Someone has said that the New Testament is the Old Testament plus Jesus. Jesus "fulfilled" the Prophets' inspired predictions, but he also filled full the highest prophetic dreams, ideals, aspirations and hopes. For example, the virgin Mary conceives a son (Isa. 7:14 in Greek), who is born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2-5). Jesus is born to be the consolation of Israel and a light to the nations (Isa. 42:6). The infant Jesus escapes from Herod, then returns from Egypt (Hosea 11:1). Bethlehem's infants are slaughtered amidst great weeping (Jer. 31:15). Thirty years later, John announces in the … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2012
GOD EVEN KNOWS OUR NAMES
It is Sunday, November 17, 1996, approximately 4:20 in the evening. I have taught and preached this weekend at a little church in the southern Arizona desert, and the Tucson traffic has almost made me miss the plane home. I rush to check in at the American Airline ticket counter, then run -- as fast as my stubby, out-of-shape body can travel -- to the departure gate marked "Dallas." I appear to be about the last person boarding. I find my aisle seat on the two-passenger side and fasten in. The flight is about 2-1/2 hours to Dallas, where I will change planes for a 45-minute jump down to … [Read more...]
GOD, NOT FATALISM
A gracEmail subscriber writes: "Sometimes I feel like God is playing a giant game in which we are just the pieces. He already knows how my life will turn out. Why does it matter if I struggle to be close to him or to serve him? Does prayer really change things, or is everything predetermined?" * * * According to the Bible, God is sovereign and humans are also responsible. Of course, we cannot grasp both ideas simultaneously any more than we can view all sides of a globe at the same time. But it doesn't really matter that we can't resolve the tension because we are not God and he has not … [Read more...]
GOD IS IN CONTROL
I was blessed by the worship service this weekend at St. John the Divine Episcopal Church in Houston, where I was completing five Sundays of Bible teaching, and I wanted to share some of that blessing with you. Both Scripture readings reminded us that we are less in control than we like to think, and that there are powers beyond our human ability to manage or to resist. In Romans 6:16-23, Paul observes that we all serve something or someone. Either we yield our lives to God or we place ourselves in the service of sin. We need a new heart spiritually and we cannot provide it for ourselves. By … [Read more...]
REJECTING GOD’S LOVE
A gracEmail subscriber, having read in previous gracEmails that Jesus made peace between God and the entire world, asks whether anyone can reject God's love and the reconciliation resulting from it. * * * The gospel is the good news of our salvation (Eph. 1:13). It is the announcement that God has "made peace" with every human being who will ever live, through the blood of Jesus Christ (Col. 1:19-20). In the life and death of Jesus Christ, God was "reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:19). From the work of Jesus Christ "there resulted life to all" (Rom. 5:18). The Creator has issued a … [Read more...]
GOD’S LOVE EXPERIENCED
God loved human beings so much that he gave his one-and-only Son to bring our alienated world back to himself (John 3:16). That Son, whom we know as Jesus of Nazareth, also loved us so much that he laid down his life to restore us to healthy relationship with the Father (John 10:17-18). By his life and death, Jesus brought into being an objective reality that did not exist before -- a state of friendship between God and the estranged world. The gospel (which means a "happy announcement") is the good news of this restored relationship between the Creator and his human creatures everywhere. Just … [Read more...]
MORE ON THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
A gracEmail subscriber asks about the sin which will never be forgiven, mentioned in Matthew 12:31-32 and Mark 3:28-30. What is the "unpardonable sin?" Can someone commit it today? * * * This is the only time the Bible specifically states that a sin will never be forgiven. The situation involved unbelieving religious leaders who accused Jesus of performing miracles by the power of the devil, when in truth Jesus was empowered by the Spirit of God. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews refers to a similar condition, in the case of one who permanently rejects Christ after encountering him … [Read more...]
UNPARDONABLE SIN
A gracEmail subscriber asks: "What is the sin mentioned in Matthew 12:31-32 which Jesus says will never be forgiven?" * * * This warning statement follows Jesus' exorcism/healing of a man who had been both blind and mute (Matt. 12:32). Since the Pharisees reject Jesus' authority as a teacher, they cannot afford to acknowledge the divine source that empowers his works. Yet they cannot deny the superhuman work Jesus has just performed. Caught in this dilemma, the Pharisees charge that Jesus is working as an agent of Satan (v. 34). Jesus responds that it makes no sense for Satan to fight … [Read more...]
SANCTIFICATION AND LAW
A gracEmail subscriber asks: "What role does the Law of God given through Moses play in our sanctification? Should the believer continually revisit the Law in order to remain convicted of sin? Or is that out of place for one who has been liberated from the penalty of the Law?" * * * Galatians 5 tells us that Christ has freed us from law as a governing (and always condemning) principle. Instead we are to live by the Spirit and "walk" by the Spirit. The chapter ends by describing what a person who lives by the Spirit will not do ("works of the flesh") and the traits that such a life will … [Read more...]
SIN’S DOUBLE CURE – 2
Do you remember the story of the adulterous woman whom Jesus forgave and gave a second chance? Although the story is not in the oldest and best Greek manuscripts, we still love it, for it sounds like something that we imagine the Savior doing and saying. It also illustrates Jesus' two-part remedy for sin referred to by the beloved hymn "Rock of Ages" in the lines: "Be of sin the double cure; cleanse me from its guilt and power." Whether or not Jesus personally spoke the words, "Go and sin no more," they express his message, and the message of the New Testament Scriptures as a whole. … [Read more...]
