“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us…” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Have you ever wondered how and why our God could be such a merciful God? Perhaps not. Perhaps you’ve wondered more often why God seems like such an angry God. If that’s the case, you haven’t been taught very well about the character of God. That’s not your fault. It’s a symptom of our culture. Read the rest…
“But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned–every one–to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Here, some 700 years before it would happen, Isaiah declares what is perhaps the deepest wonder of the cross. On the cross, Jesus bore our sins. All the things we have done wrong were placed on His shoulders. He took the punishment that should have been ours. And by ours, I mean everybody’s. The sins of the whole world living at the time, of those who had died before He did, and of those who have lived in the years of human history since were credited to His account. Read the rest…
“I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Verses like this one are a big part of why protestants tend to be so radically committed to salvation by faith alone. Look at what Paul is saying here closely because this is really important. If we could somehow get ourselves into a right relationship with God by means other than the grace of God as mediated through the death and resurrection of Jesus, then His death was without purpose. It was entirely pointless. Read the rest…
In part two of our teaching series, A Word on Reality, we talked about how we can know with assurance that we are close to God by looking at 1 John 2:1-17. What is the evidence of a life spent in Christ? Read on for the answer.
Whose Word Is Final?
Close your eyes for me for just a minute. I’m going to say some words and I want you to internally react to them. Whatever your reaction is, I want you to just dwell on it for a moment and then we’ll talk about it in a bit. Heaven. Grace. Love. The world. Sin. Submission. Obedience. Okay, open your eyes. Now, by a show of hands, how many of you reacted positively to all of those words? Anyone react negatively to all of them? How many were split between some of the words? How many of you reacted positively to the first couple of words and more negatively to the ones after that? Okay, how about this one: how many of your reactions went from most positive to most negative in the order of the words as I spoke them? That last word, obedience, leaves a sour taste in the mouths of a lot of people today. I think part of the reason for this is that we have been fed since birth a worldview by our culture that believes the highest good is achieved when we are singularly in control of our lives. Now, while there are a few people in the world who have personalities that are very comfortable in a setting where we simply do as we are told, I suspect they are more the exception than the rule. Read the rest…
For the last few days I have been reading in Romans 9-11. This morning I finished up the section. Toward the end of chapter 11, Paul, who has spent nearly all of the previous couple of chapters talking about the Jewish people, shifts gears and focuses on his largely Gentile audience. In vv. 17-24 he says this: Read the rest…
The Nexus 