v 11. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ.
So right at the heart of this foundation faith lies the historical person of Jesus. The faith that sustains us through every crisis is not based on fairy stories but on the solid basis of historical reality connected with the life, death and resurrection of the man Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus is the heart of the good news for the whole of humanity. Paul centred his preaching on the news of Jesus crucified to reconcile a broken humanity to a holy God. That is the foundational announcement that Christians make to the world. It is incredibly easy to be diverted from that by all kinds of interesting ideas and current preoccupations with the world around us, but this vital foundation must be carefully built. Without this essential truth, announcing humanity’s need to be reconciled to God through Jesus, our message to the world is emasculated. Without grasping this, there is no foundation upon which the Church can grow. The church may come up with wonderful ideas to transform a community or even a nation, it may devise an apparently powerful strategy to make life better for us all, or a business model that will care for the poor, or even venture to improve our environment, but without the foundation of Jesus, and the announcement of his reconciling grace, then the church is conducting a wonderful exercise in missing the point of our being!
I think back to the crumbling foundations of my first house in Steyning; the builders did a great job of digging down and strengthening them and so keeping the house on an even keel. Getting the foundation right lies at the heart of a church’s strategy – and sometimes a bit of rebuilding is necessary.