He is Risen!

A bed rock fact of Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Good Friday was good because Jesus bore our punishment and died in our place.  That is why we call Jesus’ death a substitutionary atonement.

But!

On Sunday He broke the bonds of death and handed Satan a crushing defeat when He rose from the grave.  Death could not hold Him.  Satan could not kill Him.  Sin could not destroy Him.  He rose from the grave.

In writing to the Corinthian church Paul explained the significance of Christ’s resurrection.

• ¹⁷ “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.” (1Co 15:17-18 ESV)

• ⁵⁷ “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  ⁵⁸ Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”  (1Co 15:57-58 ESV)

Friends of Village Schools of the Bible, Jesus is alive!

Have a blessed Resurrection Sunday where you worship.

Warren

Separation or Church and State — Workplace Implications

Posted by Warwick Alcock

By the mid-1600s, hundreds of thousands of Christians had slaughtered each other in religious wars all across Europe. The root cause? Kings wanted a loyal national Church that would permit no dissent. Disgusted, Puritans left Europe for America to establish a “city upon a hill” to model obedience to God’s laws.

One Puritan minister, Roger Williams, founded a Rhode Island settlement to “shelter…persons distressed for conscience” believing state-sponsored forced worship “stincks in God’s nostrils.” To him, the church was like a garden of Eden. “[W]hen they…opened a gap in the…wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wildernes of the world, God hathe…removed the Candlestick…and made his Garden a Wildernesse.” Separation was essential for “Soul Libertie.” It was a “command of God that, since the coming of…the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Antichristian consciences and worships, bee granted to all men in all Nations.…”   Thus was formulated a pillar of state theory that reverberates today.

Christians in the workplace now face new challenges. As Kent O’Grady, Board Chair of Village Schools of the Bible, has said, “recent conflicts regarding the separation of church and state did not come out of the U.S. Constitution, but rather out of interpretations by the U.S. Supreme Court. In its zeal to protect the rights of individuals to freely exercise their choice of faith, the Supreme Court has sought to remove any religion from the public space.  The ultimate effect of these decisions is to have the government support the ‘religion of no religion’ or what we know as atheism — itself an organized religion.”  The recent passing of conservative supreme court justice Atonin Scalia exacerbates the trend. Without Scalia’s influence, the Hobby Lobby decision might have turned out rather differently.

So how free are we to express our faith at school, government, or secular workplace? Church members are meant to be salt and light at work: what can we say and do (or not say and do) as we reach out to others with the gospel?

Kent O’Grady, Minnesota State Patrol (retired), guides us through church state separation and its workplace implications at the next Village Schools Faith at Work seminar, on 23 March at 7 pm.

Seating is limited. Register online at villageschoolsofthebible.org, or call Trish at (952) 540-9460.