New Birth In Christ

Rev. David Rockness joins our pulpit for the month of September and begins a series on I Peter. The passage today is 1:1-9, and he guides us in this passage to consider that we are called to love God, and that we are elected by God to salvation, but that our experience is first of a choice we made, and only later to we come to understand our New Birth is a result of God's own effectual call. He reminds us that the life we are called to as Christians is not one of ease, but of struggle and deep meaning. Rev. Rockness also reminds us that our union with Christ is like the union of marraige. When we are married, we enter into a unique covenantal reltionship with a person, not with the institution of marriage. So it is with the Church. Our first love and duty is not to the Church herself--it is to Christ. Once joined to Christ, we are then entered in to the fellowship of the Church. Our commitment is first to Christ, and then along with that union comes the doctrinal truths. This message is a useful reminder that studying the purity and peace of the Church is, at its heart, a matter of fully and faithfully loving Christ himself.