Ideas about the Kingdom of the Heavens around us and the unity of believers in Christ within it
In Corinth, Godly sorrow over a letter Paul regretted writing led the members of the church to a zeal to put away their sins which is the definition of repentance. After that repentance, they were told to accept back among themselves even those who had lapsed into the “worst” sins, but had repented.
Romans 2:4-5 is a warning aimed not at the wicked world, but at the self-righteous–even believers–who harshly judge others while forgetting that it was the kindness of God that led them to repentance.
A God who Speaks, Consequences, Forgetting God, forgiveness and mercy, God is Love, God Never Stopped Speaking, God Speaks to Us, God's Existence and Nature, God's Other Attributes, idolatry, judgment, patience, refusal to repent, Refusing to hear, Rejecting God, Repentance, reprobation, Sin, through his creation, Truth and Falsehood, What is sin?
Paul’s speech to the rulers of Athens in the Areopagus was a long exercise in deliberate irony, first building and then promptly burning cultural bridges. Paul did this to show them the folly of their deliberate ignorance of the true God.
A God who Speaks, Desire to have our own way, Eternity, Forgetting God, God Acts by Speaking, God is Love, God Never Stopped Speaking, God Speaks to Us, God's Existence and Nature, idolatry, Immanence, Refusing to hear, Rejecting God, Repentance, Sin, The Invisible God's Self-Existence, Truth and Falsehood, What is sin?
Though God forgave David his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah, this sin had a traceable chain of earthly consequences which extends to the present and which includes the death of Christ on the cross.
God rejected King Saul, a bungler who made a few mistakes trying to do God’s will, his own way. But he accepted King David, a rapist and murderer, forgave him two unforgivable sins, promised him an eternal kingdom, called him a man after his own heart–and put him in Jesus’ lineage! Didn’t God get this backwards? NO!!
Confession and Repentance, Desire to have our own way, forgiveness and mercy, God is Love, God's Existence and Nature, God's rationality, Leaving Our First Love, Peril of Seeking Power, Refusing to hear, Rejecting God, Repentance, Repentance versus Remorse, Sin, Sins versus sin, Social control and statecraft, The Problem of Evil, Trusting sight over God's words, What is sin?
When God sent Moses to deliver his people from Egypt, the Pharaoh who ruled Egypt responded to some of the plagues with false repentance. That is, he tried to “make a deal” with God, and even admitted that he was in the wrong, only to renege on his agreements as soon as God removed the plague. With each “deal” on which he reneged, his heart became more hardened. But this is always what happens when, out of fear or remorse, we try to “make a deal” with God rather than obey him.
In Luke 13:1-9, Jesus answers the “problem of evil” by pointing at his questioners’–and everyone’s–sin, pointing out that death and suffering come as a result of sin, not of being a greater or lesser sinner, and calling for repentance.
Correctly including character flaws in the word “paraptoma” yields a reading of Romans 4:25 which correctly includes our death to the power of sin in our members, which died with Jesus, in the justification for which he died..
In the Lord’s Prayer and the parallel teaching about mercy, Jesus tells us that we are to ask God to release us from the consequences or resulting debts of our sins as we release others from the debts we imagine they owe us. While praying, we are to show mercy upon the flaws (paráptōmata) that led them to sin, because the Father will show us mercy in the same measure.
The continued existence of ethnic Coptic and Assyrian Christian minorities in Egypt and the Middle East demonstrates God’s faithfulness and the possibility of a literal fulfillment of Isaiah 19:23-25. If God can preserve these ethnic groups across two millennia of persecution in order to fulfill a prophecy, can he possibly need my “help” doing anything in my own life?