Digging in Deeper: 1 Peter 3:18

“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What is it that draws someone to the Gospel? A whole number of different things. Some are pretty good reasons. Others aren’t quite so good or reasonable, but thankfully the destination is ultimately more important than the path as long as you do indeed wind up in the right place. One of the most powerful draws to the Gospel historically has been the promise of God’s love as expressed through the substitutionarily sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus. This assurance that God values your life even more highly than His own is a pretty potent one indeed. As the apostle Peter put there, Jesus was willing to lay down His life in order to make it possible for you to get to God. The latest entry in what has become one of the most Gospel-soaked film franchises in recent memory offered up a picture of what this is like in one of the most powerful recruitment scenes I think I’ve ever seen. Let’s talk for just a few minutes today about the most recent adventure for super spy Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.

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Morning Musing: 1 Corinthians 4:3-4

“But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.  In fact, I do not even judge myself.  For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.  It is the Lord who judges me.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

“You can’t judge me!” may be one of the premier slogans of modern, western culture.  A hundred years ago, what the people around you thought mattered a great deal.  In many cultures around the world today this is still the case.  An individual’s identity comes primarily from their social structure.  In modern American culture, we are taught to place a high value on choosing a path that explicitly rejects and even makes a mockery of the social order in which we live.  The bravest souls are the ones who take what’s expected of them and throw it in the trash to be “true to themselves” just like everybody else…
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