Title The Church for Tomorrow / Malachi 3:1
Contents Malachi 3:1
I will send my special envoy. He will pave the way for me. The Lord you have been waiting for for a long time will suddenly come to his palace. The long-awaited messenger of that covenant will come. I, the Lord of hosts, say
John 1:10-14
He was in the world. Although the world was brought into being through him, the world did not know him. He came to his land, but his people did not receive him. But to those who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the privilege of becoming children of God. They were not born of blood, of the flesh, or of the desire of man, but of God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen his glory. That glory was the glory of the only begotten son the Father gave him, and he was full of grace and truth.
Philippians 3:12-14
I have not achieved this, nor have I already reached my goal. Christ Jesus has taken me captive, and I am following to hold on to it. Brothers and sisters, I don't think I've caught it yet. There is only one thing I do. Immediately, forgetting what is behind, looking to what lies ahead, and running toward the goal, to receive the reward of that calling from above in Christ Jesus.
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In the Old Testament, the Israelites had one unchanging hope. It was that in due time God would send the Messiah to save the world through Him. The book of Malachi we read today is also one of those verses. There is a story in Malachi's words, "I will send you the long-awaited Messiah." The story of the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament like this word appears in several places in the New Testament, such as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Among them, today I will talk about the Gospel of John in particular. In the Gospel of John, the birth of the Messiah in the Old Testament does not begin with the story of the stars in the sky and the baby in the manger, as in the Gospels of Matthew or Luke, but begins with the difficult story of the Logos.
The author of the Gospel of John says that all things in the universe were created at the beginning by the Word. This universe, created by the Word, has no choice but to perish due to the wrong sins of man. So, in the end, God was forced to re-create this universe. What makes this universe anew and the energy that created the heavens and the earth in the beginning was expressed in the Gospel of John and described as love in 1 John. In any case, this power, this energy, came into this world, and it came as a small child in the manger, which is the body. In other words, the energy that will recreate this universe anew has been transformed into a human body, and that is the event of Jesus Christ. It is the energy that is in Jesus Christ Himself that makes the whole world a whole new one.
To understand this, the story of Teilhard de Chardin is perhaps the most understandable example. He said that love entered the middle of this created universe with the birth of Jesus and that his death, resurrection, and the events of the Holy Spirit created the gravitational force of love in this universe. Eventually, as this gravitational force of love is created, the dead molecules among those who live without love are awakened and absorbed into this gravitational force. In this way, these molecules form a personal community of love within the gravity circle. This community begins to move steadily upwards and yet forward. In other words, upward means looking at God, and moving forward means heading to the last omega point (new heavens and new earth). This is the process of salvation, and this community of people of love is the church. In this way, the church must always look forward and always look upwards and continue marching toward the Omega Point (New Heaven and New Earth) where the liberation of the universe is completed. That is also the story in the book of Philippians.
Philippians 3 is a verse that contains the very first intention that this Kyungdong Church was established, and it is also a verse that is the direction the community of the church should take. A forward-looking community, constantly moving forward until the new heavens and new earth are realized, is what the correct church should look like. A church is not a building. The reality of the church is always to go outward. That is the essence of the church. .
We light candles on Advent. Wearing blue, this symbolizes repentance. In this waiting season, can't we repent and get our first love back? It is time to repent once again whether that love is being cut off from us within the gravity of love as Chardin said, not just the passion of that young man at the beginning of the founding of our Kyungdong Church. Furthermore, it is time to move forward with a renewed mind at this point of the new millennium that is approaching us.