A few comments/quotes from the Erre book I just finished:

This was how I understood "following Jesus": do the good things and avoid the bad things. I knew I was saved by grace, but once I became a follower of Jesus, I thought grace no longer applied. I thought it became my job to become a better person.

I've felt this to be one of the biggest problems facing the evangelical church. As we become "more churched" this seems to be our attitude, that we rise up the church ladder (and earn more love/justice/blessings/protection from God) by cleaning ourselves up, forgetting we are no better than those outside the walls. We have a lot of learning to do in this area, myself included!

It was thought you had to be "clean" before you could come to God. But Jesus called people to come to him and taught that then God would make them clean.

Another fallacy in the church, thinking that we clean ourselves up when we know that it is God that does the cleaning, it is God that turns us around, left to ourselves we are nothing but filthy rags.

We go to church, we give money, and we do all the right things - in the hope that God will never put us in a position where we actually have to trust him.

Oooh - that one hit a little close to him, I'm convicted!

Finally, I like this context as I have been thinking more of late on the differences between Jewish Apocalyptic theology (what the Jews expected from the Messiah) and Christian Apocalyptic theology (what Jesus taught). This lesson from the viewpoint of John is proper (a good preview to this would be to read Matthew 11:2-3, I had always asked myself why John would ask this question, I think the differences in apocalyptic expectations mentioned about and the text below help answer that question):

We discover what it means to overcome when we see the picture of Jesus presented to us in Revelation 5. We are told in verse 5 that "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed." These exalted titles come from Genesis 49 and Isaiah 11 and evoke a strong militaristic and nationalistic image of the Messiah of David. This is the Messiah the Jews expected, a mighty warrior king who would conquer nations and destroy the enemies of God's people. This is what John heard: he heard about the conquering Messiah. Now, verse 6 says he looked: "ThenI saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain." He heard about a lion and looked and saw a lamb. He hears about a lion that has overcome but sees a lamb that was slain. What he saw was the lamb whose sacrificial death had redeemed the people from all nations (Rev. 5:6,9-10). The Lion was also the Lamb.