Search Results: love your nieghbor
Responding to Von Balthasar on the Trinity and Suffering
Category: General
Tags: Apologetics, Problem of Evil, Trinity
…like to briefly state one aspect of Friesenhahn’s account of von Balthasar that I love, and four areas that I found problematic. First, I love von Balthasar’s kenotic understanding of the Trinity—at least insofar Friesenhahn has discussed it. I confess that, for some odd reason, I have never gotten around…
What Would You Do If Someone Attacked Your Family?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Kingdom Living, Non-Violence, Q&A
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
…they are justified killing people who might kill them or their loved ones. In contrast to this, Jesus is saying: “Be radically different.” This is why Jesus (and Paul) didn’t qualify the “enemies” or “evildoers” he taught us to love and not violently oppose. Jesus didn’t say, “Love your enemies…
Listening Again to MLK
Category: General
Tags: Martin Luther King, Racism
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
…this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse…
A FREE Resource on Spiritual Formation
Category: General
Tags: Spiritual Formation, Woodland Hills Church
Topics: Following Jesus
…the furthest extreme possible in order to free us from our sin and the devil’s captivity, and bring us into the unfathomable, unquenchable, limitless love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We believe the infinite distance God crossed to redeem us reflects the infinite perfection of the love that…
Cruciform Communion Meal—Second Course: Blessed
Category: General, Guest Contributor
…and the nachos are completely taken advantage of, ravished and left in a disarray of destroyed crumbs. So one might ask, is my love of nachos real love? Aaaaaand cue C.S. Lewis The Four Loves. Just as there are different kinds of Love (storge, eros, philia, agape), so too there…
Should We Condemn Unbelievers For Their Own Good?
Category: General
Tags: Grace, Judgment, Repenting of Religion, Unconditional Love
…faith that God is working in others to do what only God can do. This means that we must never condition our love and acceptance of people with judgment about how much or how little progress they are making in their relationship with God. Conditioning our love and acceptance of…
Knowing the Eternal God
Category: General
Tags: Cross, God's Character, Perichoresis, Trinity
…to become our sin and our curse on Calvary expresses the unsurpassable intensity of the unwavering perfect love that the three divine Persons have for each other throughout eternity. Moreover, inasmuch as the Church as the bride of Christ is a contingent expression of the Father’s perfect love for the…
The Longing of Advent
Category: General
Tags: Advent, Christmas, Hope, Jesus, Love
…hearts cannot rest until they rest in God. We are created to love and be loved by a God who is, from eternity to eternity, perfect, unsurpassable, incomprehensible, infinite love. Paul and the Gospels proclaim that, out of his unfathomable love, the God whom we restlessly long for has come…
Right and Wrong in the New Testament
Category: General
Tags: Ethics, Holiness
…hard to avoid rudeness. He was highlighting that we must live in love. If you are living out of love of God, you won’t be rude. You will actually fulfill the law. In fact, you can strive to obey a hundred ethical rules you’ve created to define rudeness in particular…
Cruciform Communion Meal
Category: General, Guest Contributor
…for what kind of love is a coerced kind of love? In order for love to be sincere it must be freely chosen. The God who is Love calls, and to that call we freely respond. Theological aesthetics intimates this idea of call and response quite well. In seeing the…
Our Commitment to Love (and Avoiding Theological Idolatry)
Category: General
Tags: ReKnew, Theology
…beliefs we defend. So, as passionate as we are about the importance of the theological vision we feel called to advance, we are even more passionate about manifesting Christ-like love in the way we try to advance our beliefs. We cannot genuinely debate beliefs in love, however, unless we are…
Is Longing for Justice Inconsistent with Love? A Response to Paul Copan (#3)
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Justice, Love, Paul Copan
Topics: Attributes and Character
…profound longing to see wrongdoers repent, receive forgiveness, and be transformed by the love of God into the likeness of Christ. Paul teaches that love believes the best and hopes for the best for everyone (Rom 13:7), and we are called to follow Jesus’ example when he prayed for the…
Part 2: Disarming Flood’s Case Against Biblical Infallibility
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Biblical Authority, Book Reviews, Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture, Jesus, OT Violence, Paul
…and effectively communicates, the truth that Jesus, Paul, and in varying degrees the entire New Testament, reveal a God who loves enemies and who is altogether non-violent (23-33). Indeed, he rightly notes that enemy love and non-retaliation constitutes “the core narrative of the New Testament” (123). It is for this…
Part 17 (of 20)- Jordan Peterson on God
Category: General
Tags: Book Reviews, Books, Jordan Peterson
…that “God is love” (I John 4:8), while defining love by pointing us to the cross (I John 3;16). This means that God’s very essence is other-oriented, self-sacrificial love. God is, to the core of his being, a God who selflessly pours himself out for the welfare of others. To…
Trapped in a Constantinian Paradigm
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Kingdom Living, Politics
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
…status quo insofar as the status quo doesn’t reflect the character of God. Using the unique power of Christ-like love, I maintain, the Church is to take responsibility to address issues of (for example) homelessness, hunger, racism, sexism, greed, social injustice, drug abuse, domestic violence, AIDS, etc. (see, e.g. Myth,…
Should Christians really only use non-violent resistance to things like war/genocide?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Non-Violence
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence, Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
…pacifist when your loved ones are not being slaughtered. But that doesn’t mean that only a person who is in the midst of having loved ones slaughtered can espouse pacifism – though it does mean that such a person must try, as much as possible, to imaginatively place themselves in…
How Much Does the Cross Really Matter?
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion, God, God's Character, Jesus, Persecution, Power, Suffering
Topics: Attributes and Character
…way that reflects the self-sacrificial love displayed on Calvary. According to Paul, the command to reflect this kind of love is to be placed “above” every other command (Col 3:13). Hence, everything we do is to reflect God’s cruciform, agape love (1 Cor 16:14). What is more, in strict accordance…
Is the New Testament Ambiguous About Non-Violence?
Category: General
Tags: Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology, Non-Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
…whom it makes sense to love, there is nothing distinctly godly and rewarding about our love. But when we go beyond the conditional kind of love people normally extend to others and instead choose to love and bless even our worst “enemies,” we reflect God’s indiscriminate love in a distinctive…
Back up Colson Review
Category: General
…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…
Colson’s God & Government: A Review
Category: General
Tags: Book Reviews, Reviews
…politics of the Kingdom it is people who must be changed in order to change society” (105). The Church’s 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…