Three theologians stand out as those who have impacted the modern (and postmodern) church in a tremendous way towards moving away from an unbiblical pietism. “Piety” is a good word, which speaks of godly devotion, but pietism is a perversion of true piety. Pietism approaches life in a Jesus-and-me manner, perhaps expanding in some situations to include Jesus-and-me-and-my-family. In other words, the thinking is, “So long as I am saved—perhaps my family—that is sufficient for Christianity in my life. Nothing more is required of me.”

Pietism emphasises the salvation of souls—which is certainly a biblical emphasis—but it does not believe that Christianity will go beyond the individual soul to have any meaningful impact in society. These three individuals challenged that status quo, and really got people in the church thinking about these issues.

Sanctity of Life Sunday was celebrated in South Africa on 31 January 2010. The purpose of this day is to draw attention to the silent holocaust that is occurring throughout our land: a form of mass murder that is taking place, one womb at a time.

The history of this day has its roots in United States. On 22 January 1973 the US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favour of the legalisation of abortion. Since then, tens of millions of human beings have been killed through either surgical or chemical procedures with the full legal protection of the US Constitution. In essence, the ruling was that the foetus was not fully human and therefore it was not afforded human rights under the constitution.

Paul was besotted with Christ Jesus his Lord. He was humbled by His supremacy, submissive to His sovereignty and confident in His sufficiency. In a phrase, Paul was satisfied with his Saviour. And his desire was that all believers have such satisfaction in Christ. Fundamentally, this is why he wrote so many letters to both individual believers and to various local churches. We have inspired copies of 13 of these in the New Testament. Colossians is one such letter. John Macarthur notes,