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Tuesday
May262009

A Kingdom of nobles

“For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo.
Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity.”

C.S. Lewis

As ironic as it is, Christians (those who participate in a Kingdom) have largely lost the concept of  nobility.

Perhaps the notion of nobility got lost when the the last knights and ladies of the Middle Ages died off. Or perhaps we've lost the idea of nobility because we've lost a part of the Gospel itself.  What I mean is this:  In our attempts to be 'authentic' to each other, the world and to God, we've not only recognized the depths of our sin, we've decided that our selves are synonymous with those foul places.

Yet Scripture has stated otherwise:

"But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart."
-- Luke 8:15

Something better now defines us:  something stronger, regal and resplendent.  This transformation wasn't a mere brushing-up, nor a tinkering with the old in order to improve it.  It was something wholly different:  a bestowing of a fundamentally different nature -- supernatural supplanting natural.

Does the idea of Christian nobility sound too prideful for us? Are we so used to living in the mud of false humility that we cannot receive the more substantial redemption he is offering?

In C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, the children who become allies of the great Lion discover what they were meant for all along, as Aslan renames them in order to reveal their true natures:

And Aslan gave the children each a new name:

  • Peter will be known now as, "King Peter the Magnificent."
  • Susan will be called, "Queen Susan the Gentle."
  • Edmund will be known as, "King Edmund the Just."
  • Lucy will be called, "Queen Lucy the Valiant."
Whitney Young once said, "The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self." Through the strong rescue of Jesus, you are no longer this "former self" -- no matter how things appear to you. As C.S. Lewis reminds us,
“For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity.”

That is to say, your new and noble glory surpasses the goodness and character of Adam and Eve -- before they fell.  Through his transforming rescue in you, our Lord has out-done himself again. 

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Reader Comments (3)

Hi Jim,

I've been meaning to comment on this for the past few days but just haven't gotten around to it. There is a song that I have loved since my childhood, but yet the lyrics only took on meaning to me in just the past few years. It's not a "Christian" song by any means, but God spoke to me through it. I've written about it a few times. The song is Kings of the Wild Frontier by Adam and the Ants. Yeah, I know... Adam and the Ants. LOL. :) But the lyrics are wonderful. The song starts out with:

A new royal family
A wild nobility
We are the family

And then goes on with:

I feel beneath the white
There is a Redskin suffering
From centuries of taming

The song says to me, in essence, that there is a white man who is inhabited by a wild Redskin, but has been 'tamed,' and is suffering for it.

He knows who he is on the inside... part of a royal family, a wild nobility... but it's all been kept inside.

I've likened this to what the church has done to people --- taming them as 'good boys and girls,' and forgetting the Wild God who made them wild new creations. Indeed we are nobility. We weren't meant to be tamed as ordinary average 'good people.'

Some would say I'm strange to get all of this out of a song... lol... but the song has really spoken to me. In fact all of the lyrics have spoken to me in one way or another. If interested, the full lyrics can be found here.

June 2, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterJoel Brueseke

Joel, this is great stuff. How would have thought Adam and the Ants could preach? Thanks for the reference.

June 2, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterJim Robbins

Hello, please visit my page and listen to the sermons of Scott about Lewis "In His Own

Words", they are eye-opening! He quotes him from his own books (and so on), showing who

he really was. Its very important, you should listen to!
http://www.4shared.com/dir/NqMKaOV_/Scott_A_Johnson.html
:) Peter

June 24, 2010 | Unregistered Commenterpeter

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