Search Results: love your nieghbor
If salvation depends on our free choice, how are we saved totally by grace?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Free Will, Grace, Predestination, Q&A, Salvation, The Holy Spirit
Topics: Death and Salvation, Providence, Predestination and Free Will, Trinity
…to be brought to the point where they consciously choose Christ to be saved is a separate matter). But the Holy Spirit will not work coercively, for coerced love is not genuine love. So it is that through the Bible we have warnings to not resist the Holy Spirit (e.g….
Quotes to Chew on: God’s Love When We Rebel
Category: General
Tags: Jesus, Love, Repenting of Religion
“Despite the fall and its consequent curse, however, God’s love was not deterred. God is love. God doesn’t stop being God simply because the humans he created have rebelled against him. God does not abandon his goal of having others share in the eternal, ecstatic dance of the Father, Son…
The Extremity of God’s Love
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Father, God, Godhead, Jesus, Love, Sacrifice, Separation, Trinity, Unity
Topics: Atonement and The Cross
…the Trinity is the very same love that resulted in the separation of the Father from the Son. This separation actually expresses the great love of God for us. It’s real and it could never result in the destruction of the Godhead. Love is God’s essence. It’s outrageous and beautiful….
Sermon Clip: Tough To Love
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Christian Life, Kingdom Living, Love, Sermons, Woodland Hills Church
…to love the people in our life that we find challenging to deal with is often very difficult. This week in Heart Smart Greg Boyd looks at some biblical examples and instructions on how to love our enemies in the same way we love our friends. Full Sermon Here: http://whchurch.org/sermons-media/sermon/tough-to-love…
Trinity and Love
Category: General
Tags: David D. Flowers, God is Love, Love, Trinity
…can we know that? More specifically, why does John believe it? Listen to his answer: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world…” (1 Jn 4:9a NIV). John is saying that “God is love” and we can know it…
Judgment and Idolatry
Category: General
Tags: Adam and Eve, Idolatry, Judgment, Love, Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Topics: Following Jesus
…no longer trusting him for life and we immediately lose our capacity to receive his life and thus love like he loves. The moment we become judgers, we stop being lovers. The moment we eat from the forbidden tree, we’re blocked from access to the Tree of Life (Gen 3:22-24)….
The Wrong “Bulls-Eye”: Reflections on the “Christian Left”
Category: General
Tags: Kingdom Living, Politics
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues, Following Jesus
…example, as he must be, our definition of “power” is the opposite of this definition. Our calling is not to control the world by exercising power over others, but to transform the world by mirroring Calvary-like love, exercising power under others, sacrificially serving the world. Our job is to be…
Washing Osama’s Feet – blog post 8/28/07
Category: General
Tags: Non-Violence
…their forgiveness. We are to “live in love, as Christ loved us and gave his life for us…” (Eph. 5:1-2). When we were enemies, Jesus nevertheless ascribed unsurpassable worth to us by paying an unsurpassable price for us. We who claim we are his disciples are called to do the…
What Kind of Sinners Feel Welcomed by Your Church?
Category: General
Tags: Church, Homosexuality, Judgment, Kingdom Living, Repenting of Religion, Sin, Sinners
Image by Ken Shelton via Flickr Perhaps the greatest indictment on evangelical churches today is that they are not generally known as refuge houses for sinners—places where hurting, wounded, sinful people can run and find love that does not question, an understanding that does not judge, and an acceptance that…
Homosexuality and the Church: Finding a “Third Way”
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Homosexuality, Love, Politics, Sexuality
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
…us wonder why it is that the church (rightly) embraces without question people who have been divorced and remarried – several times, in some cases –but adamantly excludes committed gay couples – couples who sometimes have a love for one another that puts the love of many straight couples to…
Is God Personal?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Apologetics, God, Letters from a Skeptic, Love
Topics: Attributes and Character
…than the cause (God), and this is impossible. The enormity of the cosmos, and our smallness in relation to it, would only present a problem for God’s love and care if he were himself one product of it (an effect). But he’s behind the whole thing! His love and care…
What Is The Warfare Worldview?
Category: Essays
Tags: Blueprint Worldview, Essay, Evil, Free Will, Love, Providence, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
…answer. The trinitarian warfare theodicy argues that the answer lies in the nature of love. As Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God’s essence is love (1 John 4:8, 16). God created the world for the purpose of displaying his triune love and inviting others to share in it (cf. John…
I Ain’t No “Pietist” (well, maybe)
Category: General
…to sacrifice more than others. And our willingness to following Jesus’ example of self-sacrificial love, even for our enemies, is our unique power to transform society. Unfortunately, the western Church has on the whole not done a rather poor job of manifesting this kind of love and power. Consequently, it’s…
Rachel Held Evans Interviews Greg on Benefit of the Doubt
Category: General
Tags: Benefit of the Doubt, Cruciform Theology, Doubt, Faith, Non-Violence, Rachel Held Evans
…everything Jesus was about. This is why John said, on the basis of what he learned about God from Jesus, that “God is love” (I Jn,.4:8) and then defined the kind of “love” that God is by pointing us to the cross (I Jn 3:16). God’s very essence, in other…
The Cruciform Beauty of Horrific Divine Portraits
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
…a way that discloses how they (along with all other Scripture) point toward the enemy embracing, non-violent, self-sacrificial love that is God’s eternal nature, as revealed on Calvary. On the precedent established by Paul and other NT authors, Bates himself argued that his research implies that contemporary Christians should “unabashedly…
What’s the Purpose of Old Testament Law?
Category: General
Tags: Identity in Christ
…When we abide in love, the evidence of love is manifested in our lives. Without striving to keep a list of laws which means that we are trying to acquire something we don’t yet have, we don’t strive to acquire something we don’t yet have. We now can manifest love,…
What is the Warfare Worldview?
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
…that, unlike the questions that the blueprint worldview raises, this question has a plausible answer. The trinitarian warfare theodicy argues that the answer lies in the nature of love. As Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God’s essence is love (1 John 4:8, 16). God created the world for the purpose…
Let me tell you about my “Beso”
Category: General
…encouragement. Beso…you are “the wind beneath my wings.” Shelley doesn’t like a lot of fanfare. While she threw me the party of the century for my 50th birthday, Beso simply wanted to go out to a movie for hers. She loves pop-corn and I love Cherry Icees. Isn’t she absolutely…
What Does It Mean to Be Married to Christ?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bride of Christ, Covenant, Jesus, Married to Christ
Topics: Death and Salvation
…Because love must be freely chosen, God wants a bride who voluntarily pledges her life to him in response to loving sacrifice. We begin to belong to our heavenly bridegroom the moment we genuinely say “yes” to his proposal by pledging to reciprocate his love and surrender our life over…
God is Not a Monster
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God is Love, Jesus
Pastor Brian Zhand has a way with words that captures the imagination. And he is a pastor that has taken time to read the church fathers. In a recent post, he quotes Saint Antony who wrote, “I no longer fear God, but I love him. For love casts out fear.”…