Search Results: love your nieghbor
Satan and the Corruption of Nature: Seven Arguments
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Problem of Evil, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Creation Care, Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict, The Problem of Evil
Man…trusted God was love indeed And love Creation’s final law – Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrek’d against his creed” —Tennyson, In Memoriam Tennyson nailed it. We trust that God is love, but we also believe that God is the Creator of nature, and nature simply…
How to be Transformed
Category: General
Tags: Cataphatic Prayer, Imagination, Imaginative Prayer, Prayer, Rest, Transformation
…rest and you’ll fall short of his glory. When we rest in Christ with total honesty, we give him a chance to prove to us that he loves us amidst all our sin. We give him a chance to prove to us that he loves us, our eternal souls, not…
Where Psychology and Theology Meet
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God's Character, Guilt, Love, Sin
Topics: Attributes and Character
…logical extension, Scripture, too, is an advantageous place to hide from God if we can interpret it in such a way as to serve our need to project our guilt onto God. And yet—wonder of wonders—in His infinite love, God has actually provided Scripture for us in a form that…
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….
What is the significance of Deuteronomy 30:19?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Deuteronomy 30
…covenantal relationship with him. He desires Israel, and ultimately all people (1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9), to “choose life.” But precisely because a covenant of love must be chosen rather than coerced, he also gives people the power to choose to reject his love. World history functions as a…
When Free Will Meets Unfathomable Evil
Category: Q&A
Tags: Current Events, Emilie Parker, Evil, Faith, Free Will, God, Greg Boyd, Grief, Newtown, Problem of Evil, ReKnew, Robbie Parker, Satan, Suffering, Theodicy
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will, The Problem of Evil
…must be a world in which agents possess the free will to choose love or its opposite, for a coerced “love” isn’t a genuine love. And God can’t – not simply won’t – intervene to revoke this free agent’s ability to choose evil, not because God lacks the power to…
The Case for Annihilationism
Category: Essays
Tags: Afterlife, Essay, Heaven and Hell, Judgement
Topics: End Times
…fate of the wicked is eventual annihilation, not unending torment. Supporting Arguments 1) Unending Suffering is Inconsistent with the Love of God. The central revelation of God in the New Testament is that God is love (I Jn 4:8, 16). His anger endures for a moment, but his mercy endures…
The Bible, Government and Christian Anarchy
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Kingdom Living, Politics
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
…one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not…
Part 18 (of 20) — Jordan Peterson on Jesus
Category: General
Tags: Jordan Peterson
…this supernatural dimension of Jesus’ conception of the kingdom. Finally, I’d like us to consider Peterson’s interpretation of Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 5:43-45: You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for…
Pure Grace and Free Will
Category: General
…bring them into salvation. (The issue of whether people need 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. A coerced love is not a genuine love. So it is that through the…
God Does Not Always Get What He Wants
Category: General
Tags: Choice, Free Will, God's Will, Love, Problem of Evil, Salvation
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will
…ourselves. The Bible teaches that God desires every person to accept his love and be saved (e.g. 1 Tim 2:4, 4:10; 2 Pet 3:9; cf. Ezek 18:23, 32; 33:11). There is no partiality in God that leads him to love one person more than another, or to arbitrarily select some…
Was Jesus Abandoned by the Father on the Cross?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Abandonment, Cross, Jesus, Love, Trinity
Topics: Atonement and The Cross
…is to distinguish between the love and unity that the three divine persons experience, on the one hand, and the love and unity that defines God’s eternal essence, on the other. We could say that on the cross, the former was momentarily sacrificed as an expression of the latter. That…
God is Different Than You Think
Category: General
Tags: Crucifixion, God, Jesus, Love, Sacrifice
Topics: Attributes and Character
…been called “the grand exorcism.” On a different note, the manner in which Jesus’ love led him to serve and engage with people in ways that shocked the religious establishment of his day anticipates the shocking non-discriminating love of God revealed on Calvary. For example, Jesus rebelled against social norms…
Why Doesn’t God Make Himself Obvious?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Apologetics, Doubt, Free Will, God, Letters from a Skeptic
Topics: Attributes and Character, Hearing God, Prayer
…they can wow or scare people into submission (and that only temporarily). They can coerce obedience. They can temporarily modify behavior — including the fear-filled words “I love you.” But they do not produce love. If God were to answer obviously all our prayers, if he were a genie in…
What About Jesus’ Violent Parables? A Response to Paul Copan (#7)
Category: General
Tags: Non-Violence, Parables, Paul Copan
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
…that we are to love indiscriminately – like the rain falls and like the sun shines — because this is how our heavenly Father loves. Consistent with this, Jesus teaches that our ability and willingness to love and bless our enemies is the central criteria for being considered “children of…
In the Middle of Infinity
Category: General
…reality should be viewed as a pointer to the even more awe-inspiring magnitude of God’s love. Though we are microscopic in size next to the vastness of the universe, the Creator loves each of us as if we were the only being he created. For a God of unlimited love,…
God’s Goal for the World
Category: General
Tags: Kingdom Living, Love, Repenting of Religion, Unity
…in ascribing infinite worth to God as our source (worship); we affirm the infinite worth we ourselves have because of what God has done for us in Christ (self-love); and we affirm the infinite worth others have because of what Christ as done for them (neighbor-love). (Repenting of Religion, 28,30)…
God is Like a Trojan Horse
Category: General
Tags: Atonement, Christus Victor, Jesus, Satan
Topics: Christus Victor view of Atonement
…willing human agents, the powers played right into God’s secret plan and orchestrated the crucifixion of the Lord of glory (Ac 2:22-23; 4:28). God thus brilliantly used the self-inflicted incapacity of evil to understand love against itself. And, like light dispelling darkness, this unfathomably beautiful act of self-sacrificial love defeated…
Revolting Against Judgment
Category: General
Tags: Blessing, Discipline of Blessing, Judgment, Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Topics: Following Jesus
…good and evil. What I’ve also come to understand is that every one of these judgments keeps us from doing the one thing we were created to do in relation to other humans: namely, love them the way God loves us. Judgment is the antithesis of self-sacrificial love. We simply…
Q&A: If Salvation Depends on our Free Choice, How are we Saved by Grace?
Category: General
Tags: Grace, Open Theism, Q&A, Responding to Calvinism, Salvation
…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. Acts 7:51; Eph 4:30; Heb 3:7-8). The Holy Spirit will bring us to…