Category: Sin and Salvation

Victims?

All of us have been victims of sin. We’ve been hurt by what others have done to us, said to us, or withheld from us. We’re all damaged in some measure as a result. And, if we’re honest, we know that we’ve also hurt others. We may have apologized, or we may have simply walked …

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Bonding

Relationships define us. Yet most of us share a common sense assumption that we exist as self-defined and self-directed individuals. This unshakeable premise grows out of a shared human experience: that we live and move on the basis of inward, personal deliberations. Even the quiet and private moment of reading just now can be seen …

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The Divine Last Laugh

I’m struck with the lack of overt humor in the Bible, especially given how often we readers tend to treat delight and laughter as one and the same. Yet the Bible avoids linking God to laughter even though it speaks of his delight and joy. So joy, yes, but laughter, no. Irony, yes, laughter, no. …

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Out of the World

This post has also been published at the Cordeo.org.uk website. In John 17 Jesus prayed for his own—for those the Father had given him. In praying for his own he offered a contrast between them and those who are in the “world”. The distinction can’t be missed as Jesus uses the term “world” seventeen times …

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Deification

It is said that Genesis 1-3 is the seedbed of all of Christian theology. What we believe about God, about our humanity, our morality, our future, and much more is traced back to our reading of these three chapters. What, for instance, should we make of the serpent’s word to Eve that “… you will …

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How saved are we?

Some Christians seem to bank on salvation as the spiritual equivalent of a catastrophic health insurance policy: good for the future disaster called death but hardly related to the small matters of life in the here and now. This, I suspect, is the fruit of an approach that drew many people to profess a Christian …

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Salvation

When we talk about Christian salvation does a belief in the Trinity really matter? Can’t we be saved just as readily if our view of God is less complicated. So why not dismiss the three-in-one confusion that comes with the Trinity and deal, instead, with an all-powerful monadic being? After all many would argue that …

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