To walk in light means for everything that we hide nothing for God. We tell Him everything, exactly such as it is. To those that or not sincere God does have aversion. God does not ask firstly that we are holy or perfect, but first of all to be honest. That is the beginning point of real sanctification, and from this source of honesty already the other originate. And if there is one thing for us all what we can do, then it is to decide to be honest. Confess for this reason your sins directly to God. Call sinful ideas no longer at beautiful names to excuse for them. We will never get to know victory over sin if we become not honest.
"And he said, Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom. And he said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Luke 23:42-43
"We believe, confess, repent and die figuratively when 'we are buried with him, by baptism into death' (Romans 6 v 4). The penitent thief believed, confessed, repented, and died literally, after he had been accepted by the dying Jesus: and thus he became the first one to be baptized into Christ.
So what does this mean to our brother or sister who, in his or her humility, feels unworthy, as every right thinking brother or sister feels? Here, surely, is God, showing with emphasis how far He is willing and eager to go to save His children. 'The Lord is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance' (2 Peter 3 v 9). The first one to be baptized into Christ in the Christian dispensation was not someone we might have selected, to put on a pedestal and say 'There is someone you can look up to and follow.' No, the first one was a common criminal, but one who realized his helplessness and his need, and looked on the only example to be followed, that of the One 'who had done nothing amiss'."
Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch - one of the world's leading historians - reveals the origins of Christianity and explores what it means to be a Christian on BBC 4 and Last broadcast on Saturday on BBC Two.
When Diarmaid MacCulloch was a small boy, his parents used to drive him round historic churches. Little did they know that they had created a monster, with the history of the Christian Church becoming his life's work.
In a series sweeping across four continents, Professor MacCulloch goes in search of Christianity's forgotten origins. He overturns the familiar story that it all began when the apostle Paul took Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. Instead, he shows that the true origins of Christianity lie further east, and that at one point it was poised to triumph in Asia, maybe even in China.
The headquarters of Christianity might well have been Baghdad not Rome, and if that had happened then Western Christianity would have been very different.
2. Catholicism: The Unpredictable Rise of Rome
Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch's grandfather was a devout pillar of the local Anglican church and felt that any dabbling in Catholicism was liable to pollute the English way of life. But now Professor's grandfather isn't around to stop him exploring the extraordinary and unpredictable rise of the Roman Catholic Church.
Over one billion Christians look to Rome, more than half of all Christians on the planet. But how did a small Jewish sect from the backwoods of 1st-century Palestine, which preached humility and the virtue of poverty, become the established religion of western Europe - wealthy, powerful and expecting unfailing obedience from the faithful?
Amongst the surprising revelations, MacCulloch tells how confession was invented by monks on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, and how the Crusades gave Britain the university system.
Above all, it is a story of what can be achieved when you have friends in high places.
3. Orthodoxy - From Empire to Empire
Today, Eastern Orthodox Christianity flourishes in the Balkans and Russia, with over 150 million members worldwide. It is unlike Catholicism or Protestantism - worship is carefully choreographed, icons pull the faithful into a mystical union with Christ, and everywhere there is a symbol of a fierce-looking bird, the double-headed eagle. What story is this ancient drama trying to tell us?
In the third part of his journey into the history of Christianity, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch charts Orthodoxy's extraordinary fight for survival. After its glory days in the eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, was seized by the Russian tsars and faced near-extinction under Soviet communism.
MacCulloch visits the greatest collection of early icons in the Sinai desert, a surviving relic of the iconoclastic crisis in Istanbul and Ivan the Terrible's cathedral in Moscow to discover the secret of Orthodoxy's endurance.
"And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, "If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well." And immediately the hemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, "Who touched my garments?" And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, 'Who touched me?'" And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had been done to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." (Mark 5:25-34 RSV)
We may wonder why Jesus did not let this poor woman escape with her precious secret untold. Matthew suggests the answer. She had said within herself, "If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole". That was an error which Jesus found it imperative to correct and so her secret had to be revealed. The power was not in his garment but in her faith. "Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole." Her faith was great, but her knowledge was imperfect. Without her confession, and the blessing of Jesus, she would have known of his power, but not of his love."
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A Life of Jesus - Melva Purkis
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2013 update:
English: Jesus Christ - detail from Deesis mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
