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...]

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...]

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 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...]