CT - Alan Rudnick

Be a peace-wager like Nelson Mandela

As the world reacts to the death of Nelson Mandela, we cannot help but read and understand his amazing history of peace. Fighting against injustice and apartheid in South Africa were his notable achievements, but Mandela did so much more.

Mandela spent 27 years in prison for fighting for his beliefs and for justice. Emerging for oppressive imprisonment, Mandela spoke about peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness. How can someone emerge from such hate, injustice, and pain to take about reconciliation? He became a symbol of truth, reconciliation, grace and peace.

Many talk about peace, but few understand what it takes. It’s easy to speak about peace but if one truly wants to achieve peace, one must “wage peace”. Nelson Mandela died in the midst of Advent, the precursor to Christmas. The story of Christmas is the story of God waging peace with the world. Making peace is not an easy business. Mandela was a peace-wager.

Peace amid tragedy is challenging. Mandela was one who could find peace in tragedy.

The message of Christmas is this: Christ was born to all the world for the redemption of the world. However, as Christians, we often believe that peace is to be something to pray for yet it is never accomplished. It is common for Christians to think that peace is to be prayed for and never acting on.

Jesus said,

afeature, marriage

Does God Promise You a Spouse?

Does God promise you a spouse in the Bible?

...that was the question that Rob Eagar over at thelife.com proposed recently. His post tried to answer this question in the affirmative. Many evangelicals through the years have often painted a picture that God promises a spouse to all believers. Except there is one problem, no where in scripture does God make this promise.

Eagar said:

Does God promise us a spouse? The Bible says “yes” by describing Christians as the spiritual bride of Christ. Our true spouse is Jesus. Yet, many of us say, “I’m glad to be spiritually married to Christ, but I can’t feel Him. Wouldn’t it be better if I could enjoy God’s love with someone else? I want Jesus with skin on.” So, we pray for God to bring us an earthly mate.

This type of theology has created a generation of frustrated Christian singles. No where in scripture does God promise a wife or husband to a believer on the sole basis that they are a Christian. Christians are not the spiritual bride of Christ. The spiritual bride of Christ is the Church (ecclesia). Some would say Christians make up the church, thus Christ is our bride. Maybe (that is pretty loose theology), but not in the erotic sense. However, scripture is clear where we get this “bridal theology” from, such as Ephesians 5:25:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Here, Paul speaks about the love that exists between a husband and wife and mirrors that love in non-erotic language (Paul uses agapate to describe this love) to describe the relationship between the Church and Jesus. Agnieszka Tennant, writing for CT, posted this article about the over use of love language with Christ. Her most telling quote reveals the trouble with the over use of the love language of God:

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Be a peace-wager like Nelson Mandela

Does God Promise You a Spouse?

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