I’m currently enjoying a book by Fred Saunders called “Embracing the Trinity” and it is proving a stimulating read. The following is a quote from the introduction that acts as timely wakeup call to those of us in the evangelical parts of the church.
The evangelical movement is booming, but often seems to be ten miles wide and half an inch deep. This shallowness is not only how things look from the outside… It also describes the way many evangelicals feel about their own churches and spiritual lives. Many evangelicals seem haunted by a sense of not being about anything except the moment of conversion. When they stop to ask themselves where they are taking their converts, they fear that when they get there, there will be no there there. When they sense that God is calling them to a deeper communion with him, they are unable to say what that would be. After all you can’t get any more saved than saved.
There is much more that follows this but for this post I just wanted to agree with the assessment that an over obsession with conversion as a puntilliar event with nothing or very little following is death to real Christianity. Real Christianity is a relationship with the Father, Son and Spirit. It begins at conversion and grows over years of experience. Saunder’s superb answer to this evangelical shallowness is that the deeper communion we are called into is deeper understanding, appreciation and rejoicing in the gospel. The more I understand the gospel and the three persons who designed and executed the gospel the more deeply I will be drawn into fellowship with them and the richer and fuller my communion with them will be.
Ephesians 1:4-6
… In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace…
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