Self-Sacrificial Love
The Worst Heresy That Never Got Anyone Burned at the Stake
Category: General
Tags: Calvinism, Enemy Love, Heresy, Love Your Enemies, Self-Sacrificial Love, Torture
Topics: Following Jesus
According to John’s Gospel, on the evening of his crucifixion Jesus clearly articulated the single-most important quality by which his followers would be recognized: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples,…
Can Self-Sacrificial Love Be Dysfunctional? (podcast)
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Self-Sacrificial Love
Self-sacrificial love goes under the microscope as Greg and Dan push and shove to get the last word. Episode 506 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0506.mp3
Love That Keeps On Giving
Category: General
Tags: Love, Self-Sacrificial Love, Unsurpassable Worth
In English, we have one word for love. In ancient Greek, there were four different words that we can translate as “love.” And each has a different meaning. Let’s consider each briefly. Storge—referred to a…
God’s Kind of Holy War
Category: General
Tags: Book of Revelation, Jesus, Lamb of God, Self-Sacrificial Love, Spiritual Warfare
Topics: Biblical Interpretation, Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
This is part three of a series on Revelation. You can find part one here and part two here. While there will come a day when the sacrificial victory of the Lamb and of his…
Voluntary Suffering and the Kingdom
Category: General
Tags: Kingdom Living, Power, Self-Sacrificial Love, Suffering
Topics: Following Jesus
In a post from two days ago, I wrote about the call to voluntary suffering for others as it is laid out in the New Testament. For the first three centuries of the church, Christians…
The Call to Suffer
Category: General
Tags: Judgment, Justice, Kingdom Living, Self-Sacrificial Love, Suffering
Topics: Following Jesus
Paul tells us that in all our relations, we are to “have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had” (Phil 2:5). Though he was “in very nature God,” he didn’t cling to this status….
Willing to Bleed
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Justice, Self-Sacrificial Love, Service
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
What does salvation have to do with social justice? Greg turns this often-politicized question on its head in this video by The Work of the People.
The Revelation of God in the Cross
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Cruciform Theology, God, Jesus, Love, Self-Sacrificial Love
The cross cannot be understood apart from the resurrection, just as the resurrection can never be understood apart from the cross. They are two sides of the same coin. If you consider the cross apart…
The Greatest Mystery of the Christian Faith
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Cruciform Theology, Incarnation, Love, Self-Sacrificial Love, Trinity
God has always been willing to stoop to accommodate the fallen state of his covenant people in order to remain in a transforming relationship with them and in order to continue to further his sovereign…
The Kingdom of God (Part 2)
Category: General
Tags: Action, Enemy Love, Jesus, Kingdom Living, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Following Jesus
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….
Absolute Truth and Violence
Category: General
Tags: Enemy Love, Holy War, Love, Self-Sacrificial Love, Service, Truth, Violence
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
A common argument today against Christianity is that believing that Jesus (or any other religious figure or religion) is the only way to God (See yesterday’s post) is “dangerous.” This claim actually has some justification, for…
Memorial Day
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Jesus, Kingdom Living, Non-Violence, Pacifism, Self-Sacrificial Love, Soldiers, War
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence, Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
For Memorial Day, we thought we would repost Greg’s thoughts from 2007. In this post, Greg expresses his conflicted feelings over this holiday and gives a brief defense of Christian pacifism. *** Hope you all had a…
The Cruciform Center Part 4: How Revelation Reveals a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Jesus, Lamb of God, Non-Violence, Revelation, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
I’ve been arguing that, while everything Jesus did and taught revealed God, the character of the God he reveals is most perfectly expressed by his loving sacrifice on the cross. Our theology and our reading…
The Cruciform Center Part 3: How Paul’s Epistles Reveal a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, Paul, Paul's Letters, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
As we’ve discussed, the four Gospels point to a cruciform revelation of God (click here and here for a review), but what about the most widely read writer of the New Testament? What did the…
The Cruciform Center Part 2: How John’s Gospel Reveals a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, John's Gospel, Love, Self-Sacrificial Love
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In the previous post, we looked at how the Synoptics illustrate the centrality of the cross. While the Gospel of John varies in its structure and language from the Synoptics, the cross remains at the…
The Cruciform Center Part 1: How Matthew, Mark and Luke Reveal a Cruciform God
Category: Essays
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, Self-Sacrificial Love, Synoptic Gospels
Topics: Apologetics, Atonement and The Cross, Christology, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
In the previous series of posts I’ve argued that a merely “Christocentric” approach to God is too general, as can be shown by the widely different conceptions of God people arrive at, despite their claim…