Yesterday (24th January) marks the launch of the Archbishop of Canterbury and York's third annual global, ecumenical prayer movement - Thy Kingdom Come.

Considered one of the most dynamic prayer initiatives to emerge from the Church of England in recent years, high profile figures from across the main denominations gathered together at Lambeth Palace and Bishopthorpe, to hear plans for this year's Thy Kingdom Come from May 10th -20th.
One of the highlights from both events was the premier of a new film featuring Archbishop Justin Welby, his grandson Elijah and Brian Heasley, Director of 24/7 Prayer International.

In the film Brian shares his powerful story of how he went from criminal to Christ follower, something which he credits to the persistent prayers of loved ones.

Thy Kingdom Come is a simple invitation to pray between Ascension and Pentecost for friends and family to come to faith. Now in its third year, participation has grown every year.

In 2016 - 100,000 Christians pledged to pray. By 2017 - more than half a million had pledged to pray from more than 85 countries including Ghana, Netherlands, Malaysia, Cuba, South Africa, Australia, Korea, Japan and the Philippines to name a few.

In the UK, in 2017 every diocese in the Church of England was involved. Many cathedrals took part, hosting 'beacon' events designed to focus prayers in towns and cities nationwide.

The campaign's broad ecumenical appeal led to more than 50 denominations and traditions being involved last year; including the Roman Catholic Church, the Methodist Church and the Redeemed Christian Church of God.
The positive impact of Thy Kingdom Come 2017 continues to unfold as numerous stories of personal and communal transformation pour in from churches, families and whole communities alike.
Among the stories arising from the initiative - many of them deeply moving - is one from a couple who had not seen their son for 22 years. 'We pray every day obviously for him but during Thy Kingdom Come he was one of the people we prayed for as a group,' they say. 'We put his name on the altar before God and… yesterday he came home.'
This year also sees some digital developments including a brand-new website and a Thy Kingdom Come devotional app created by leading Christian publishers SPCK. Both products will be translated into several languages including Spanish, Korean, and Swahili and will be launched in time for Easter.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby said:

"The business of being witnesses to Jesus Christ and of praying to be witnesses compels us to look into the world around us. It compels us to seek, to experience the compassion of God for a world caught up in lostness, in sin, but also in suffering and pain, in oppression of the poor, in cruelty, in abuse, in outrageous inequality, in all the things that go against the Kingdom of God.

"There is no limit to what the Kingdom of God does, and so the moment we start praying Thy Kingdom Come we look outwards.

"The Kingdom of God when we pray for the Kingdom to come, the Kingdom will transform individuals, the Kingdom transforms society, the Kingdom transforms the globe and the Kingdom transforms the cosmos."

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu said: "It gladdens and warms my heart to know that many Christians throughout the world are committing themselves, from today to Pentecost, to pray for the Coming of Our Father in Heaven's Kingdom - a Kingdom of Justice, Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit. And with a passion for people from every nation, tribe and language to encounter Jesus Christ - the Light of the world. Please join me in praying the "Our Father who art in Heaven…." on the Hour every Hour when you are able."
Emma Buchan, Project Manager of Thy Kingdom Come and the Archbishops' Evangelism Task Group Project Leader, said:
"It is such a blessing to be involved with Thy Kingdom Come and what God is calling us to. I pray and hope that in some small way we can encourage individuals, families and churches to pray for people to come to know Jesus Christ.

We were amazed by the level of engagement last year - from Australia to Cuba, from Japan to the Falkland's and across denominations.

We have received a number of powerful testimonies - including stories of answered prayer as well as many people and churches committing, even more so, to pray for loved ones to come to know Christ.

We are so excited to see what happens next."

During a friendly “spiritual conversation” with another believer, he said, “I believe we can get to a place where we no longer sin.”

While some of us in the modern-day age have become used to thinking of sin as bad practices or actions taken against God’s law, the concept of “sin” is a much more profound and deep for me, than wrong doing or good deeds. Sin is something which affects, influences and impacts way more than we sometimes superficially understand.

Sin vs. Sin
When reading carefully through the bible, there seems to be many different ways in which the bible authors use the term “sin”. For example, sin can be referring to actions and practices, but also to a condition, a state or a power.

Below are a few examples of verses referring to sin not as actions, but as a power, a state or a condition:

“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps. 51:5);
“Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jo. 1:29);
“for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin” (Rom. 3:9);
“For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.” (Rom. 5:19);
“knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:6);
“But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind” (Rom. 7:8);
“For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.” (Rom. 7:14);
“through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin” (Rom 5:12)

To sin (chet\chata) in Hebrew = “to miss”
In our Hebrew language, the word חֶטְא (“sin”) literally means “to miss”[1]. From which the Hebrew speaker understands that “to sin” means to “miss” the will of God.
Unlike the Mosaic Covenant, where to stay away from sin meant not to break laws (such as not to hurt your neighbor), under the New Covenant, that is no longer enough! You saw your neighbor in need and you did not help him? You have sinned – you have missed the will of God.

“To one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17)

For Israel, the Mosaic covenant was like receiving first aid treatment. The Mosaic law limited the wrongdoings of our wicked hearts, which were heavily affected by the evil civilization all around. However, the New Covenant raises the bar much higher, setting the standard back as in the days of creation – the ultimate will of God.

NOT to miss the will of God (not to sin) therefore, goes much deeper and much farther than not to murder someone or not to rob a bank. We miss God’s will in more ways than we begin to realize – we miss God’s will in our lifestyle, in our cultural practices, in our ways of thinking, in what we say, in what we eat, in what we buy and in many other ways. We miss the will of God in simple everyday actions that we don’t even stop to think about – such as polluting God’s creation because of using electricity or driving a car (pollution which leads not only to diseases but also to natural disasters [2]). Or when we buy an iPhone, without realizing we support modern slavery as children as young as thirteen are forced to work in the mines for as little as $2 a day [3]. Or when we give our little ones sodas, pumping their body with sugars and artificial chemicals which cause obesity and other sicknesses. Or when our materialistic culture drives us into buying a $50k leisure boat while there are starving children on the other side of town.

There are endless other examples of realities, situations and things that we do, that are “missing the will of God”, simply because we live in a world which is in a sinful condition, many times even contributing to its condition without realizing.

Everything is tangled together, it is practically impossible for us to escape the infinite cosmic loop of sin we are all stuck in. The implication is that if we like it or not, we are an integral part of the butterfly effect caused by the condition of sin in the world – and in us.

What we do is who we are
Sin, of course, goes much deeper than the external actions we do, as the source of what comes out externally emanates from who we are inside. It has to do with our inner being, with our identity deep inside – and with missing the will of God in who we were created to be.

In his book, “The Reason for God”, Dr. Keller gives this definition of sin:

“Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from him. …So, according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things.”[4]

Or as 19th century Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, beautifully and simply puts it:

“Sin is building your identity on anything but God.”[5]

Meaning that even loving our loved ones (which is a good thing in itself) more than we love God is to miss the will of God – to sin.

The swamp of sin
The condition of sin is like a swamp – the more we try to fight it ourselves, the deeper we sink. A cosmic swamp that all creation is affected by.

Due to the sinful condition humanity is in, no one can escape, we are all affected. No one can stand before a holy God, claiming “I had nothing to do with this”.

Just as being stuck in a swamp, there is nothing we can do but only to hope that someone from the outside will reach out to rescue us and pull us out – we need for God Himself to provide the way of justification for us.

Considering the fact that sin is a condition and not only an action, then moving from the condition of sin to the condition of being righteous is not something we can “do” on our own. It is also not a process or a procedure in which we slowly achieve or earn from God, nor it is something we can maintain in our own power – it is God who pulls us out of the swamp, not we who are climbing out, trying to grab onto him. Either we agree that He will pull us out or we reject his offer of rescue. It is simply a swapping of states – either you are still in the swamp because you rejected help, or you are out of it because you allowed God to take hold of you.

The world is divided into two: those who are justified and those who are not. There is no in between, there is no progress, nor a process of slowly climbing out of the swamp, as if completing the race successfully in order to win a computer game.

In other words, it is not your sins that keep salvation away from you, is it your deliberate rejection (disbelief) of the help of the Savior that keeps salvation away from you, and keeps you in the condition of sin (in the swamp).

The only way for you NOT to be saved, is by deliberately refusing to catch on the only life line being offered that can pull you out of the swamp. How do you take hold of the life line? By simply saying “YES” to the rescue God is offering in Messiah Yeshua (aka – the famous “Sola fide”; justification by faith alone through grace alone [6]).

Save me!!
Not being able to understand sin as first and foremost a condition is what I believe causes good hearted believers to fail in grasping this fundamental doctrine of salvation. A good example comes from the Pentecostal pastor and author David Pawson who holds that salvation is something you need to obtain and maintain yourself and by your own power, through a process of being able to stay away from sin: “Salvation is clearly therefore a process. And a process that is not yet complete for any one of us!”.[7]

Pawson’s statement is based of his lack in understanding the concept of sin as a condition from the first place: “Sins are the same in believers as unbelievers. For “saints” to think they will get away with it is a fatal mistake, when actually they are storing up wrath against themselves.”

The good news is that I have security in the new condition I have in Yeshua the Messiah – the condition of justification. And with all due respect to David Pawson, I can sleep at night knowing that it’s not even up to my abilities to maintain in that condition, but merely on what Yeshua did for my on the cross!

“It is Finished.” (John 19:30)

Source: www.oneforisrael.org

[1] Strong’s Concordance, 2398: chata: ‘to miss’ חָטָא
[2] Natural Disasters Tied to Unnatural Causes (Live Science, Apr 5, 2012)
[3] Apple admits child labour was used to build iPods and iPhones in Chinese factories (Daily Mail, Feb 27, 2010)
How the iPhone Helps Perpetuate Modern-Day Slavery (Huffington Post, Nov 10, 2014)
[4] Timothy Keller, “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism” (Penguin Books; 2009), page 162.
[5] “Sickness unto Death” by Soren Kierkegaard
[6] One of the doctrines that most distinguishes between Protestant denominations and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church.
[7] David Pawson, “What We Believe About Salvation” (part of an 8-part series titled WHAT WE BELIEVE).
[8] David Pawson, “Once Saved, Always Saved?: A Study in Perseverance and Inheritance” (Hodder & Stoughton, 1996), page 8.

What would life be without Jesus? Thousands of people have never met a Christian or heard the Good News in their mother tongue. In 2018 more people than ever will find out that God is reaching out to them. Wycliffe Bible Translators personnel work tirelessly towards the goal of delivering the message of Jesus in people's heart languages, while organisations like MAF travel across continents to deliver God's Word to new believers. Recently a South Sudanese Christian said, 'I was jealous of white people being blessed by having the Word of God in their own language. We had no Bible in Baka.’ Then he gave a broad grin: ‘Now I am happy because I have a Baka Bible. God did not forget us.’ Now Christians speaking Baka can share God’s Word with those around them who do not yet know the salvation Christ offers. See the World article ‘Praying for the unreached’, and also https://www.maf-uk.org/campaign/unreached