As
children of God, we are recipients of God’s saving grace hence we are to act as
those who are not just under the common grace. God’s salvation for us has to
lead us to the original cultural mandate of God which is to subdue the earth
and we are to stick to the Great commission of Christ. The problem in our
Church today is the tendency to get stuck in the present temporal issues rather
than kingdom purposes of significance for both time and eternity. Most
Christians forget to think eschatologically and miss the fact that apart from
the common grace, there is also the common curse, and that there is an idea of
the catastrophic.
The
Antithesis drives us to focus and maintain our journey to win more souls for
Christ. This is not because we have the power to determine who are the elect
but because we are made to be obedient to the Lord and do as He instructs us to
do. It is only God who knows who will be saved and who will be the reprobate and
our role is to live the cultural mandate and Great commission of Christ. Having
this in mind, we need to understand this and take by heart because it will be
dangerous to go forth and win souls and then share to them a different Gospel.
Being
a missionary, I met a lot of frontliners in the battlefield who are so bold as
driven by Christ’s Great Commission. Most of them inspire me but it hurts me
though when some of them criticize theologians because for them, there is an
urgency for the harvest and theologians just waste time figuring out and
solving many errors when the great problem is actually how to bring more souls
to Christ. To me, there should be a balance because missionaries, theologians,
and others are all parts of the body of Christ and have important roles to work
on. And actually, missionaries really need to be theologians themselves as well
because in the battlefield, there will be so many false teachings and errors
that will lead to the corruption of their teachings as they share the Gospel to
communities. Hence there should be the clarity of revelation as per the
Reformed Apologetics is concerned and theologians have an important role in
this matter.
Missionary
theologians will not be easily swayed by some teachings especially things like the
dualism of the Romanists, which apparently introduces a different god. The
Scripture teaches us that man was totally disposed to God in the Garden of Eden
in the book of Genesis and is not having two different natures as in the RC’s
teachings of concupiscence.
The
testimony of the Holy Spirit is of prime importance when we serve in the
missionfield. It is then always important to base all understanding and
teachings on the Scripture which exhibits fully as clear evidence of truth .
Anything that is apart from this form of God’s special revelation will lead
anyone astray no matter how good the theology of a minister sounds.
Week 5
Digest, Sept.21-27, 2022
Lanilane Ocbina
WCTS, ThM program
