We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Are we God’s children by nature or adoption?
Greg addresses a reader question about our status as God’s children. Do we come by that by nature or by adoption? Scripture seems to give something of a mixed answer. What’s up with that?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Adoption, God's Character, God's Love, Nature
Topics: Death and Salvation, Following Jesus
Related Reading
Cross-Shaped Transcendence
Hellenistic philosophers traditionally embrace a conception of God as the simple, necessary, and immutable One. They do this in order to try to explain the “unmoved mover” who is absolutely distinct from the ever-changing, composite, contingent world. However, we must be clear that it is misguided for Christian theology to follow this path. If we…
“Whatever it means, it cannot mean that.”
pure9 via Compfight Roger Olson wrote a great article a couple of days ago entitled Why (High) Calvinism Is Impossible. He points out that there is no way to understand God as “good” while also believing in double predestination. The idea that God predestines some to heaven and a vast majority to hell for his “glory”…
The Root of Broken Relationships
God’s goal for creation is for us to receive his perfect love in such a way that we all become prisms that reflect this love. However, you don’t have to look very far to notice that creation falls far short of this goal. Although you might be tempted to look around for someone to blame,…
The Ultimate Criteria for Theology
Theology is thinking (logos) about God (theos). It is a good and necessary discipline, but only so long as it is centered on Christ. All of our speculation and debate about such things as God’s character, power, and glory must be done with our focus on Jesus Christ—more specifically, on the decisive act by which…
Knowing the Eternal God
If all our knowledge about God is to be oriented around the cross, as I argue in many places (see this post for instance), what does this mean for how we reflect on God’s transcendence? In other words, how can we speak of God’s eternal being since there obviously was no cross within God prior…
Podcast: Was it God Who Sent the Plagues in Exodus?
Greg discusses how God’s restraint from action is often written as an act (rather than a non-act). http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0075.mp3