Art as expression – NOT as market campaigns, will still capture our Imaginations
On almost every page of the New Testament, the spiritual foe of Christians is identified, not as a mere principle, but as personal, intelligent, malignant and cunning. Yes, it’s Satan, the Devil, the great dragon, serpent and evil one!
James could not have meant here that Christians are “to pretend that they get joy out of things which are disagreeable, for that would be an act of insincerity.”
The obvious meaning of the passage is Christian baptism; that is, the baptism which is the initiatory rite of admittance into the Christian religion.
This was the central event in world history, apparently of the most ordinary significance to anyone who might have been aware of it, but actually the pivot upon which the future of mankind turned, the cornerstone and foundation of all mortal hopes.
God’s device of accounting people righteous is that of forming them into a corporate unity, of which Christ is head, all the saved being members of it, the body itself being identified as “Christ,” and therefore partaking of the perfect righteousness of the Son of God himself.
