The Beauty of Salvation (15)
Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet;
Praise Him with the lute and harp!
Praise Him with the timbrel and dance;
Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes!
Praise Him with loud cymbals;
Praise Him with clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD! Psalm 150.3-6
I suspect that not many of us think of our salvation as a kind of dance. Or that dancing should be a way to praise God for His saving mercy and grace.
But dance is an excellent way of thinking about the great and beautiful gift of salvation which God has bestowed on us. We are all like Eliza Doolittle. Having been washed and renewed and engaged within an excruciating work of transformation, we step out onto the ballroom floor of our salvation and dance as if we were born to royalty and to dance.
And we are. Reborn to dance, that is. David Bentley Hart explains: “For Christian thought, the true order of sacrifice is that which corresponds to the motion of the divine perichoresis, the Father’s giving of the Son, the Son’s execution of all the Father is and wills, the Spirit’s eternal offering back up of the gift in endless variety, each person receiving from and giving to each other in infinite love.”
The word perichoresis is “dance”, and the “divine dance” involves the eternal glad and infinitely outflowing love which characterizes the divine Trinity. We are brought into that dance by the grace of God, as an infinite variety of gifted saints. The Holy Spirit applies the salvation Jesus has won to our lost souls, now redeemed and reborn. He begins the work of transformation in us which, by the glory of God seen in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3.12-18; 4.6), transforms us from street waifs to royal children and invites us into the Lord’s eternal dance of love—receiving from and giving to one another the infinite love God has for us, and which, as living sacrifices, we offer back daily to Him.
To meditate on this always-in-process gift of salvation, this being “dressed up” and “resocialized” into the likeness of Jesus Christ, this perpetual participation in the divine dance, love flowing all around and through us, why, it’s enough to make one want to dance all night.
Resources for being and making disciples
We continue our reprise of Mike McQueen’s discussions of the work of disciple-making. The Church needs to recover this facet of our calling because making disciples is what Jesus has commanded us to do. Listen in as Mike shares from more than 40 years of ministry experience his keen insights on this subject.
Other columns of interest: This week: In our ReVision column we look at the Church as people in ministry and how that is realized. Our Read Moore podcast is working through the book, The Kingdom Turn. In our Crosfigell teaching letter, we continue examining the state of pastors and churches during the period of the Celtic Revival, using contemporary witnesses. And in our Scriptoriumcolumn we are working through the sermon on the mount. Click here to see all the other columns and writers available to you.
The Ailbe Bookstore: All the books in The Ailbe Bookstore are now available at no charge. Only pay postage. New books in PDF in our store include The Disciplined Life, Let God Be True, and Pray for Your Church. Download all the PDFs in our bookstore and share them freely with your study group, leadership team, or entire congregation.
Resources for Shepherds: I encourage you to follow Ailbe Brother A. D. Labuschagne’s series on worship in the Insights column. Writing from South Africa, A. D.’s latest column calls us to worship God as living sacrifices. Did you know that you can join our Praying with the Psalms group that meets bi-weekly to learn how to pray and sing the psalms? Simply go to the website and sign-up, then order your free copy of Praying with the Psalms from our bookstore.
From the Celtic Revival
State of the Churches in the Time of the Celtic Revival
It is a clear sign that a man is not a lawful shepherd or even middling Christian if he denies or rejects pronouncements that originate not so much from me (and I am very worthless) as from the Old and New Testaments…Let all examine their conscience in a true balance; only thus will they be able to determine if it is right for them to sit in the chair of a priest.
– Gildas, The Ruin of Britain
Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.
– 2 Corinthians 13.5
Gildas conceded that there were probably some faithful shepherds serving in churches around Britain. He was not offering a blanket condemnation of all the pastors in every church in his native land. Rather, his words were aimed at those who seemed most influential and whose work—or rather, lack of it—affected most of the Lord’s sheep.
It’s hard for us to believe that such pastors can continue in a church. Pastors who do not preach all the counsel of God, do not feed their flocks but pander to their felt needs, do not attend to the needs of their sheep, seek the favor of rulers and magistrates, allow themselves to be showered with material benefits, indulge in fleshly entertainments, and keep aloof from those they are called to feed and serve.
|Resources from the Celtic Revival (ca. 430-800 AD)
Reading about the saints of Ireland during this period can be challenging, enlightening, and fun. Hagiography is a blend of history and story-telling, which fits perfectly with the Irish imagination. Our book, Lives of Irish Saints, uses as its basis the important early-20th century work of Charles Plummer and presents some of the leaders of the early period of the Celtic Revival. You can download it for free by clicking here.
T. M. Moore
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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
