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Higher Calling

 


Hosea 4:4

The Lord says, “Let no one accuse the people or reprimand them—my complaint is against you priests.

 

Thought for the day – Higher calling

Today’s reading is God proclaiming judgement on the priests of Israel. And as a church minister that has some sort of priestly function it sits uncomfortably with me as I consider my own ministry in the light of the passage today.

There can be no denying that those called to ministry face increased scrutiny in terms of their words, behaviours and attitudes. It’s not easy. But then being a Christian isn’t easy either.

 

For while I am an ordained minister, I firmly believe in the priesthood of all believers. As Peter say in 1 Peter 2, we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that we may declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light. We are all priests of God and we all subject to the highest calling. We are called to represent people to God and then God to the people. And if the image of God that we present is marred by our behaviour, attitudes and words, then like the priests in our reading today, we should be subject to the punishments they faced.

 

But what about God’s grace, you ask. We are saved by faith and we are no longer under condemnation, according to Paul. That is true, but we will still one day have to stand before the throne of God and explain why, in spite of all that God has done for us, we chose to not declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light. Because if the world sees hypocritical Christians, they have every right to believe that if God has no importance or meaning to those who are his so called followers, why should he have any meaning or importance to them.

This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0


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