Tag: Christ

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. –Ecclesiastes 3:14 The Lord brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up. –I Samuel 2:6 Judas Iscariot Three decades ago now (to the year) I started struggling heavily with anxiety, depression, and spiritual warfare that was beyond me. It was this that the Lord used in my life to draw me to Him in very serious and sober ways. This struggle, in a very intense way (on a…

Richard Sibbes (1577-1635), Puritan pastor and theologian has a few words on the sufficiency of Christ’s offering to the Father, and the trinitarian shape of the gospel: What a support to our faith is this, that God the Father, the party offended by our sins, is so well pleased with the work of redemption! And what a comfort is this, that seeing God’s love resteth on Christ, as well pleased in him, we may gather that he is as well pleased with us, if we be in Christ! For his love resteth in whole Christ, in Christ mystical, as well…

Charlie, died in Christ. Christ in Charlie was an aroma of life leading to life, for some, and for others, an aroma of death leading to death. It was the aroma of Christ perfusing through Charlie’s witness for his Lord that brought connection for all, through the Holy Spirit. People are longing deeply for the peace of Christ, the speech of Grace that perfumed Charlie’s interactions with others, and we collectively saw that taken away in a violent way. Charlie, was just living the Christian life in public, which is a uniting not a fracturing life. Rest in the peace…

TF Torrance often refers to what he calls ‘The Latin Heresy,’ when discussing Western theology; especially with reference to its fountainhead, Augustine. The Latin Heresy for TFT entails the neo-Platonist dualism that funds Augustine’s theology, and all other theologies that follow Augustine’s categories. For TFT, this dualism involves a competitive relationship between God and humanity; such that, humanity is thought in abstraction relative to God’s life, rather than finding its concrete ground therein. This shows up most clearly in Augustine’s doctrine of election. JND Kelly masterfully describes this, The problem of predestination has so far only been hinted at. Since…

Longtime pastor and seminary Dean, John MacArthur, is currently on his way to be with the Lord. It was announced at his church, Grace Community Church, in Sun Valley, CA, that JMac has come down with a pneumonia that he isn’t expected to survive (like only days left). This is sad news, but also points-up, once again, that this life truly is but a vapor. May we hold his family and close friends up in prayer at this time. Relatedly, I have been a longtime critic of JMac’s, online in particular. I started out my blogging career in 2005 bantering…

My recent readings in Barth’s Church Dogmatics have me engaging with his development on a doctrine of nothingness (i.e., sin and evil). The particular section I am reading has been exceedingly edifying. The passage I am going to share from him is a summarizing type of statement of what he has been treating heretofore. As I was reading this section it gave me great hope to ponder the present and forthcoming realities, as those relate to Christ’s victory over nothingness-sin-evil, and all that entails eschatologically. It is hopeful to ruminate on the concrete victory of Christ vis-à-vis the despair and…

Warm-up Question What is your favorite holiday? Share some of the reasons why you prefer that celebration. Holiday Origin Stories Every year we celebrate a number of holidays. Some are national in origin, which is why Independence Day is on July 4th in the United States of America, September 16th in Mexico, and June 26th in Madagascar. Others have deep religious meaning, like Christmas, Easter, and Halloween, though each of those holidays now have many secular elements as well. Too often, we only tell one part of the holiday’s origin story. Take, for instance, the celebration of Christmas. Of course,…

The following is a post I wrote quite a few years ago where I reflect on the implications of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is both devotional, personal, and a little academic in orientation; but I think it’s fitting for today. Christ is risen! I really struggled with a false sense of guilt and condemnation for particular sins from my past for years upon years. The enemy of my soul kept me living under ‘a yoke of bondage’ that Jesus said I ‘would be free indeed’ from. The Lord did not leave me as an orphan though, by the…

Christ’s atonement is limited to Christ’s vicarious humanity for the world. As the ‘firstborn from the dead’ He is the second and greater Adam, wherein all of humanity, from Christ’s elect humanity, comes to have the capacity, in echo of Christ’s Yes and Amen for us, to say Yes and Amen by the Spirit, to the Father. Christ is God’s unconditionally elect human for the world, and it is in His humanity that we come to have the capacity to truly be human; insofar that the entailments of what it means to be genuinely human is to be in right…

An abstract notion of saving faith, based on an abstract, or even undefined doctrine of election, always must attempt to make itself concrete. It must seek a way to fill in the gap created by a notion of faith wherein the believer believes out of an idea of faith that is seemingly inherent to them, or individually gifted to THEM. The antidote to this abstract notion of faith is to come to understand that people believe or trust out of Christ’s vicarious faith for us. It is by His poverty for us that we have become rich; that we can…