Friday 6 July 2012

There's only one way to find out... FIGHT!!!

Today, the press has its eyes on the meeting of The General Synod of the Church of England because it's at this meeting that a decision will be made about the possible consecration of women as bishops (btw, bishops are not 'ordained', they're 'consecrated').
Of course the press only wants a good story, and they interview only the people who'll give them a story in dumbed-down, bite-sized, tasty morsels. So this morning on the BBC we hear from a woman desperate to see women bishops because, after all, God created us all the same, and from a man who thinks 'priests' should be men because Jesus only called men and because he was a man.
But which is right? "There's only one way to find out... FIGHT...!!" (as Harry Hill would say). Of course the truth is more complicated, and neither are right. But that won't stop the fight nor the ensuing damage to the name of the Lord Jesus, his church and the gospel message.
The liberal pro-consecration of women are wrong because they fail to recognise that human relationships between men and women should reflect and testify to the glorious relationships in the Trinity (1 Corinthians 11:3 cf John 10:18; John 12:49f; John 14:31; John 15:10 etc.). The anglo-catholics are wrong because they think that the ordained minister (the 'priest' or 'bishop') stands in the place of Christ and his apostles in some kind of royal succession and so deny the sufficiency of Christ as our one High Priest and his church as the priesthood of the new covenant (1 Peter 2:4-10; Hebrews 7:11-8:13; Hebrews 19:1-18).
But which is worse - to deny the glory of the submission and obedience of the Son of God or to deny the glory of the sufficiency of the priesthood of the Son of God? If I had to choose, I think I'd say that the latter is worse because it keeps people away from direct contact with God by placing human priests between us, whereas the former, while it removes a testimony to the glory of Jesus and denies men and women their full humanity, doesn't keep people away from God.
Of course what we really want is a church that fully proclaims free access to the Father through the Son and the full glory of the submission of the Son to the Father.

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