As religious practice appears to freefall in the UK, interest in Jesus and Christianity is on the rise. Take Russell Brand’s 2024 baptism for instance and his meandering reflections on faith amongst his many online followers. To my point, Brand recently joined forces with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson to lead 25,000 people in publicly reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Now even arch-atheist Richard Dawkins and Donald Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk are promoting “cultural Christianity” as their bulwark against rampant “wokeism”
Perhaps Mike Bird is right when he describes the appeal of so-called “cultural Christianity”
“I think a lot of people are realising that a Christian-based society is better than a Caliphate or Rainbow Stalinism. Spirituality is better than living through our devices in some technologically infused hedonistic hellscape.”
Nevertheless, this turn to cultural Christianity often amounts to nothing more than co-opting Jesus as the brand ambassador for a political ideology or psychological viewpoint. As if sticking a Jesus badge on a worldview was the endorsement it needed to prove its value.
And it’s not just public figures. Even we believers can be guilty of enlisting the name of Jesus to bless our plans or validate our views.
Yet, Jesus is King Jesus! He calls us to follow him, to support and promote his plans, not ours. Jesus called people to be disciples, to imitate his life, to adopt his values, and to do what he did. His call to follow in his way and to become like him is not a list of lifestyle options to select from but commands to obey. Following his instructions brings our lives into alignment with his, positioning us to live in his favour and fashioning our souls to be fully alive as we reflect his character in the world.
Of course, assiduous imitation of Jesus’ life is not enough. We are invited not to a moral self-improvement attained by human effort but a new life! The life of heaven, on earth.
As 2025 kicks off with all its promise of turbulence and unpredictability our Sunday teaching will focus on “Following the Way of Jesus”. He calls us to live in Kingdom culture: charting a course that is at variance with social and religious pressures around us. Matthew records Jesus’ teaching on Kingdom Culture in chapters 5-7 of his gospel in what we call the “Sermon on the Mount”, and that is where we will begin.
This week we kick off with Matthew 4:17 and Jesus’ message to “repent for the kingdom of heaven is here”.
This is a summons to put things in the right order: to take on heaven’s perspective and to put into practice heaven’s mission in our earthly lives. It’s not human society, social influencers or even the spiritual climate that set the temperature of the Christian soul but Jesus’ unseen advancing kingdom. Circumstances, statistics and the general cynical malaise of our world should not determine our expectations of God and his work in our hearts and nation. Kingdom culture invites us to see our world with heaven’s eyes, from the point of view of one who has won the victory over death and who has the power to open the eyes of the spiritually blind. To expect the miraculous, to anticipate the appeal of Jesus and the power of the Spirit at work to call people to faith.
So repent! Re-view the world. Lord open our eyes to heaven’s viewpoint!
So Hope! – The kingdom of God is near. Lord open our hearts to your action in the world.
And God is at work in our nation. Not only are we seeing a renewed interest in Jesus, but we are seeing a growing conviction and determination to make him known. Anne and I were privileged to be with nearly 300 church and ministry leaders from all over Scotland to pray and fast this week for the power of the gospel to transform our people and land. An unprecedented gathering! We were so encouraged to see new shoots of life springing up around the country and to hear the stories of people called from the nations leave home and to come to Scotland to share the good news of Jesus as missionaries.
Maybe it’s time to let go of some of our earth-bound human perspectives, to repent and believe in the kingdom of heaven breaking into our world right here and right now, in Scotland, in 2025.
Iain