"You will know them by their fruits," Jesus said when warning his disciples about false teachers (Matt. 7:15-20). Teaching and living go together. Say something often enough, or just hear it said, and you will soon be living as if the thing being said is true. Which brings us to Titus. Paul stationed Titus in Crete to amend what he found defective and to ordain elders in every town. The Cretan churches faced two primary issues: the presence of some subversive teaching (Titus 1:9-16), and ongoing problems involving Christian morality. "The grace of God, the goodness and loving kindness of … [Read more...]
Archives for November 2014
“Security,” “Warnings” and the Gospel
By Edward Fudge “...[you] who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." --1 Pet. 1:5, KJV. ((Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New International version.)) Peter speaks here of the Christian's salvation and of his security. He mentions its certainty ("[you] who are kept by the power of God") and its conditionality or means ("through faith"). How do we put these two elements together? There are two traditional answers. The Calvinist reads the words, "kept by the power of God," and preaches security. The … [Read more...]
Divine revelation–Word to words to Word
A crowning diamond in the Christian treasury is the gracious ease with which God's self-revelation to humankind occurs, and the beauty of its flow from Word to words and back again to Word, until every rift between God and humans is removed and relationship is fully restored. The cycle of redemption is thus completed: the fullness of God becomes human and, through dying and being raised from death, brings the fullness of humanity into the glory of its intended destiny in sharing the divine nature (Heb. 2:5-9; 2 Pet. 1:3-4). The cycle of revelation begins in the eternal beauty of God's … [Read more...]
GOD HAS SPOKEN TO US
What a sense of awe and wonder Moses must have felt, there in the silence of the wilderness, when God spoke to him from the burning bush! Can we even imagine the awful terror with which the Israelites waited to hear God speak from Mount Sinai--the mountain quaking, its form hidden by smoke, the air charged with lightning on a day as black as night? What awesome joy surged through Peter, James, and John on the mount of the Transfiguration as God spoke from heaven and Jesus shone with the brilliance of his divine glory. Do we wish we could have been there when these encounters took place, or are … [Read more...]