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.
Costly Discipleship
Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus is doing a series of posts called “Blogmatics” in which he fleshes out the theological assumptions that inform his blog posts. A couple of days ago he discussed discipleship and the life that believers are called to in a post entitled Blogmatics: The Cost of Discipleship. He draws heavily on the thoughts of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in this post. God’s grace is given freely; it’s true. But the cost of accepting this gift of God is dear. We are called to imitate the life that Jesus lived, including his obedience and sacrifice. Zack nailed it in his blog post. We hope you’ll allow this post to challenge and encourage you.
From Zack’s thoughts:
I want a cross centered faith, a faith that makes demands of me each and every day to die to self in increasingly more radical ways. I want a faith that is fundamentally not about me, a faith that drags me kicking and screaming out of my comfort zone and to the feet of a stranger in need. I want a faith that tells me how to live, a faith that takes who I am and transforms me into who I need to be.
I want a faith that looks like Christ is still living and incarnate and walking the earth again through me.
Category: General
Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Kingdom Living, The American Jesus, Zack Hunt
Related Reading
Responding to the Negative Fallout of Trump’s Election
Yesterday I suggested that we refrain from judging the motivations of brothers and sisters who voted for Donald Trump (see post). As the young lady I spoke with illustrates, a person could genuinely grieve over the negative implications Trump’s Presidency might have for certain people groups but nevertheless believe that there are considerations that outweigh these negative implications…
What Motivates Torture “In Jesus’ Name”?
Why has the church, at times, tortured and murdered people? What motivates killing and persecution “in the name of Jesus” or “for the glory of God”? (See the post from yesterday about how the church has tortured people.) A variety of political, social, and theological explanations could be offered, and they might all be valid.…
Jesus was Not a [Socialist]
Article by Dan Kent Our political climate right now exhausts me. The fracturing. The bullying. The ideological mobs. I feel like I’m surrounded by a hundred Towers of Babel babbling at me all day long, pummeling me with endless propaganda and page-after-page of facts. “Look at the facts!” they implore. They want me in their…
The Politics of Jesus, Part 2
Even in the midst of politically-troubled times, we are called to preserve the radical uniqueness of the kingdom. This, after all, is what Jesus did as he engaged the first century world with a different kind of politics (see post). To appreciate the importance of preserving this distinction, we need to understand that the Jewish…
The Call to a Cruciform Life
Jesus repeatedly taught that following him meant that one had to be willing to “pick up their cross daily and follow [him]” (Lk 9:23; 14:27). Picking up our cross is the centerpiece of following Jesus because this was the centerpiece of what Jesus was all about. The thematic centrality of the cross is also illustrated…
7 Ways to Join the Kingdom Revolution
In the previous post, I introduced in short form the call to participate in the kingdom revolution that Jesus began. What does this mean for us today? Let me offer seven ways we are called to the Jesus revolution: When Jesus set aside the riches of his divine prerogatives and sided with the poor and…
