Question Time

One of the great learning experiences of my life has been the consistent presence of question time following the sermon at Cumberland Uni Church (that's Uni as in University not unitarian as someone who came from a letterbox drop misinterpreted it.) Though no doubt all confusion about our belief in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit would have been cleared up in question time, had it not been made known earlier.

Question time has been a great way to interact with the preacher and the word of God. It's slipped off the radar of late at Uni Church but our pastor Andy Chung has graciously (as he's the one that gets grilled) reinstated it. My personal tip in question time: always ask your question on the verse or verses the preacher skipped over. That way, you'll know if they didn't know what it meant or just cut it out for time.

A question that came up on Sunday was in response to a statement Andy had made during the sermon

Satan is the ruler of this world.

I now think Andy was right. Andy as is often the case, was in fact always correct and the misunderstanding was with me. But because he was able to nuance his statement with the benefit of question time, Andy got sharpened in his understanding and so did the congregation. Ephesians 2:2 describes satan as the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Jesus describes him in John 12:31 as the ruler of this world. Satan however is not the ultimate ruler and has no true hold over Christian's who live under the rule of Jesus.

It is an important thing to get correct as we don't want an over-realised eschatology which leads to a perceived ability to attain sinless perferctionism. [TRANSLATION: Think satan is dead, therefore we can live without sin in this life.] On the other hand we don't want an under-realised esachatology (which I often associate with our US Southern Baptist friends) where somehow the battle with satan is still being fought. [TRANSLATION: Jesus didn't defeat satan on the cross, therefore we are still waiting for him to be defeated.]

We end up somewhere in the middle. No, not the fence again, but what Phillip Jensen calls a "toothless tiger." Satan is not dead, but powerless. Or as one of the wise old heads at Uni Church, Stewart Binns put it, it's similar to the way we talk about death. Though still present, it's defeated and has no sting.