Love characterizes Christian action. It is the way of the Church, the Way to the Kingdom, and the Way of the Kingdom. In fact, it could be considered the Way of God, the logos that John says makes the world go round. It is first the Way of God’s Church. The Beloved Apostle says the […]
Bob and Lupe use some good arguments to qualify the way I interpreted God’s unconditional love. As Bob reports, some passages warn we should not use God’s love to excuse all. For instance, the whole point of Jude seems to be his insistence that false prophets will share eternal punishment with fallen angels and other […]
The Bible seems to make a point of dividing God’s love for us, our love for God, and our love for each other. I’ll use the same pattern. God’s love for us is not mentioned much in the Old Testament. Scholars claim Hosea did it first 700 years before Christ. He, also, was the first […]
Bob’s comment makes a wonderful summary: “The nexus between faith, love, and hope is exemplified by the phrase “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” It is not fully spelled out, but our faith assures us that we will be what God wants us to be, and since he is a loving God, […]
Let’s take a look at “hope” as we continue our study of the triad used to describe the Christian life. For what do we hope? A quick word search finds the object of Christian hope is usually our own resurrections or our sharing in the glory of God, two ways of saying the same thing. […]
At the heart of Christianity is, of course, faith in Christ Jesus. John says this means Jesus is the logos, the design, or the explanation of the world. If Jesus is the first thing God created, he becomes the pattern by which everything else is made. He is the key to understanding everything else in […]
Let me list the points our discussion has made so far: Faith is trusting God. It includes trusting also the goodness of his creation. That means we must trust God’s love in spite of what we observe humans doing to one another and what we remember they did to Jesus. To trust God is to […]
Let me say more about story and promise. It can be said that the Bible contains God’s story. We are not talking about theological statements, laws or even history. As the Augsburg Confession XX says, faith is not merely knowledge of historical events, even Satan knows these, but a confidence in God and the fulfillment […]
I closed last week’s post with the question, “What does faith in God involve? What do we trust God to do for us?” None of the responses I received believed faith in God involved expecting God to grant personal requests. For example, Bob wrote, “I think that trust in others is a surrogate for trust […]
Biblical faith is best defined as trust. To have faith does not mean simply believing God exists or accepting some teaching about him. It is to trust God’s promises. So when Jesus wonders out loud in Luke 18: 8, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”, he could be asking […]
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