Friday, May 23, 2008

inclusiveness

Sometimes I come across a piece that says exactly what I would want to say about a subject. The following is from a sermon entitled "True Inclusiveness", found in Fleming Rutledge's Help My Unbelief. The sermon reflects on the tension between the Galatians (who needed less law) and the Corinthians (who needed more). At the conclusion, she writes (with one minor adjustment on my part):

"Fellow evangelicals! You know, and I know, that the hallmark of the wider [] church today is "inclusiveness"...You know also, and I know, that the reproach continually brought against us evangelicals is that we are "narrow", "intolerant", "rigid", and "exclusive". I believe that we must not let the idea of inclusiveness be wrested away from us. The gospel is more inclusive than anyone who does not know scripture could ever imagine. Who could ever have spoken of the justification of the ungodly and the undeserving except by revelation? We do not stand on our spiritual gifts, our religious habits, our extemporaneous prayers, our right doctrines, our correct interpretations. We stand on only one thing: the grace and love of God freely given to us in the Cross of the One of whom it is written that at the moment of his death the curtain was rent asunder from top to bottom. There is neither first class or second class, black or white, slave or free, Jew or Greek, male or female, oppressed or oppressor, liberal or conservative, gay or straight, deserving or undeserving. For circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing. In Christ Jesus, there is a new creation."

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