2024-04-19 15:48
The only God the Gospel knowsis the One revealed in the Incarnation,the Cross and the Creation,as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all cre… Read More
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The Faith Log Blog
faithlog.blogspot.com
Exploring the Gospel, the Scriptures and Christian faith, with defibrillations to set your heart beating with the rhythms of God.
2024-04-17 15:19
Though the world be in chaos, Jesus Christ is the continuity of all things. For in Him all things consist and hold together — in Him who is the same yesterday, today and forever. And H… Read More
2024-04-15 20:30
If we find something in the Scriptures but we do not find it in Jesus Christ, then we are not reading them correctly, for they speak of Him. Lord Jesus taught that the Scriptures are about h… Read More
2024-04-13 15:21
Christ is clothed with the Scriptures, embodied in them and truly present in them, that there we may encounter him.So he said to them, “You foolish people – how slow of heart to… Read More
2024-04-08 13:17
Inclusion is not something we can create but something we can only discover. What we discover in the gospel is that all are included in Christ from the very beginning and to the very end.We… Read More
2024-04-05 20:13
The Incarnation Means That We are Deeply and Inextricably Connected to One Another, for Christ is Deeply and Inextricably United with All Humankind.Though there are many human persons, there… Read More
2024-03-27 16:13
The way of the world is violence. The way of Christ, the way of the Cross, is the undoing of violence.If we do not understand the solution, it is because we have not sufficiently unders… Read More
2024-03-25 14:33
The coming of Christ into the world is the end of time. He is the fulfillment, the fullness of time. His Incarnation is the union of eternity with time in such a way that time is transfigure… Read More
2024-03-22 15:03
Many evangelicals know how Paul begins his long argument in Romans 1. But I wonder how many know the surprising conclusion he comes to at the very end of his argument, one that we would not… Read More
2024-03-21 13:15
Having begun in repentance, turning from the twisted ways of the world which do nothing but drain us dry, and deepening in remembrance and recognition of the Lord who has ever been with us f… Read More
2024-03-20 13:37
For several years now, I have understood the Scriptures (what we know as the Old Testament) as being about Jesus Christ. I have done so because Lord Jesus himself taught us they are about hi… Read More
2024-03-19 13:28
Traveling together, we discover a unity that is deeper and more ancient than we can comprehend. It is eternal. The journey is bigger than us. It draws us together and encompasses us —… Read More
2024-03-18 15:24
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:31 NKJV)Yes, it can be a very terrifying thing to fall into the hands of God. That is not because of God’s d… Read More
2024-03-16 14:58
There is an ancient memory of the glory of the Lord, and that memory runs deep within us. Humility revives it, brings it to the fore. It is bracing, stabilizing. Drawing upon it helps us per… Read More
2024-03-15 15:20
The Incarnation of Christ is not only the union of divinity with humanity, of God with humankind, it is also the union of eternity with time in such a way that time is transfigured. This is… Read More
2024-03-14 13:37
The journey has been long, and there is yet more to go. We have been to the bottom, cried out from the depths, learned humility, and there experienced the mercy of God. It does not answer al… Read More
2024-03-13 15:26
Baptism is not a work by which we merit salvation. It is a work of God in us, by Water and the Holy Spirit, and manifests our salvation in a very tangible way. It is a participation in salva… Read More
2024-03-12 13:10
Now we come to a turning point in the journey. We began from far away in a land with no peace, and awakened to the joyful prospect of coming again to our heart’s true home in God. We h… Read More
2024-03-11 15:48
Lord, you know everythinggoing on in my heartbetter than I do.I am a mix,and I am a mess.Come and heal my heart,and put right everythingthat is in me.Amen.How blessed it is when we come to o… Read More
2024-03-09 15:46
They had been greatly oppressed, harnessed to the plow and run over time and again. But the Lord cut the straps that held them, the cords that bound them, and set them free. The testimony of… Read More
2024-03-08 14:59
What does “separation from God” mean? Inasmuch as all are created
through Christ, by Christ, for Christ and in Christ (Colossians
1:16-17), it is therefore actually impossible… Read More
2024-03-07 13:43
In the middle of the journey, the psalm writer speaks quite unabashedly about the blessing, the joy — the happiness — that attends those who honor the Lord and walk in His ways… Read More
2024-03-06 16:36
When I hideIn shame or pride,I crumble inside.When I confessMy mess,I come to my rest.Pride and shame are but two sides of the same coin. Both sides are false, teaching us lies about who we… Read More
2024-03-05 14:07
This pilgrim journey is one of giving up the vain notion that everything — or anything — depends upon us, and coming to the place of humility, realizing how great is our helpless… Read More
2024-03-04 16:04
The gospel is not a transaction, or an offer. It is an announcement, and it is unconditional. It is not about what we must do but about what Christ has done, and is doing through the Holy Sp… Read More
2024-03-02 15:29
Our journey well under way, singing the goodness of the Lord, we are glad, full of joy. But all the while, we are mindful that there are others who are yet far away, and we hold them in our… Read More
2024-03-01 15:52
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us.” Lavished! I love that word. It speaks of generosity, abundance, extravagance and grace. It reminds me of the extravagant love… Read More
2024-02-29 13:27
The world is a danger, but we do not travel alone — and never have. Lord Jesus has walked the road himself, on the journey he calls us to travel with him. He encircles us as the mounta… Read More
2024-02-28 15:41
Baptism is not a statute to be observed but a sacrament to be received. It is not a work we perform but a work God does in us through means of Water and the Word. And by it, God accomplishes… Read More
2024-02-27 13:43
Sometimes it is the anger and pride of others who would entangle us in their arrogance, foolishness and deceit. Sometimes it is our own anger and pride that would trip us up and enslave us t… Read More
2024-02-26 20:38
With repentance, hope, and the prospect of returning to the heart of God — the fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit — and so be properly aligned with everyone and ever… Read More
2024-02-26 20:37
Having begun in repentance, and with our eyes lifted up in hope, there is now joy at the invitation to go up to the true home of the heart, the House of the Lord. We have been here before. W… Read More
2024-02-26 20:36
Having begun in repentance (see Too Long Living In A Land With No Peace), the journey of The Pilgrim Psalms proceeds to having hope, the lifting up of the head. Looking to the source of our… Read More
2024-02-26 15:15
Adam blew it. Christ renewed it. Recapitulation. Recapitulation as atonement is a very biblical idea. Paul speaks of it expressly as the plan and purpose of God. It is the saving work o… Read More
2024-02-23 14:15
Here is one of the three main Bible passages used by many evangelicals in an attempt to shut down any idea of Christian universalism. Does it succeed in doing so? I don’t think so, but… Read More
2024-02-21 15:13
There are many who profess to be Christian, to be “born again,” to know Christ, who may even do many things in the name of Christ, yet do not follow him or do what he says. They… Read More
2024-02-19 15:55
The Last Word on all things, the ultimate condition of everyone and everything, is this: God will be All in All. It is the final horizon for all things. There may be many horizons between he… Read More
2024-02-16 16:20
The Bible does speak about the “wrath” of God. But it is a wrath against
sin, not against persons. God did not send His Son into the world to
condemn the world but to save the… Read More
2024-02-15 14:07
As we enter the season of Lent, it is very like the journey of The Pilgrim Psalms. It begins in repentance, an awareness that we have for too long been living in a land with no peace, among… Read More
2024-02-13 14:27
It seems almost a cruel trick for Ash Wednesday to fall on St. Valentine’s Day. One is the remembrance of our mortality, the other of love. The imposition of ashes on our forehead spea… Read More
2024-02-09 22:58
There is no “hell” as such. There is an idea that has been cobbled together and weaponized by certain strands of Christianity and labeled “hell,” but such a realm is… Read More
2024-02-06 14:00
Allegory and typology are somewhat fluid; there are no hard and fast definitions for them when it comes to the Scriptures. What is important is to see the pattern and paradigm of Christ and… Read More
2024-02-05 16:28
This is a project that has been a long time coming. I began writing it over 30 years ago, and it has been in studio production over the past two years. And now, thanks to my brother, Greg Do… Read More
2024-02-03 15:34
All things — which is to say, everything that exists, that has being — are created by Christ, through Christ, for Christ, and in Christ (Colossians 1:15-17). So, everything is sa… Read More
2024-02-01 02:35
What does the holiness of God finally require? Is it the everlasting punishment of sinners, as some have imagined, a view that has been known as the Eternal Conscious Torment position? That… Read More
2024-01-28 19:07
The Cross was not about a debt paid or a penalty satisfied, though some
have taken passages such as Colossians 2:14, as teaching such. But this passage
does not describe some cosmic debt… Read More
2024-01-15 16:48
Why is there evil and suffering in the world? Here is a different take that comes to me the more I meditate on how central Christ crucified and risen is to everything. Here it is for your c… Read More
2024-01-14 19:59
The problem of the human will is not that of wills that are free but
must somehow be persuaded to choose God and the good. Rather, the
problem is that of the human will bound in darkness a… Read More
2022-11-11 16:29
Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of… Read More
2022-11-09 16:11
If he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was… Read More
2022-11-05 12:58
Now the body of Christ, as I often have said, is the whole of humanity.— St. Gregory of NyssaIt is a truth of the Incarnation, in which Christ has united himself with all of humanity… Read More
2022-11-03 13:20
YES! There is divine judgment — and thank God for it! It is how God puts everything right. But the judgment and justice of God is not antithetical to the love of God, nor does the love… Read More
2022-10-30 15:09
It is a most amazing revelation:“For as in Adam all die, so alsoin Christ all will be made alive.”It is clear and absolute,and perfectly symmetrical.Both clauses balance outperfe… Read More
2022-10-28 14:17
His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he ac… Read More
2022-10-26 21:50
They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)In Luke 24, Jesus does not speak a… Read More
2020-12-14 16:42
Every year at Christmastime the message comes to us in many forms — in sermons, banners, carols, greeting cards, even on bumper stickers: Jesus is the reason for the season!It is an en… Read More
2020-06-29 14:41
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)These are sobering words Jesus s… Read More
2020-06-14 11:50
Abba, Father, Thank You, for giving us Your SonAnd sending us Your Holy Spirit.Holy Spirit,By whom we cry out, “Abba, Father,”Thank You for showing us Lord Jesus,For taking what… Read More
2020-06-09 11:11
So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, for the one br… Read More
2020-06-07 12:36
Father of us all, Who is over all things,Let the beauty of Your name,The glory of Your goodness,The faithfulness of Your love,The brilliance of Your light,The vibrancy of Your lifeBe se… Read More
2020-06-05 14:29
Will evil finally be eradicated from God’s creation, or is the best we can hope for is that it will be sequestered? Will it finally be no more, or will it be forever confined in some c… Read More
2020-06-03 12:22
The judgment of God is never against us, to condemn us, but is always for our good, to save us. That is a stunningly beautiful truth, though one that some Christians balk at. It means that G… Read More
2020-06-01 15:28
Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:21… Read More
2020-05-28 11:09
Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to tha… Read More
2020-05-26 10:56
In my last post, we looked at the Cross as Ascension, particularly in the Gospel of John. There we saw Jesus speaking of his death on the cross as being “lifted up.” The Greek wo… Read More
2020-05-21 12:12
We often think of the Cross, the Resurrection and the Ascension as three events instead of one. They seem to be separate in time; each is given its own day within the space of forty-so… Read More
2020-05-19 11:38
There are passages in the Old Testament which, if interpreted literally, would portray God as a Zeus-like, retributive deity. But to read them that way would be to read them very differently… Read More
2020-05-17 11:31
The Scriptures are about Christ. This is what he said to the Pharisees (John 5:49). It is what he taught the disciples (Luke 24 and Reading the Scriptures). The Scriptures are centered on Ch… Read More
2020-05-15 22:23
What does it say? What does it mean? How does it apply? Those were the questions I was taught, in my earlier years, to ask when reading the Scriptures. But I have since come to believe tha… Read More
2020-05-10 12:00
These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admire… Read More
2020-05-08 13:04
The Incarnation is the truth that Christ — by whom, through whom and for whom all things are created, and in whom all things exist and hold together (Colossians 1:16-17) — &ldquo&hell…Read More
2020-05-06 11:52
Through the Incarnation, Christ participates in humanity, the only humanity there is and in which we all participate. Christ participates in it with us; we participate in it with him. This i… Read More
2020-05-04 12:04
We are already in Christ as much as we are ever going to be, and Christ is already in us as much as he is ever going to be — which is 100%! It is irrevocably so because to undo it woul… Read More
2020-05-02 13:54
From the beginning, the purpose and project of creation was to make Man in God’s image and to be like God (compare Genesis 1:26 with Genesis 1:27). It is important to understand that G… Read More
2020-04-30 13:36
The Scriptures teach us that God is love and that God is a consuming fire. That is not saying two different things but saying the same thing in two different ways. For God is simple, not a b… Read More
2020-04-28 11:51
The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:26)Death has an expiration date, for it is the last enemy to be destroyed. After that, there are no more enemies of God. No beings… Read More
2020-04-26 13:06
In a previous post, Luke 24 and Reading the Scriptures, I made the point that we ought always interpret the Scriptures in a Christ-centered, cross-shaped way. In this post, I seek to apply t… Read More
2020-04-24 13:15
In a previous post, Luke 24 and Reading the Scriptures, I made the point that we ought always interpret the Scriptures in a Christ-centered, cross-shaped way. In this post, I seek to apply t… Read More
2020-04-22 12:46
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And b… Read More
2020-04-20 14:44
The Cross and Resurrection are not two different events but two different views of the same event.Yet many Christians have thought of it as a two-step plan. They have been taught that the Cr… Read More
2020-04-19 14:55
At the Cross, Jesus, in whom all the fullness of divinity dwells in bodily form, suffered for us, with us and as us — this is the truth of the Incarnation. God suffers with us.Through… Read More
2020-04-12 14:57
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tombs bestowing life.I love the icon of the Anastasis (Resurrection). Beneath the feet of Christ are the bro… Read More
2020-02-25 17:13
“The love of God is the fire of hell.” ~ St. Isaac the SyrianWhat St. Isaac speaks is nothing more than the truth that God is love. Love is not merely what God has or does but wh… Read More
2019-10-29 17:06
When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:28)Whatever happens in the meantime, in… Read More
2019-10-16 16:03
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22)There is only one human nature, one humanity, of which we all partake. The Incarnation, God becoming man and… Read More
2019-09-20 16:01
At the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom, by whom and for whom all things were created, and in whom all things hold together, and who by the Incarnation joined himself with all huma… Read More
2019-08-16 20:33
(adapted from Colossians 1:15-20)Christ is all-encompassing, In every dimension and every degree. The fullness of Christ in all things,the fullness of all things in Christ,with nothing left… Read More
2019-02-11 22:11
There are some things God is not willing to do, and this is marvelously portrayed in the three parables that comprise Luke 15. Jesus told them in response to the Pharisees and teachers of Je… Read More
2018-11-30 19:14
Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment ... (Hebrews 9:27)Evangelical universalism entails the possibility of “post-mortem conversion,” that is… Read More
2018-11-20 18:53
We hear it a lot — I say it a lot — but what does it mean? Simply put, to be “in Christ” is to be in union with Christ, one with Christ. To be in union with Christ is… Read More
2018-08-23 20:05
How hard it is even for Christians to believe that God intends to save the whole world. This is even though the New Testament indicates in several places that this is exactly what God has pu… Read More
2018-07-22 19:41
Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. (Romans 12:19)There is somethi… Read More
2018-06-29 13:17
From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. (2 Corinthians 5:16)The gospel changes how we view every human bein… Read More
2018-05-18 16:44
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. (Psalm 103:11)How high are the heavens above the earth? It is more than we can comprehend. Yet th… Read More
2018-05-17 02:33
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil —… Read More
2018-05-07 15:46
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. (1 Corinthians 15:56)Last time, we looked at the question of what Paul meant in Romans 5:12, on whether universal sin resulted in… Read More
2018-05-04 15:52
Therefore, just as sin entered into the cosmos through one man, and death through sin, so also death pervaded all humanity, whereupon all sinned. (Romans 5:12 DBH)Here is a very interesting… Read More
2017-11-08 17:20
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. (Romans 12:15)In times of tragedy, it has become common on social media to see people offer “thoughts and prayers,” co… Read More
2017-10-06 14:21
There are three things we should understand about the Old Testament and the early Church if we want to read the Scriptures the way the first Christians did. First is that, for the early Chur… Read More
2017-07-14 15:14
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s ha… Read More
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