Search Results: love your nieghbor
A Review of Colson’s God & Government
Category: General
Tags: Book Reviews, Reviews
…order to change society” (105). The Church’s role is to transform society primarily by putting on display God’s love, revealed in Jesus Christ (103). While political power can restrict people’s behavior, only Christ-like love can genuinely transform people. God “commands [his people] to influence the world through their obedience to…
12 Reasons for Keeping the Kingdom of God Separate from Politics, Part 1
Category: General
Tags: Kingdom, Politics
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
…out of love for the people who crucified him. Following his example, kingdom people are called to transform the world not by the power of the law but by the much greater power of Christ-like, self-sacrificial love. Our central call is to “be imitators of God” and to “live in…
Can You Believe It?
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Jesus, Truth
Topics: Attributes and Character
…his love that leads him to become a cursed criminal for us on Calvary. God is unfathomably glorious, but his glory is the radiance of a perfect love that leads him to become one who was despised, humiliated, and forsaken out of love for us. And God is immutable, but…
Q&A: If God is So Great, Why Would He Care About Us?
Category: General
Tags: God, Q&A
…great to care about us little humans, I’d say God is great preciselybecause he cares about us little humans. For the essence of God’s greatness is love, and love between unequals is greater than a love between equals. A story of a prince who willingly sacrifices his whole kingdom out…
The Cruciform Trinity
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Crucifixion, Jesus, Kenosis, Love, Trinity
Topics: Trinity
…the others in love to entail a sort of self-emptying (kenosis) in the very essence of God. (See J. Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, 58-60, 118-9; von Balthasar, Love Alone, 86-9.) Indeed, if the self-emptying of God to become a human and to die on…
Was Jesus Unloving Towards the Pharisees?
Category: General
Tags: Enemy Love, Jesus, Love
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
…others back on themselves. And harsh as it sounds, it was motivated by love. At the same time, it is significant that Jesus directed this offensive language against the Pharisees in front of “crowds” (Mt 23:1), for it suggests that this language was used not only out of love for…
Guest Post: Is Hell the Center of our Faith?
Category: General
Tags: Hell, India, Mercy, Missionary Work, Trudy Smith
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
…unless they made a “profession of faith” and “prayed to receive Jesus into their hearts”? “What does it mean to profess faith?” we asked. If people began to live like Jesus, practicing enemy love and forgiveness, caring for one another, and experiencing God’s unconditional love, was this not a profession…
The Cross and The Trinity
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Cruciform Theology, Trinity
Topics: Attributes and Character
…Holy Trinity (The Mediation of Christ, 113). This, I contend, is the meaning of the revelation that God is love—the kind of love that is revealed when God stoops to the infinite extreme of becoming a human and dying on a cross for a race of people who could not…
Why I’m a Vegetarian
Category: General
Topics: Creation Care
For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. Pythagoras (6th century BC) I used to be a carnivore. I especially used to love rare steak. When I’d order meat in a…
Review of Colson’s God & Government
Category: General
…the premise that society must be changed in order to change people,” Colson notes, “in the politics of the Kingdom it is people who must be changed in order to change society” (105). The Church’s role is to transform society primarily by putting on display God’s love, revealed in Jesus…
What About the Harsh Words of Paul? A Response to Paul Copan (#4)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Love, Non-Violence, Paul Copan
Topics: Attributes and Character
…examples indicate that Paul occasionally used language that conflicts with my cross-centered understanding of love. But rather than allowing Paul’s language to qualify our understanding of love, think we should instead conclude that Paul was a fallible human being who didn’t always live up to the Gospel he preached. I…
The Kind of Sin Jesus Publicly Exposes
Category: General
Tags: Judgment, Love and Judgment, Religion, Religious Idolatry, Repenting of Religion
Topics: Following Jesus
…the only sin that can keep a community from fulfilling the commission to unconditionally love and embrace everyone. When religious sin infects people, they feed off their judgment rather than love. Where this diabolic delusion is in place in leadership, the kingdom of God is resisted. God’s will can’t be…
The Problem with Christocentrism
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Christocentrism, Cruciform Theology
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
…trouble is, it seems to me that this criteria often doesn’t go nearly far enough, for the same reason the word “love” doesn’t go far enough. “Love” is not self-interpreting, which is why Augustine and theologians throughout history have been able to render it compatible with just about any conceivable…
Why Can’t I Feel God?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Cataphatic Prayer, Experiencing God, Experiencing Jesus, Imagination, Imaginative Prayer, Prayer
Topics: Hearing God, Prayer
…when you don’t love me enough to lift the veil over my mind and break me free with your love?” I have never felt any of God’s love, or presence or anything! The truth is that God feels distant, unloving, and even non-existent, and it angers me that my Father,…
The Point of the Book of Job
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Bible, Essay, Old Testament, Problem of Evil
Topics: The Problem of Evil
…is why our original job description – a job description God is yet calling on us to fulfill – involves very little knowing but a great deal of loving. Our limited domain of responsibility is primarily to love God and others as we are ourselves filled with God’s love. Hence…
Prayer When You’re Anxious
Category: General
Tags: Practicing the Presence of God, Prayer, Present Perfect
…ultimately matters is that you are submerged in God’s love right now. Remain mindful of the fact that the perfect love that God expressed by becoming a human and dying on a cross to redeem you engulfs you, right now. Remind yourself that you could not be more loved than…
Getting Honest about the Dark Side of the Bible
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Honesty, Jesus, John Calvin, OT Violence
…the clash between these portraits and God’s own self-revelation in the crucified Christ. On the cross he reveals his eternal nature to be self-sacrificial, enemy-loving, non-violent love. God is love (1 Jn.4:8), and this love is defined by the cross (1 Jn. 3:16). This love doesn’t seem compatible with God…
Cheap Grace and Consumer Christianity
Category: General
Tags: Atonement, Consumerism, Kingdom Living, Penal Substitution View of Atonement
Topics: Atonement and The Cross, Following Jesus
…only takes up the cross for us, but also calls us to take up the cross in imitation of him (Mt 10:37-40, 16:21-28). Imitating Jesus’ love, participating in Jesus’ love, identifying with Jesus’ love, and being transformed by Jesus’ love, is the essence of the Kingdom Jesus came to establish….
Blessing the Soldiers of ISIS
Category: General
Tags: Augustine, Enemy Love, Holy War, ISIS, Love Your Enemies, Non-Violence
…In reality, Jesus doesn’t leave open this possibility. Just as God demonstrated his love toward us by acting in self-sacrificial ways to bless us, so we are to demonstrate our love toward even our enemies by acting in self-sacrificial ways toward them—to “bless them.” By “love your enemies,” Jesus means…
Kingdom Centeredness
Category: Essays
Tags: Discipleship, Essay, Kingdom Living
Topics: Following Jesus
…look at the fruit, or the symptoms. Are you living in love, as Christ loved you and gave his life for you? Or do you live out of self-interest, loving those who love you, but experience hatred towards those who hate you and apathy toward those you don’t know? Are…