Jesus

Crucifying Transcendence

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The classical view of God’s transcendence in theology is in large borrowed from a major strand within Hellenistic philosophy. In sharp contrast to ancient Israelites, whose conception of God was entirely based on their experience…

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The Rule of Love

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The traditional confession that Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres (“Sacred Scripture is its own interpreter”) presupposes that there is one divine mind behind Scripture, for example. Moreover, Church scholars have traditionally assumed that Scripture’s unity can be…

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The Key to Understanding the Bible

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In yesterday’s post we discussed how Jesus is the starting point for interpreting Scripture. If this is the case and Jesus is the subject matter of all Scripture, then the ultimate challenge is to disclose how each aspect of…

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Rethinking the Resurrection

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As much as every other aspect of Jesus life and ministry, I submit that the resurrection must be understood in light of the cross. This event was not anything like the resuscitation of a random…

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The Old Testament Is NOT on the Same Plane as the New Testament

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Paul taught that unbelievers are blinded by “the god of this age” when they read the OT such that “their minds are made dull” and a “veil covers their hearts…when the old covenant is read”…

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Reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer

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Jesus begins the instruction on prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) by telling his disciples to pray for the Father’s name to be “hallowed,” for his kingdom to come, and for his will to be established on earth…

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What Are the “Keys to the Kingdom”?

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And I tell you that you are Peter [petros = rock], and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys…

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Why Did Jesus Curse the Fig Tree?

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One of the strangest episodes recorded in the Gospels is Jesus cursing a fig tree because he was hungry and it didn’t have any figs (Mk 11:12-14; Mt 21:18-19).  It’s the only destructive miracle found…

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Was Jesus Fully Human and Fully God?

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The New Testament is very clear that Jesus was a full human being. He had to grow in wisdom (Lk 2:52) and learn obedience by going through trials, just like every other human being (Heb….

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Was Jesus Abandoned by the Father on the Cross?

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As Jesus hung on the cross, he cried, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (Mt 27:46). This is the cry of our God who stooped to the furthest possible depths to experience his own antithesis, as the…

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Creating God in Our Own Image

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How have we created God in our own image? In this short video produced by The Work of the People, Greg reflects on various ways that humans typically think about God in terms of power, and how…

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The Cruciform Trinity

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As paradoxical as it sounds, if God is supremely revealed when he stoops to the infinite extremity of becoming his own antithesis on the cross, then we must conclude that stooping to this extremity out…

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How Much Does the Cross Really Matter?

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The cross is as foolishness and weakness to nonbelievers, but Paul wrote that to those who are being saved it is both “the power” and “wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:18, 24). In sharp contrast…

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God is Different Than You Think

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The revelation of “[a] God humiliated even unto the cross,” as Pascal put it, flies in the face of what most Jews of Jesus’ time, and of what most people throughout history, have expected God…

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What To Do With the Violent God of the Old Testament

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For eight years Greg has been researching for and writing the book entitled The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. In it he confronts the commonly held idea that the Old Testament depictions of God behaving violently should be…

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God is Like a Trojan Horse

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Yesterday, I introduced a basic understanding of the Christus Victor view of Christ’s work on the cross. [Click here to read it.] Today, I want to expand on this briefly. Because God is a God…

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How to Produce the Fruit of the Spirit

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When the New Testament tells us to be loving, joyful, peaceful, kind and so on, it is not giving us a new set of behaviors that we are to strive to accomplish. Striving to attain…

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How To Fix The Church: The Kingdom of God (Part 4)

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God has leveraged everything on the Church loving like Jesus loved, as outlined in our previous posts in this series. “By this the world will know you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “by your love”…

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The Only Thing That Matters Is Love: The Kingdom of God (Part 3)

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To say that living in Calvary-quality love is the most important thing in our life is to grossly understate its importance. This stands in distinction from how we typically define the Kingdom of God. But…

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The Kingdom of God (Part 2)

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The Church is called to be nothing less than “the body of Christ,” a sort of corporate extension of Jesus’ incarnate body. We are called to replicate who Jesus was by manifesting who Jesus is….

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