The journey that makes for our union with Christ is not “us to him,” but Jesus’s journey from heaven to rescue us - the Incarnation.

They knew that it wasn’t Christ sitting on the altar bodily any more than Jesus was in two places at the Last Supper - the host of the dinner and the bread and wine on the Passover table. They felt that God is much bigger and than making him fit into an automatic understanding of communicated grace in Holy Communion, and far more transformative.

What would a one-stream Anglican Church look like - - the biblical, evangelical stream that’s front-and-center in the Articles of Religion, the Homilies, and in the Book of Common Prayer? We all know that three-streams sounds nice and agrees with our digestive sensitivities (Protestant, Catholic, Pentecostal), but it’s a new idea - only from 1954 (Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God). We also know that there is not a hint or suggestion of more than one stream anywhere in the Formularies.

For Cranmer, assurance of salvation is essential for the Christian life. The medieval Church had no such notion of assurance. Catholics were to face the future with a sober uncertainty about their fate, striving to lead a godly life in a constant state of both hope and fear. For Cranmer, however, only assurance makes clear the true, unconditional love of God for humanity, and only this assurance begins to birth in believers the power to love God more than sin. How? Gratitude - the gratitude that can only come from the assurance of salvation.

If all this sounds formulaic, propositional and cold, it wasn’t so for Thomas Cranmer and the reformers, and neither is it for Christians today. It is a life-changer! Dane Ortland reminds us that “the gospel offers us not only legal exoneration - inviolably precious truth! - it also sweeps us into Christ’s very heart.” Saving faith is much more than a legal agreement for adoption signed in some far-away heavenly courtroom; it is adoption! It’s not just about having our sins forgiven; it’s union with the one who created us and loves us for such a relationship. Now that our salvation is “finished,” he is not sitting around waiting to see how we do with it - in heaven he lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25). “Intercession is the constant hitting ‘refresh’ of our justification in the court of heaven (Ortland).”