What is a genuine miracle for the purpose of this post? The short answer is that it is one that I find convincing because (1) it is beneficial and (2) cannot be more easily explained as a natural occurrence.
The longer answer (but not dreadfully long) goes like this. On one hand, every thing is a miracle. But as soon as we admit that, the term loses its usefulness. Perhaps it’s better to say everything is a gift and some gifts are miraculous.
A physician’s report that says an individual recovered in spite of medical predictions would be bonafide in my mind, whether or not we knew that someone had prayed for that healing. Missing a flight or a ride that happened to culminate in an accident might be a miracle. Finding oneself in an airport and receiving a call from one’s grandmother warning one not to board the flight that did culminate in an accident would be an even more convincing example of divine intervention.
You get the idea: the less probable and the more helpful an otherwise difficult-to-explain event is, the more likely it is to be a miracle.
As a reminder, we believe in Jesus because his Father has revealed him to us (Matthew 16:16-18). That revelation—that conviction that Jesus is the Christ—is less tangible but more reliable than a reported miracle.
Even so, miracles that reveal the love and kindness of God deserve our attention. Frequently in the New Testament, they serve two purposes at the same time, to help the individual and to reveal the goodness and power of God (John 9:1-6).
In my experience, Christians talk about miracles and even imagine miracles far more often than they experience them. What counts as miracles here are experiences that cannot be more easily accounted for as coincidences or instances of random luck. Bonafide miracles in this context result from the Spirit of God somehow moving in this physical world to make a much-needed change.
So, if you will, in the comments below, please share any bonafide miracles you’ve witnessed. Please be as honest as you can. When I was in high school I told a friend my van had miraculously started running well. She told her dad. He was a skeptic. I stood my ground. The truth is, I didn’t mention that I had replaced a spark plug. This was something I didn’t even think about in my zeal. If I could go back in time, I’d simply thank God for the ability to put a new plug in my car and leave the miraculous out of the picture.
If I see a need to edit your comment, I’ll send you an email letting you know the reasons (for clarity and integrity). Let’s start with one of the few documented miracles in my life. There are many events that I think are divinely guided but they do not make compelling stories to outsiders.
Listen to previous version, recorded Sept. 30, 2023 (9 minutes, 45 seconds), author’s voice
Certain evangelicals contrast grace and truth because they think grace is only mercy and truth is an updated version of the law.
The apostles John and Paul, however, teach that Grace is Jesus living through us, and Truth is the revelation of Jesus living through us.
Life and death distinctions for the follower of Jesus:
The fundamental definition for this post (and for life): the law makes us conscious of sin, while grace makes us conscious of the gift of Jesus’ redemption (forgiveness and deliverance… both being free gifts received by faith)
The Gospel of John clearly and happily differentiates between “law” and “truth”
When John writes, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” John makes it explicit: the law shows us we need grace because we always eventually fail to keep the law, and truth reveals to us that Jesus is the giver of grace
Christians, and perhaps especially evangelicals, being nervous about “cheap grace” (i.e. license to sin), redefine truth as the law (i.e. a moral standard)—and this redefinition essentially ends the truth about Jesus
This dilution of truth as merely a moral standard undermines the gospel badly
Truth reveals the complete redemption Jesus gives us through himself, forever freeing us from the law, which, by comparison, is just a shadow of the reality of trusting in Christ
Truth shifts all the emphasis toward the success and sufficiency of Jesus and away from our futile efforts at self-improvement
I do not know how widespread the grace-truth misunderstanding is among evangelicals.[1] I do know two of the largest and, for many good reasons, most popular, evangelical churches in the Denver area have propagated a serious misreading of the Gospel of John’s “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1).
Little is more beautiful to me than that scripture. It replaces the bad news (the law) with the good news (grace and truth).
Before contrasting the bad news with the good, I present an example of the muddled version that some evangelicals circulate. If it doesn’t seem muddled at first, it might appear so when we look at the way the Gospel of John uses the word “truth.”
And this is the question we are asking in this series: is it this or is it that?
For instance, when we hear two words like grace and truth, we cannot help but place them on a pendulum: is God more about grace or more about truth? But of course the answer to that question is “yes,” and as Christians we’re called to a double major. In other words, you don’t just get to swing the pendulum to the side of grace, because then you lower the standard of truth. And in the same way, you don’t get to swing the pendulum to the side of truth because then you crush people in the process by refusing to give them the same grace that you’re also going to need.
Similarly, we hear the following from Ben Foote (perhaps my favorite speaker at Flatirons Community Church) in an otherwise engaging sermon on May 1, 2022:
You’re trying to earn, earn, earn a passing grade from Principal Jesus. There are a ton of us, myself included, who we were sold the Principal Jesus in our churches growing up. He is all truth and he is no grace.
….
So yes, Jesus is grace. But when he is all grace and no truth, you get another cheap, superstore version of Jesus. This one is called “get-out-of-jail-free Jesus.[2]
Both quotations rely on a false dichotomy between grace and truth, a cardinal error. And then they inadvertently suggest believers need their version of truth, which has been reduced to a moral standard (another name for the law). And this conflation is the very thing that outraged the apostle Paul, who said of those who muddle grace and law: “I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!”
From other sermons, I know Doug and Ben understand grace better than their false dichotomy between grace and truth suggests…so let’s put the castration tools away. But language is important, so I must persist in the analysis.
From Doug we hear that grace is balanced by truth. This reduces grace to mercy (i.e. forgiveness) and reduces truth to the law (i.e. rigor). From Ben we hear that truth makes us perform harder, which is exactly what the law does, and if you don’t believe me, read Romans 7, the apostolic statement on the law. Far from making us work harder, the truth sets us free because the truth is the truth of redemption. Ben also refers to getting a Jesus who is all grace but no truth, which is impossible if we are referring to divine grace. As with Doug, the false dichotomy reduces grace to mercy (get out of jail free), and truth to law (don’t abuse mercy).
Beneath the false dichotomy of grace or truth lurks the pernicious and perpetual bad news that humans need to try to be better. This emphasis on human effort is something the apostle Paul never recommends. In addition to distorting the meaning of “truth,” this line of thinking ignores the power of grace to fulfill the moral law in us, and this ignorance has kept Christians both unhappy and powerless for millennia.
The bad news: the law (the moral demands that Paul calls “the strength of sin”) rightly shows humans how they should live, even demands it, but in no way assists. The result? Sin increases. The more the person tries, the more the person relies on his or her self—the very self that was never intended to operate in isolation and independence from the loving provision of God.
Religion, including much of Christianity, groans beneath the joyless weight of the law. To the moral (and sometimes immoral) demands of religion, the person seems to rise to the occasion only to be blindsided by pride, or the person sinks to failure only to be depressed by guilt. Pride in one’s success, of course, leads to judging others. Failure, of course, makes one resolve to try harder next time, putting the person on a treadmill of anxiety, fear, and disappointment.
The good news: grace and truth. They are a pair not a polarity. They are two sides of the same coin, not two coins one must flip, as if to say, “Today do I follow grace or do I follow truth?” They are an and, not a but, a true identity not a false dichotomy.
“Grace” refers to the divine aid to do and be what we in our own strength and moral makeup could never achieve. By grace, we are healed, delivered, adopted, and righteous. Grace is divine life assisting us and can never “lower the standard of truth” as was suggested in the Red Rocks sermon.
“Truth,” as in Jesus’ “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14), is a revelation of Jesus, of his descent into hell and his exaltation at God’s right hand. Truth leads to revelations about our being in Christ, seated in Christ, animated by Christ. It’s the truth that provides the grace.
This truth that is infinitely superior to the law occurs again when Jesus says we must “worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4). He is juxtaposing “truth” with “the law”—one law says worship in Jerusalem, another law says worship on the mountain, but truth says worship in the spirit.
Truth, then, is the means to grace and the way to spirit. The more of Jesus’ truth we receive, the more grace we receive. The more of Jesus’ truth we receive, the more our worship is spiritual, not forced and fleshly. And it is faith, as always, that makes these things real to us.
So where do certain evangelicals go wrong? First they define grace as mercy (i.e. forgiveness). Then they worry that people will use forgiveness as a kind of fire insurance that gives them license to sin. To correct that, they redefine truth as… yes, you may have guessed it, the law. The license provided by grace-misunderstood-as-mercy is held in check by truth-redefined-as-law, browbeating us to behave correctly.
It’s amazing how historically the church in general and also in this case in particular resists full-fledged grace, which by definition includes freedom from the law. It’s amazing how the law keeps getting invited to enter through the back door. We simply cannot trust Jesus but instead want to replace him with our efforts and obedience.
Grace understood through the truth in Jesus establishes us in a new life. We are dead to sin (crucified with Christ), dead to the law (crucified with Christ), and alive to righteousness (risen, with Christ, and sitting in him in heavenly places). We are new people—new creations—and are motivated by the love of God working in our hearts, comforted by our Father in heaven. Sin, Paul says, will not be our master, because we are not under law but under grace. Note that Paul does not say the law will keep us from sin. On the contrary, whether we call it the law or truth, if it demands our compliance instead of promising our deliverance, it is the law and it will never give us the life that the grace and truth that comes through Jesus will give us.
How do we know we’ve moved away from the law and into grace and truth? We know it from the road signs that say we are on the right path: peace, love, and joy. I see the signs increasingly. When I used to confuse truth with law, I used to see only my struggling self.
____Footnotes for “Grace and Truth”____
[1] Apparently, one the sources of this evangelical confusion is this book: The Grace and Truth Paradox: Responding with Christlike Balance (2003). When one reads “balance” one is close to hearing that we have two elements that, if not kept in check, will tip the scale unfairly to one side or the other. Thus people think they must balance grace and the law (or truth, the new Evangelical name for the law), while in reality, they must die to the law altogether in order to walk in truth. The good news offers no balance, but instead promises a new identity that leaves behind the fallen, old, natural humanity and its insufficient remedies.
The description of the book, at it appears on amazon.com, reads: “Grace without truth deceives people, and ceases to be grace. Truth without grace crushes people, and ceases to be truth. Alcorn shows the reader how to show the world Jesus — offering grace instead of the world’s apathy and tolerance, offering truth instead of the world’s relativism and deception.” The “crush” of course echoes the sermon from Red Rocks that I cite. And the statement that truth counters “relativism” strongly insists that the author is using grace as a moral standard (i.e. as the law). If this second distinction isn’t clear to a reader, I strongly suggest reading the Book of Romans, particularly chapters 6 and 7.
[2] There’s a bit of irony in Ben’s sermon. He is earnestly railing against the abuse of mercy (which he calls grace) and legalism (which he calls truth), yet earlier in the sermon he makes a strong pitch against being against things (“Because it’s easy to be against something” [28:30]). If he followed his own good advice, he’d stop focusing on the downside of bad-faith Christianity and focus instead on the gospel of grace: we have been crucified with Christ, buried with Christ, and risen with Christ, seated in heavenly places. Perhaps this gospel is not practical enough to be appreciated by the majority of the members—but how will they ever appreciate it if they don’t see it elevated to its proper place?
Publishing Info First published Sept. 30, 2023. Last revision: June. 10, 2024.
Vaccination against disease involves getting a small dose of something infectious with the result that one’s immune system gains the upper hand against the infection, eradicating it (smallpox) or nearly so (polio).
Vaccination against the best news involves getting just enough news to underrate and ignore it—or getting such a mangled presentation of the news as to reject it.
The best news is the news about Jesus. In Greek it’s called εὐαγγέλιον (good messenger or gospel), but as a reminder of its significance, I occasionally refer to it as the best news.
In brief, the best news involves the following: Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate around A.D 33, was buried, but rose from the dead and returned to his Father in heaven, sending his Spirit to us on earth, so that by faith we can share his life forever.
Non-Christians can be vaccinated against this gospel—and often are. Surprisingly, Christians, too, can be vaccinated against the very faith they claim—and this is a seriously bad vaccination.
How to Vaccinate an Unbeliever
Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. (from Matthew 13:18-19)
In Jesus’ parable, some people reject the gospel out of hand because they do not understand it. Too little understanding vaccinates them against believing—often for the rest of life. It happens this way: as they age, they later encounter the good news in various forms. However, first impressions being lasting ones, they (honestly) think to themselves: “Oh, that. I decided long ago that it wasn’t for me.”
When this happens, only something sensational or catastrophic—or both—will awaken them to the value of the best news. A divorce, an arrest, an addiction, an affliction, the death of a loved one, or the growing realization that one’s life is meaningless—such events may awaken a person’s faith.
A miracle can reverse the course of one’s vaccinated life, leading the person to earnestly look for Jesus. It may consist of experiences such as a physical healing, the exposure to a person of faith whose love and integrity cannot be ignored, or discovering that the words of the Bible suddenly make sense in a way they previously did not.
How to Vaccinate a Believer
The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil. . . . (from Matthew 13:20-23)
A believer becomes vaccinated against the gospel by a lack of perseverance.
Difficulties, persecutions, disappointments, listening uncritically to skeptics and higher criticism, finding oneself in the clutches of a vice—all or any of these can dissuade one from believing. When things don’t always line up—and when does everything line up in this world?—we all tend to capitulate. Either the promises in the gospel don’t come true, or shiny things in the visible world start seeming much more interesting than seeking God. Material goods, social status, handsome and beautiful people, intellectual superiority—these and others may swarm into one’s life, rendering the initial enthusiasm and its attendant beliefs insignificant.
The lynchpin to getting a full vaccination is finally to stop reading or listening to the gospel altogether. Instead, listen to interpretations of it, particularly skeptical ones. Better, listen exclusively to alternate explanations of the meaning of life, including the one that dismisses as unimportant the meaning of life.
Allow me to grant the possibility that one’s previous commitment to the gospel may have been a genuine mistake. Assume that what I call “perseverance” increasingly becomes a gross denial of reality as one matures. This could be the case, and I’ve considered it a possibility in my own life. One element that keeps me believing in spite of this possibility is found within the gospels themselves. Repeatedly, Jesus warns against being bamboozled out of one’s faith. The parable of the sower quoted above is one example. Another comes from Luke 21:34-36:
Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.
The Gospel of Matthew, similarly, has several reminders for believers to be vigilant, to “watch” both that one is not deceived by a false prophet or that one is not spiritually asleep at the return of Jesus.
I urge all of us: don’t miss the the true gospel. This is the one that Paul said comes not only in word but also in power. If Jesus told his disciples they were of little faith, so much more are we prone to mistaking a knowledge of Jesus for faith in him. It behooves us to humble ourselves and ask God to teach us how to live in power as well as in word.
It might take time and the discomfort of the unknown, but once the eyes of our heart are enlightened, then we will be free from being referred to as a people whose lips are near to God but whose hearts are far away.
Publishing Info This post was first published on: May 29, 2024. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory.
Listen to the April 22, 2024 version of the post (17 minutes), author’s voice
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:24)
(and)
He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Timothy 1:9-10)
What’s So Important about Tense and Language?
I am neither a Greek scholar nor a grammarian, but I am aware, as my readers are or will soon be, that “tense” matters when it comes to faith in Jesus. By “tense” I mean the way verbs may point to past, present, and future events (I ran yesterday, I run or am running today, and I will run tomorrow).
The intent of this post is to urge us to live in terms of the past—not our checkered and unreliable past, but in terms of the divine past. This past consists of needs God addressed before the beginning of time, and it is fulfilled in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The divine past is one way of accessing faith, which we know looks at things unseen, not at things that are seen.
Before entering into the wonderful realm of the divine past, let’s suspend our modern distinction between physical healing and spiritual salvation. In the Gospel (the revelation of Jesus), the two often overlap.
Three words in Greek are used to refer to both healing and salvation: sozo/σώζω, therapeuo/θεραπεύω, and iaomai/ἰάομαι (Three New Testament Words for Healing). Each of these words is used in the New Testament, and each refers to both physical healing and spiritual salvation. The Gospel (incarnated in Jesus) reveals that the whole person is under the purview of God’s love, with the result that God “will make peace your governor and well-being your ruler” (Isaiah 60:17, NIV). On more than one occasion, Jesus healed and forgave the person, making the person whole physically and admonishing the person to sin no more. Let us learn, then, to think of the divine touch as complete, sufficient for all our needs.
The present and the past are not separate for the eternal God. We live in time, but God does not. When we pray to the one who already knows everything, we addressing the real God. Similarly the two kinds of healing—physical and spiritual—are never strictly separated in the New Testament. Why do we draw a line where God does not? A genuine experience with either type of healing can encourage an experience with the other. May our minds be open to the God for whom nothing is impossible, the God who resists the proud but who reveals himself to children. Then we will be able to hear what Jesus said to the blind men: “According to your faith let it be done to you…” (Matthew 9:29).
Today’s Prayers Have Been Answered Already by God
Speaking in strictly human terms we can, I think, agree that the past seems stable, while the present may be confusing, and the future remains uncertain. If the present is difficult (such as with ill health, bad circumstances, or demoralization), we will find more consolation in learning that something for our benefit has been done in the past than we will in finding something may be done for our benefit in the future. It is my wish that the readers of this post will walk away with more confidence that our Father has already foreseen and addressed the majority of their needs in the past. This revelation will result in peace for the believer who will be free to respond with thanksgiving, and not with worry.
Usually, hope looks to the future, while faith accepts in the present something that has already been done or promised in the past. Similarly, promises refer to future events (I will marry you), while facts refer to past accomplishments (I married you). As we will see for past and future, as well as facts and promises, each has its role and each works in its own way to communicate to us the provision of God who lives outside of time. What I overlooked for years and what appears to be overlooked by much of Christianity is that our Father and our Lord Jesus have already accomplished much of what we hope will be done.
Most of us feel comfortable with promises, while we are forgetful of facts. Promises and the future come to us naturally. We grow up with parents or caregivers who make promises, and if this person is both capable of fulfilling the promise and trustworthy, we can hope for its fulfillment. Similarly when the scriptures provide a promise such as “no good thing will he [God] withhold from them that walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11, KJV), we are right at home. We put our hope in the promise for future fulfillment and, assuming the promise applies to us, we will receive its fulfillment so long as we walk uprightly.
But we are less used to hearing a divine fact about a past accomplishment and accepting it as being done. For this difficulty there are at least two reasons.
First, the facts to which I’m referring are not obvious to natural observation. These must be revealed in the scriptures and by the Holy Spirit. Who, in fact, would have guessed that the key to faith in the opening quotation (Mark 11:24) instructed us to believe that we have already received whatever we ask for? Many of us have read this verse all our lives and have not caught its meaning.
Its meaning, however, points directly to the one to whom we are praying: the eternal creator who knows everything and stands outside of time. If you are not praying to this being, you are probably praying to someone created in your own image, most likely a “god” who is occasionally forgetful and sometimes indifferent. Listen to Jesus’ words on tense: “Do not be like them [those who keep repeating prayers], for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:8, NIV). As we trust that God already knows and cares, we are living in faith.
The second reason we think in terms of God responding in the future instead of the past is that we simply have not been instructed well. We hear “the promises of God” applied too loosely. In Christian sermons the phrase often is not only applied to promises, but also to facts that have been long ago been performed. Fuzzy preaching leads to fuddled minds. We are often treading water, lacking confidence in both the divine past and the future, both in God’s will and in our inheritance—all with the result that we flounder in the present.
It’s fine to hope for fulfillment in the future—and some things, such as one’s wedding date or our new bodies, are reserved for the future and are proper objects of hope. Other things—indeed many of our greatest needs—have already been known by God, addressed by God, and accomplished by Jesus. To use a crude analogy, the check is not in the mail, it has been deposited before we knew we needed the money and awaits only for us to draw upon the account.
Petitions (requests) for present needs are best considered as already provided by God. The past tense is undeniable in the Greek for Mark 11:24.
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (NIV)
Greek: πιστεύετε ὅτι ἐλάβετε καὶ ἔσται
New American Standard: believe that you have received them, and they will be [granted] you.
King James: believe that ye receive [them], and ye…
(https://biblehub.com/greek/elabete_2983.htm)
In short, no begging with God.
If you are indifferent to what I’m pointing out, please know that the difference is immense. Trusting what God already knows, what God already intends, and what Jesus already accomplished delivers us from a life of fretful worry to a life of peace and joy. We may not instantly experience much, but the knowledge that the matter is in hands greater than ours promotes trust. I’ve found peace and resolution by assuming a gift from God is mine, even when it isn’t visible or sensible.
Once we open our minds to God’s awareness and provision for our present, we see it expressed often in the gospels, as well as in stunning passages such as the entirety of Romans 8. We see it before Jesus heals the man born blind. In the past—before his birth and blindness—he was ordained to be healed, and he was later healed (in his present) (John 9:2-7).
After word got out that Jesus could heal people and deliver them from demons, Jesus was flooded with requests:
When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
“He took up our infirmities
and bore our diseases.”
Before the infirmities and diseases affected people in the present-day Palestine, Jesus had offered himself as a servant to remove the suffering. Jesus was, we learn, “the lamb slain before the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). Of course, I don’t know how the prophetic past tense and present time relate—only that what was intended and accomplished is later manifested.
We discover that time is and is not important in Christ: it’s extremely important because everything has to be worked out, experienced, achieved. Jesus had to suffer on a specific day under the authority of Pontius Pilate. Yet the intentions, the obedience, the supernatural power were expressed “since the foundation of the world” (Hebrews 4:3).
Assurance without tangible evidence may be considered the foundation of faith, which, as we learn in Hebrews 11:1 is “the substance [in the present] of things hoped for [in the future], the evidence [in the present] of things not [yet] seen” (KJV]). The litmus test of prayer is whether, when we are done expressing it, we are walking away with assurance that it’s being taken care of or whether we feel it all remains up to us to accomplish. We may have to remind ourselves that we’ve been heard; we never need wonder whether or not our Father has listened.
This assurance comes by being convinced that we know God’s will, that it is good, perfect, and acceptable, that it is for our welfare and not our destruction, that it is full of grace and mercy. We must rid ourselves of institutional disbelief—teachings and practices that reduce God to some kind of sadistic being that prefers to teach through sickness rather than healing, through punishment rather than forgiveness. If the good news is anything, it is good and, yes, at this late date, it is still news.
New People as a Result of the Past Obedience of Jesus
Up to this point, we’ve focused on petitionary prayer. This kind of prayer includes asking for daily needs and physical healing—both incredibly vital for each of us. As secure as our lives may seem and as wonderful as medical science may be, many of us still have unmet needs—hence the need for petitions. We are all living closer to the brink of disaster than we often realize. We are taught to ask for our daily bread. Each of us, like Shakespeare’s Richard II, has these needs (“I live with bread like you, feel want, / Taste grief, need friends”). It’s perfectly good for children to turn to their Heavenly Father for aid.
However, more important than our health or our physical well-being is our identity—who and what we really are. If I’m the wrong person, all the health or provision in the world cannot make me happy. But if I’m a new person, a person adopted by God and endowed with the righteousness of Jesus—well, then, I’m forever fine!
One quotation from Peter (who was quoting Isaiah) provides us with a transition from physical to spiritual healing. It uses a word for healing but with a strong emphasis on sin (moral bankruptcy). And it stresses the past tense:
“He [Jesus] himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” (I Peter 2:24 NIV)
This scripture quotes Isaiah 53:5 but Peter changes “are healed” to “have been healed.” Some Christians interpret Peter as meaning our physical healing is tied into the physical sufferings of Jesus. Far be it for me to discount this. More Christians interpret the statement in Peter as referring to the beginning of Jesus’ redemptive crucifixion. What everyone agrees on is that the healing occurred in the past, which is plain and simple in the Greek:
Greek: τῷ μώλωπι ἰάθητε
New American Standard: for by His wounds you were healed.
King James: whose stripes ye were healed.
(https://biblehub.com/greek/iathe_te_2390.htm)
We never make God aware of our needs. We wake up to his constant awareness.
Remembering that the Greek words for healing and salvation are the same, we can celebrate God’s provision for this life and the life to come. What remains unambiguous throughout the New Testament is
Jesus frequently healed all who came to him who were ill,
he often chided his followers for their disbelief,
he valued our eternal welfare over our physical existence (Matthew 18:8-10).
With those points in mind, we proceed to how the Gospel assures us our spiritual welfare has already been addressed by God.
The great scripture that is so often quoted as to become a mere jingle to our ears is “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, NIV). Note that the deed has been done in the past; we need not pray it happens nor can we make it happen: “he gave his one and only son….” Note, also, that we who live in the present can believe in this son: “whoever believes in him….” And, finally, observe that the effect of this past deed will result in future effects for those who believe who “shall…have eternal life.”
Here is a wonderful scripture that highlights the role of tense:
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
(Romans 5:6-9)
The “right time” is the historical past, about 33 AD. This is followed by literary (or eternal) present, “God demonstrates his own love.” And, again, “While we were still sinners,” refers to the past in one or two respects. First, the author, Paul the Apostle, was alive and sinning (by his own confession) when Christ died for him. Second, those who were born after the crucifixion (that’s us) discover that, while we may be still sinning in the present, Christ already died for us in the past. As a result, whether a person lives in in the first or twenty-first century, “we have now been justified” (past perfect tense—to indicate that one event happened before another in the past).
The important point is that the miracle happened in the past and that we benefit from it by believing in the present. Put differently, the only remaining event is our acceptance…all the divine work has been finished.
We often pray as though God is a hopefully caring individual who will assist us if we can just get his attention, and this, frankly, indicates we are already living in disbelief. It’s essential to believe in the present that God both understands and has provided for this moment’s needs. He knows before we ask what we have need of (Matthew 6:7-8, KJV). We do not “remind” God of anything. We remind ourselves that God has already numbered the hairs on our head and knows what we need (Luke 12:6-7, KJV).
It’s worth reiterating, that most of what we need now has already been provided in the past: Our old man was crucified with Christ so the body of sin can, in the present, be made powerless (Romans 6:6, NIV). We count (in the present) ourselves dead to sin (a done deal), with the result that we are alive with God (in the present) (Romans 6:11, NIV). We have already received the spirit of adoption, which causes us to cry out in the present, “Dad, Father” (Romans 8:15, NIV). Finally, we realize that we have been crucified with Christ (in the past), and that it is no longer we who live (spiritually speaking) but Christ who now lives in us in the present (Galatians 2:20, NIV).
More can be said for living by faith in what God has already achieved and accomplished. Not only does it put us in tune with God. It also makes our part in the process perfectly clear. We are recipients. We cannot brag about things God has done for us. We can only be grateful. When we realize that the vast majority of our needs have already been met by Christ—through his sufferings and his resurrection—we have nothing to boast about, to anxiously work for, to fear concerning, or to earn. We are already home:
It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” (I Corinthians 1:30-31, NIV)
We are not waiting to gain entrance to God’s presence or to be near Jesus—God has already placed us in Christ. We are not waiting for Jesus to give us wisdom, righteousness, holiness (sanctification), or redemption. We now have them by virtue of already being in Christ. All we need are the eyes to continually see this and the heart to insist on it when this life tells us we are on the outside, far away from Christ.
One of my readers said this post reminded him of the following song—something to rejoice over:
Publishing Info This post was first published on: April 22, 2024 at 15:00. Revised July 8, 2024. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory.
Listen to the Feb 12, 2024 version of the post (3 minutes), author’s voice
First, here’s how Christians (and others) often define sin, righteousness, and judgment. The definitions are like those found in an English dictionary, but in no way do they capture the message Jesus brought:
Sin: Anything that is imperfect—and that’s a truckload of activities and attitudes,
Righteousness: The opposite of the above, (i.e. everything that’s perfect)—another truckload of things to do and be concerned about, and,
Judgment: The consequence of yielding to sin or slacking off on righteousness.
Note two things. First, the definitions make us and our failures the centerpiece—we are the agents of sin and righteousness, just as we are the recipients of justice. Second, as the following quotation from John shows, they are not how Jesus defined the terms. As always, his definitions deserve the final say, for in them is freedom and peace, not worry and fear.
His definitions should confuse us the first time we think about them. If we are not taken aback, we are not awake:
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [i.e. Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgement, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. (John 16:7-11)
Notice the departure from our habitual self-oriented thinking. His message involves no moral bookkeeping, finger pointing, or punishment for us. Instead, we find Jesus giving exclusive attention his identity as the true savior and to the “ruler of the world” as the ultimate foe. We are witnesses and recipients only, which is another way of saying we are put in our rightful place. Here’s the definitions Jesus provides:
Sin: Disbelief in Jesus—the one sin that rules them all,
Righteousness: To see Jesus is to see true righteousness, and now that he is no longer visible, only the Spirit can reveal that righteousness to us, and,
Judgment: Not against us, but against the “ruler of this world” (i.e. Satan)—who stands condemned.
How should we respond to this? Many ways, no doubt, but the obvious is to admit any disbelief, admire his righteousness (which he offers to give us by faith), and rejoice that the truly sinister force behind our wayward actions stands condemned.
Publishing Info This post was first published on: Feb 12, 2024 at 12:01. Revised: July 19, 2024. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory.
If you pay attention to Christian descriptions of God, they are quite varied and, frankly, at times disheartening. You may think, “If that’s what God is like, I’ll pass, please.” Whenever I’m confronted with a description of a violent/cruel/merciless God, I ask myself, “What would Jesus do?” or “Would Jesus do that?” In other words, Jesus is my touchstone for the true nature of his Father, the gold standard for divinity.
This post assumes that Jesus is the clearest representation of God’s character that we will ever have. Jesus himself says in the gospel of John: “I do only those things that I see my Father do” (John 5:19) and “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). Finally, Hebrews 1:1-3 states that, unlike the prophets, Jesus was the exact representation of God. And it states this in contrast to the prophets: “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”
Can things be made any more clear? Hardly! No one will argue with that until they get to the corollary.
Here’s the corollary: the portrayal of Jesus in the New Testament often overrides and corrects representations of God, usually in the Old Testament but perhaps occasionally in the New Testament. If you are a fundamentalist, you were likely taught (or commanded) to take every scripture as being equally inspired by God. No progressive revelations of God allowed. So, when I demonstrate that Jesus sets the record straight, you must do acrobatics mentally, textually, and historically to explain how it’s all equally accurate stuff.
One evidence that Jesus came to set the record straight occurs in a string of statements in Matthew 5 (the Sermon on the Mount). We hear him say repeatedly, “You have heard that it was said,” followed by a quote from the Old Testament, and finally followed by “But I say to you….” And there he is, modifying the ancient scripture. This is how he came to “fulfill” “the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 5:17). Yes, the old statements stand, but they stand as pillars to hold up the clearer truth that Jesus brings. There are more ways to murder than by shedding blood, more ways to commit adultery than by sleeping with someone, fewer reasons to get a divorce than Moses allowed. Jesus makes it clear that what he has to say eclipses and surpasses many statements in the Old Testament.
At this, some of you will say that Jesus didn’t override the Old Testament, but only reinterpreted it. That’s not unreasonable.
A more abstract, yet more compelling argument contrasts the way Jesus behaves with the ways God is often reputed to have behaved in the Old Testament (as well as in the present, according to many Christians).
What do we find when we compare how Jesus treats people to the way traditional theology assumes God treats people? Here we find once again that Jesus presents a less violent, more merciful image. Jesus was fine with—and at times apparently enjoyed—spending time with sinners (tax collectors, sex workers, a thief on the nearby cross). True, he had a tough time with preachers and Bible scholars (pharisees and scribes). But none of his treatment of anyone approaches the violence and retribution often attributed to God. Many people allow ancient images of God to override the example Jesus relentlessly gives.
When we read the Old Testament with Jesus as our standard, we no longer need to juggle competing images of God. If the alleged behavior of God is the very thing Jesus came to save us from…then admit the representation is inaccurate. Here are some representations of God that, judged by the morality undergirding both the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ life, are bad business:
People of Babylon, you are sentenced to be destroyed.
Happy is the person who pays you back
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the person who grabs your babies
and smashes them against the rocks. (Psalm 137:8-9)
This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ (I Samuel 15:2-3)
Many, if not most, Christians will come up with justifications for both these passages. They were necessary for one reason or another. For example, the existing cultures were so rotten that they were going to infect the entire human race. Hypothetically, perhaps. But I cannot imagine Jesus doing any of those things (at all). Either the Father and the Son have a division of labor (I, the Father, destroy life, while you, the Son, repair it), or the ancient scriptures were colored by a projection of human violence onto God. Jesus never mentioned a division of labor, but instead said, “I do only those things that I see my Father do” (John 5:19).
If I’m doing violence to your interpretation of scripture, it may be because many interpretations are unjust by doing violence to the character of God. Such interpretations relegate Jesus and his Father to a long lineage of pagan gods who are vindictive and violent. The violence is on the human side. The cross shows that. I plead with you, brothers and sisters, let Jesus be your guide to how you view God. Do not let your theory of scripture mar the purity of God. Never forget that Jesus is the exact representation of God. He’s the final word and must have the final word. Everything will be better because we’ll have a better image of God!
Publishing Info This post was first published on: Jan 12, 2024 at 18:36. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change, just as it might change in order to bring current posts to the top (or bottom) of the directory.
I was thinking about all the things Jesus told his followers to do. Me? I don’t do many of those things. Am I ok? Are you? Go through this checklist to the key at the bottom and see for yourself.
I’ll start the checkpoints with the less stressful and move up to the harder sayings (at least for me). In the end, it will feel like a trick checklist. But that’s because it is. By design it echos the paradoxical nature of grace: in our weakness God’s strength is made perfect (2 Cor. 12:9).
The Checklist
thisis anonymous & none of your choices is saved anywhere. Refresh the page to start over (don’t you wish life were that easy?)
How Do You Check Out?
Careful, here! If what follows were always accepted by all Christians, we may never have had the Reformation, including the bloody history that led up to and away from it. So you might find yourself disagreeing with what I offer. That’s ok. This checklist is to make us think, not to define us.
Click here for the evaluation key
The key for #1-8 is that most of us will have had to put down “Often, even Almost Often” or “Never or Almost Never” for several if not all of them.
If you have “Always” on most or all of them, I want to interview you!
Rarely do I give away what I am wearing and rarely do I lend to strangers (#7)—we know from the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus meant strangers. Frankly, I’ve never plucked out an eye literally and rarely figuratively (#8).
All of these pronouncements from Jesus are quite important, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that they are on his checklist (nor that he has one). Nor nor does it mean that they were spoken with the expectation that his listeners would painfully eek them out with all the self-righteousness they could muster. We saw what happened when Peter tried that.
Watchman Nee—among others—assures us that the reason Jesus could raise such a high bar was because he believed so fully in his ability to live his life through us by our faith.
Here are the final two checkpoints:
When we get to #9 and #10, faith kicks in. Believe that Jesus already offered his life to you so he could live through you, and you are on the road. You can admit to him that you need help with everything. It’s his ability and not yours that makes the good news good. My wish is that we would all be able to put “Often, even Oftener than Not” for #9 and #10.
If the checklist has any value, it is to remind us to rely on Jesus, to learn to be quiet and trusting, to give thanks in all things, to make our requests known to our Father, to cast all our cares on him, knowing that he cares for us.
Publishing Info This post was first published on: June 3, 2024. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change, just as it might change in order to bring current posts to the top (or bottom) of the directory.
Assume you can have only one account at the Bank of Morality. You can have the account in your name or in the name of Jesus, as a co-signer. You choose how you will be identified.
The account in your name would go something like this: sometimes you’d have a positive balance of moral assets, sometimes negative. When positive, you’d feel pretty good about yourself. You might even look down on others who were in the negative. You would undergo stress at times, fearing you’d somehow compromise. When you did begin to lose your ground, your stress and anxiety would increase considerably. If you lost too much ground, you’d suffer insufferable guilt—and that’s too much guilt to be sure.
The account in Jesus’ name would go something like this: everything you need would have been paid for (note the past tense). His account offers no pride for being righteous, nor guilt for past sins. It is his account, not yours or mine. We are purely beneficiaries. Receiving the gift of a completely new identity is a humbling thing. It is also a peaceful, joyful, loving thing.
Need forgiveness? Done, first from before time in the heart of God and later in history made unforgettable while Jesus was on the cross. Need redemption? Already done. Need better behavior (also called sanctification)? It’s yours! Really? Yes, the Account Holder has already lived a perfect life and will live it again, in you, step by step as you trust him. The entire account is yours by faith. Faith or trust is the only thing you are asked to contribute and even that’s a gift! No room for boasting, plenty of room for gratitude.
One can piece all these things together easily by reading the letters of Paul and others in the New Testament. But one statement from Paul says it all: “But it is due to God that you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption” (I Corinthians 1:30). In Jesus’ account there can never be a negative balance. It’s all too good to be true in this world, but it is standard fare for the kingdom of God.
What, then, are the downsides of signing on to the account of Jesus? First downside: it’s invisible. Being invisible, it takes faith, something many of us discount in favor of our feelings. One will never have faith without listening to the revealed words of God and allowing the Spirit of God to reveal their meaning. This happens to me over time, not over night. Second downside: there’s no boasting, no pride. Any sense of one’s importance must be replaced by one’s sense of being loved. No more judging others, no more taking credit for one’s successes—everything shifts to relying on Jesus’ accomplishment. When, on the cross, he said, “It is finished”—he meant it in the broadest sense. The redemption of humanity was finished.
The upside of the second downside is that when pride and boasting are ruled out, guilt and fear also disappear. One is defined no longer by one’s track record but by the success Jesus possesses as a redeemer.
Which will it be, this day and every day? Are we so significant that we somehow are too bad or too weak for Jesus to save? Must we open an independent account just in case he fails or in case he needs assistance?
God forbid.
God bids us to be redeemed not redeemers. Let’s trade in our worry and anxiety for gratitude and thanksgiving. Close that independent account, you, fellow beneficiary of the life of Jesus!
Publishing Info This post was first published on: Dec 6, 2023 at 16:48. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change, just as it might change in order to bring current posts to the top (or bottom) of the directory.
Listen to the old version of this post (10 minutes, 16 seconds)
Sitting on my couch, I looked at the name of a woman written on a piece of paper. We will call her Beautiful. It was a reminder to pray for her healing because her cancer had returned. I thought of all the people who were praying for Beautiful. Probably a hundred or so.
Beautiful died about a year later. And so I revise this post, soberly.
When I re-read the gospels, I never see Jesus begging, nor, when it comes to healing, hoping. When he announces the death of Lazarus to his disciples, he says, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up” (John 11:11). He does not, for example, say to the disciples, “and I hope to wake him up.” Nor when he is at the grave site does he say, “Father, I’d really like it if you raise Lazarus from the dead.” No, what does he say? “Lazarus, come forth.” And it happens.
Now I know this is a sensitive subject because when we pray for a healing (or a resurrection, which I have done with no success), the disappointment of someone or ourselves remaining sick is compounded by the disappointment of prayer or our faith being inauthentic. When that happens, we might doubt God’s existence, his character, or the accuracy of the New Testament. In the end of this scenario, we are left with a sickness (or death) and an imaginary God.
At that point, we often backpedal, and there are plenty of Christians and agnostics to help us do so. Because of my low opinion of this kind of help, I’ll deliver some of their consolation in a rambling sentence.
Healing miracles are rare because medical science has rendered them unnecessary, and you can’t expect to pray like Jesus, especially since all those miracles were to introduce the world to the gospel, not to be part of it, I mean, they symbolized our spiritual healing and nothing more, so we should be satisfied with inner healing and leave the rest up to God who, after all, would heal if he wanted to … look at the apostle Paul whose prayer for healing wasn’t answered and who concluded that in his weakness God’s strength was made perfect … who do we think we are to expect any more than Paul?
If you’ve been exposed to intelligent people of faith—or have read the New Testament with an eye on how faith and prayer are expressed—you’ll know the entire ramble is not in the scriptures.
Here are the counterpoints.
Medical science is in its adolescence; many diseases including cancer are often fatal, the blind to not have their sight restored, those with withered limbs do not, in a moment, regain a fully functional limb, and deafness is only partially addressed medically
Jesus never suggested that he was the only one with God’s ear; in fact he said, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12)
The miracles did introduce Jesus and his disciples to their world with a bang, yes, but nothing in the New Testament suggests the miracles were destined to stop at any point in time; the Book of Acts was apparently written 50 or so years after Jesus left the earth, and nothing in it suggests that the divine show of healing had ended or would end
It’s always suspicious when any miracle of God—any show of the supernatural in Christianity—is watered down to something humans can do, something that no longer requires a miracle; thus, saying “spiritual healing is all that Jesus was trying to point us to,” or saying “inner healing is more important than physical healing” is, what shall I say, suspicious? so suspicious that the people who say such things would do better to publish self help books
My ire is raised by the idea that God would heal if he wanted to: who in this world would say the vast amount of sickness, let alone violence, is what God wants?
Finally, for the low hanging fruit, Paul’s unanswered prayer: if you read the passage in II Corinthians 12, where Paul asks three times for God to remove the thorn from his flesh, you see that in the previous paragraphs, he listed the persecutions he endured (much more frequently than his fellow apostles), that it makes sense that persecution was the messenger from Satan that humbled him since he had received so great a revelation of Christ…besides, in light of those revelations, even if Paul were talking about his alleged bad eyesight, how many sick people have ever needed humbling because of the greatness of the revelation they had received?
Back to my couch and to Beautiful. She had many (many) people praying for her. She did live a year longer, but left the world too soon. If the number of people praying worked like addition, the healing power would be great, but faith is not like arithmetic. One plus God is a majority. One person with faith can be in a crowd and God will look over the crowd to find that person (2 Chronicles 16:9a). When Jesus went to raise the little girl from the dead, he allowed only three disciples the the girl’s parents into the room…and he healed her.
I have no idea what kind of prayers were spoken on behalf of Beautiful. I do know the kind of prayer I received when I was about to be diagnosed for cancer. Going up to “the prayer team” after a lively service at a large Evangelical church, I explained my concerns to the mature couple who were appointed to pray for me. As soon as I expressed my desire for healing, the man said, “Well, we all have to die sometime.” And that was followed by his wife telling me about a motorcycle accident that injured her in a way she has never recovered from.
As soon as I could get away from their aura of disbelief, I headed to the parking lot and called my sister in another state in order to shake off the bad vibes from the prayer team. My sister speaks words of faith—and did that night. My healing came through successful surgery (not what I had hoped for, but a heap better than having to die sometime soon).
This post focuses on what prayer is not. When I write a sequel, by God’s grace, it will express, at least in part, what Jesus-inspired prayer is. I surmise it will involve the classic verse from Mark: “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Until then, be well, speak well, pray from the heart and believe God knows what you need before you mention it.
Publishing Info This post was first published on: July 30, 2022 at 22:46. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change, just as it might change in order to bring current posts to the top (or bottom) of the directory.
Anyone who has given Jesus more than a moment’s thought has a personal version of Jesus in his or her mind.
To some, he’s a literal king, to some an ideology (socialist, Marxist, fascist, you name it), to some an avenger who came as a lamb the first time but will return as an angry lion the next. He may be a friend, and some tame him to “my buddy,” the offspring of “the man upstairs.” At the other extreme, he is in his glorified state beyond description, beyond language—one before whom a person can only be filled with awe and silence (a safer extreme). In my early faith, he was a supernatural counter-culture rebel who would both give meaning to my life and remove meaning from the establishment, including the versions of him that churches had fixed beneath their stained glass and steeples.
The sneakiest version is the one assumed by the fundamentalist to be perfectly accurate and adequate. By fundamentalist, I refer to a person who equates literalism with truth and thinks he or she has an unmediated, direct knowledge of the real Jesus, a version infallible and unquestionable. Once one is sure one is right, there’s no need to look further. It’s hard to discuss matters with this person. For years I had a hard time discussing matters with myself.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with constructing a version of Jesus in our minds. It is unavoidable, being the way the human mind works. We are always and only constructing a knowledge of others from a mixture of facts, fallacies, reasoning, feelings, experiences, and imagery. Because the process is both universal and fallible, most good novels depict a main character as being disabused of assumptions about one’s world and its population. If it is hard to admit we are wrong about others, it’s often harder to admit we are wrong about ourselves. As a friend of mine quotes Lord Jim: “it is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.”
Misconstructions of others and ourselves can be comical, irritating, inconvenient, or fatal (think of Othello). Misconstruction of Jesus, or, rather, stubborn adherence to our misconstruction, may be disastrous.
How disastrous? The Sermon on the Mount provides an extreme example. It is extreme because the image of Jesus is held by someone who seems to know better, someone whose experience comes replete with signs and wonders:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:21-23)
We are not told how the evildoers perceived Jesus. They certainly had whatever it takes to prophesy, drive out demons, and perform miracles. On on hand, these are the will of Jesus’ Father, clearly. So something else went awry.
Perhaps the evildoers were living double lives, doing the right thing by day and then indulging in pride or carnality by night. In that case, they saw Jesus as someone impressed by the supernatural without consideration of character. Perhaps they simply followed supernatural fireworks and were devoid of love (as in St. Paul’s, if I have not love, I am nothing). In that case, they saw Jesus as a divine stuntman, not understanding in the least his Father’s motivation—and his cooperation—behind his coming to earth.
If my life has meant anything down these lines, it has meant year after year of having assumptions and presumptions pressed out of me, reducing me to the person I’ve always been: partial, clumsy, pretentious, and needy. In turn, more than ever, I see Jesus has more capable, wise, enigmatic, and deserving of my attention than ever. Let me add trustworthy, quite in contrast to myself.
He is the head of body (the real church), the first-born from the dead, the visible image of the invisible God, the source of all mercy, truth, and grace, the one who is no person’s fool and yet seems always willing to lower himself to those who find themselves lowly.
Publishing Info This post was first published on: Apr 30, 2023 at 15:56. If this article is significantly updated, the publication date beneath the title may change in order to bring current posts to the top of the directory.