Pride obscures our relationship with God by treating God as smaller than he actually is, and treating ourselves as greater than we actually are. Pride is a distortion of reality. God can no more work with pride than reason with a lunatic. Pride is a kind of moral madness, where we see ourselves as gods with intrinsic beauty. With pride goes unbelief, which is refusing to accept what God says about us, himself and reality. We can only love and reverence God rightly if we grant to God his true place of firstness in our lives.

At the heart of reverence, or holy love, are six components: otherness, openness, submissiveness, gratefulness, childlikeness, and wholeheartedness. To rescue reverence is to understand these in turn.
What is the fundamental obstacle to knowing and loving God? Self-worship. Pride and unbelief, the two sides of the coin of Self, are at the root of every sin, and therefore at the root of fleeing from God. Stubborn independence, guiltily skulking away, and refusing to find pleasure in his beauty come from the flesh’s desire to rule. Unbelieving pride is the mother of all sins, and the root of all spiritual malfunction.
If we are to worship God by knowing him, the absolute starting point is that we recognise he is God and we are not. Christianity broken down to its first principle is this: only one God exists, and he is not us. He is not a means to our own ends. We have been created to know and love him for who he is. If we are to love God as he is, we must deny ourselves, recognising that our lives do not revolve around ourselves, since we orbit the sun that is God, not the other way around. We must turn from trying to use God, or manipulate God, and come to him to love him as our only God. We must settle on the fact that there will be only one ultimate love in our lives, and it will be God. A failure to give God his place as God is at the root of all our problems.
This foundational attitude of loving God we could call otherness. It understands that the Great Choice of life is to acknowledge God’s claim on us, go out of ourselves, as Augustine put it, and acknowledge God’s claim on us. Our fundamental posture is oriented away from self towards the other: the Great Other Himself.
Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, But to Your name give glory, Because of Your mercy, Because of Your truth. (Psa 115:1)
Otherness is to understand that life is not about self. Life is about going outside of ourselves to God. It is about him. He is God, we are not. He is the source, we are not. He is Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End. This is the starting point of the fear of the Lord.
A biblical word for otherness is humility.
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No angel, and no mere saint, could work so great a wonder. But Jesus can. He is none other than the Father’s “beloved Son” (Mark 1:11), whom heaven always hears (John 11:42). He is “the righteous” one, “the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1–2), whose wounds and words satisfy every claim of justice. And best of all, he is the advocate of the Father’s own appointing. It was the Father who sent Christ, the Father who raised Christ, the Father who installed Christ as our everlasting advocate. All the intercession of Christ, then, only echoes his own heart-love.

He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. (Hebrews 7:25)
Some phrases carry such strong comfort, such enduring consolation, that they ought to be engraved on the walls of the heart. Airplanes ought to write them daily in our spiritual sky. They ought to be carved on every tree in the forest of the soul. “To the uttermost” is such a phrase.
Jesus is able to save to the uttermost. “That word ‘uttermost’ includes all that can be said,” John Newton once wrote. “Take an estimate of all our sins, all our temptations, all our difficulties, all our fears, and all our backslidings of every kind, still the word ‘uttermost’ goes beyond them all.” The word carries the idea of both fullness and finality: Jesus is able to save completely, and he is able to save forever.
And the reason he is able to save his people so fully, so completely, is because “he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). In a world of ever-present danger, we have an ever-praying Savior.
Our Praying Savior
For many, a mist surrounds the present ministry of our exalted Lord. We know Jesus as a past Savior who lived, died, and rose for us. We know him as a future Savior who will come again for us. But now, between the two trumpet blasts of his resurrection and return, we can struggle to speak of him in the present tense. What is Jesus doing right now?
He “is interceding for us” (Romans 8:34). Though exalted in glory, the head has not forgotten his body, nor the bridegroom his bride, nor the older brother his little siblings. Our great Moses upon the mountain, our true Aaron within the veil, Christ ever keeps us on his heart. He prays for us.
We may wonder, however, what his intercession really means. Does Jesus literally pray to the Father, vocally asking for our deliverance, forgiveness, protection? Some theologians (like Stephen Charnock, 1628–1680) think so, while others (like John Calvin) argue that he intercedes metaphorically, his glorified scars (representing his death) serving as our eternal plea. Either way, how intercession works matters less than what intercession is: at every moment, the living Jesus applies the power of his past sacrifice for our present help.
Like Israel’s high priest of old, who would enter the temple wearing stones upon his chest and shoulders that represented the people (Exodus 28:15–30), so Jesus carries us and our concerns into the very heart of heaven. As Michael Reeves writes, “God the Son came from his Father, became one of us, died our death — and all to bring us back with him to be before his Father like the jewels on the heart of the high priest” (Delighting in the Trinity, 74). Because he died and rose then, Jesus represents us in heaven now, able and willing to save us to the uttermost.
To get a sense of the height and length and breadth and depth of that word uttermost, consider three promises guaranteed by the present prayers of Jesus for his redeemed people.
1. Your faith will not fail you.
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. (Luke 22:31–32)
At the dawn of Good Friday, the streets of Jerusalem were stained with the apostle Peter’s tears. The same man who had once leaped from his boat to follow Jesus, and raised his voice to confess Jesus, and walked on the water to meet Jesus somehow, someway found himself denying Jesus. Satan had taken the rock and thrown him like a pebble.
Yet even then, somehow, someway, Peter’s faith did not fail — not completely. Unlike Judas, he would meet Jesus once again by the sea, and once again he would leap from his boat to follow him (John 21:7, 19). And why?
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The Global Anglican Future Conference and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches–which combined represent an estimated 85% of Anglicans worldwide in predominately non-Western countries–gathered in April of 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda to produce the Kigali Commitment, which has urged the leadership of the Church of England to repent, and called for a significant reset of how global Anglicans understand themselves and relate to one another. The Kigali Commitment’s summons to reset the global Anglican communion especially envisages a recovery of Holy Scripture as the final authority of the church’s belief and practice, in at least three regards. Lamenting current divisions caused by “failure to hear and heed God’s Word undermines the mission of the church as a whole,” the Kigali Commitment declares.

What gives global Anglicanism today its identity and coherence? After decades-long tensions reached a breaking point in early 2023, the global Anglican communion has entered a new era for its members’ relationships to one another and to the world. This provides a singular opportunity to recover and bolster the reformed and catholic character of global Anglicanism, and offers a pathway towards renewal.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has historically been an influential means for Anglican unity around the world, being recognized as a first among equals in the college of bishops in the Anglican Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury has been regarded as neither an Anglican equivalent to the Pope in terms of ecclesiology and institutional power, nor as merely one more bishop among others, given the significant influence and potential to foster voluntary unity historically associated with the See of Canterbury. But a realignment has been underway for several decades, and a drastically different conception of what unifies the Anglican communion is now assumed by the overwhelming majority of Anglicans worldwide.
Tensions that had been mounting for decades reached a pivotal moment in February of 2023, when the General Synod of the Church of England voted by a majority to commend the blessing of same-sex couples/unions. Subsequently, the Global Anglican Future Conference and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches–which combined represent an estimated 85% of Anglicans worldwide in predominately non-Western countries–gathered in April of 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda to produce the Kigali Commitment, which has urged the leadership of the Church of England to repent, and called for a significant reset of how global Anglicans understand themselves and relate to one another. The Kigali Commitment’s summons to reset the global Anglican communion especially envisages a recovery of Holy Scripture as the final authority of the church’s belief and practice, in at least three regards. Lamenting current divisions caused by “failure to hear and heed God’s Word undermines the mission of the church as a whole,” the Kigali Commitment declares:
The Bible is God’s Word written, breathed out by God as it was written by his faithful messengers (2 Timothy 3:16). It carries God’s own authority, is its own interpreter, and it does not need to be supplemented, nor can it ever be overturned by human wisdom. God’s good Word is the rule of our lives as disciples of Jesus and is the final authority in the church… this fellowship is broken when we turn aside from God’s Word or attempt to reinterpret it in any way that overturns the plain reading of the text in its canonical context and so deny its truthfulness, clarity, sufficiency, and thereby its authority (Jerusalem Declaration #2).
Further, the authority of Scripture is identified as the issue at the heart of recent crises in the Anglican communion, declaring that “despite 25 years of persistent warnings by most Anglican Primates, repeated departures from the authority of God’s Word have torn the fabric of the Communion.” The most recent precipitating event from early 2023 is thus described as undermining of “biblical teaching,” and the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leaders are charged with having betrayed their vows “to uphold and defend the truth taught in Scripture.” The constructive alternative that the Kigali Commitment foregrounds that “‘communion’ between churches and Christians must be based on doctrine,” declaring “Anglican identity is defined by this and not by recognition from the See of Canterbury,” thus summoning the Archbishop to repentance and the global Anglican communion to renewal. In short, we might ask, how does the Kigali Commitment envisage what unifies global Anglicans? Rather than bare communion with a bishop or a set of common practices or aesthetics, the glue holding global Anglicans together is commitment to certain theological doctrines whose authoritative basis is Holy Scripture.
Perhaps the strongest critique that has been raised about the Kigali Commitment from within conservative Anglicanism is the June 2023 First Things essay by Hans Boersma, Gerald McDermott, and Greg Peters entitled “Is the Anglican ‘Reset’ Truly Anglican?” The authors are not concerned about the Kigali Commitment because they hold a progressive outlook on recent controversies, but rather:
We applaud our Anglican bishops’ willingness to reject neocolonial demands to accept the hegemony of the sexual revolution. But we are concerned that in an admirable attempt to resist the liberal project, they unwittingly have themselves opened the door to the use of Scripture for liberal ends. The Kigali Commitment repeatedly appeals to the authority of the Bible alone and fails to mention either the authority of the Church or the role of tradition, describing the Bible as “the rule of our lives” and the “final authority in the church” without mentioning that Scripture functions within the context of tradition—in particular, the common liturgy of the Church and the Book of Common Prayer—and the Church’s teaching authority.
Boersma, McDermott, and Peters agree with the Kigali Commitment that “the divine Scriptures are indeed the ultimate authority for matters of doctrine. The Church has no authority to define dogma that the Scriptures do not already contain or to admit heretical teachings that contradict them.” However, they are concerned that “a strict sola scriptura hermeneutic, which fails to recognize the Bible’s origin in the ancient Church and its authoritative interpretation by the Church fathers and creeds, opens the way to a liberal method in which every reader serves as his own authority.” Where the Kigali Commitment asserts a “plain reading” of Scripture, its “clarity,” and that Scripture is “its own interpreter,” Boersma, McDermott, and Peters contend “the Church cannot avoid interpreting the Scriptures, and she must do so faithfully, in line with sacred tradition. Without tradition as norm and guide, the canonical context and clarity of Scripture are meaningless… Kigali’s strict ‘Bible alone’ viewpoint is also a departure from the approach of the English Reformers,” from Thomas Cranmer through bedrocks of Anglican theology such as John Jewell and Richard Hooker.
The critique offered by Boersma, McDermott, and Peters is helpful and stimulating in many ways. A biblicistic disregard for the rule of faith, ecclesiology, and the Great Tradition indeed can have disastrous consequences in the life of the church. Does the Kigali Commitment’s theological prolegomena and hermeneutic unintentionally undermine its commendable aims? It is of dire importance that our reimagination of the global Anglican communion proceed on sound theological grounds, informed by theological practices that have preceded and will also long outlast us. Indeed, for Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker, as well as magisterial Reformers such as Calvin and Luther,[1] the authority, sufficiency, and clarity of Scripture were never imagined to mean that everything in Scripture is clear to everyone. Sola Scriptura after all, is a statement about Scripture’s authority, rather than a hermeneutical principle. Even at that, it might be better to say Prima Scriptura rather than Sola, since Holy Scripture is the highest, final, and primary authority for the church’s faith and practice, rather than the only authority.[2] If the Kigali Commitment indeed envisages an individualistic biblicism as the hermeneutic governing the church’s life, wherein every individual interpreter’s reading of Scripture becomes the final arbiter for faith and practice, abstracted from ecclesial structure, then indeed its efforts are in vain. That would be to cede the church’s theology to the whims of political biases and self-autonomous individuals, rather than the church’s reading of Holy Scripture being ordered to the rule of faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3), a torch passed down through the ages for us to pass on to others, especially in the ecumenical creeds and their early exposition and defense by the Church Fathers. But is that indeed the theological program and hermeneutic advocated for by the Kigali Commitment?
If we take into consideration the context assumed by the Kigali Commitment, then concerns of a biblicism that disregards Anglican tradition and the rule of faith are allayed. When the Kigali Commitment mentions the plain sense of Scripture in its canonical context, it cites the second statement of the 2008 Jerusalem Declaration. That section, and the two which follow, declare:

We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.
We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.

While these commitments to a catholic and evangelical theology under the historic and conciliar rule of faith are not made in the Kigali Commitment itself, the Kigali Commitment’s citation of the Jerusalem Declaration on this matter arguably means these concerns are part of the wider context within which the Kigali Commitment should be read.
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