Ideas about the Kingdom of the Heavens around us and the unity of believers in Christ within it
God speaks to us individually, and also collectively as his Body. We must hear him and walk with him individually and also depend on each other for his voice. Believers all have the mind of Christ, but none of us alone has all of the mind of Christ.
God speaks to us through his Holy Spirit, who must teach us–by building within us–everything we truly know of God. God also speaks to the world through us, by his Spirit who is building his image within us.
Introduction to the historic process by which the Early Church, a collection of outcasts bound together by a personal relationship with Jesus, within a few centuries became the chief bastion of worldly power and order held together by legally enforced adherence to a creed.
In this post, I give a short, one web page, summary of what I believe, in language as simple as I can manage. It gives only a quick, “big picture” of my understanding of God, my relationship to him, and my role on Earth. Comments are invited.
Church purpose versus church growth, Complex unity, Conversation with God, Divisions in the Church, Eternity, Free will, God Acts by Speaking, God is Love, God Never Stopped Speaking, God Speaks to Us, God was never our enemy, God's Existence and Nature, God's purpose for us, God's rationality, God's sovereignty, His Children, His Friends, Immanence, Islam as a Consequence, Language and Speech, Male and female, Merit, Omnipresence, Reconciliation, Refusing to hear, Regeneration, Rejecting God, Repentance, Restoration of God's Image, Salvation, Show us the Way of Truth, Sin, Sins versus sin, The Invisible God's Self-Existence, The Kingdom of the Heavens, The Problem of Evil, To be his ambassadors, To be in his image, To live in unity, Transcendence, Trinity, Ultimate reality, Unity, Wars as consequences, What is God's Word, What is sin?
The Scriptures generally draw a qualitative distinction between “sin,” in the singular, and “sins,” in the plural. “Sin” is our inward attitude of rebellion against God. “Sins” are bad actions. This post gives examples from First John which paint a picture of the complete Christian life.
The Scriptures generally draw a qualitative distinction between “sin,” in the singular, and “sins,” in the plural. “Sin” is our inward attitude of rebellion against God. “Sins” are bad actions. This post gives a series of examples from Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians.
Jesus came as a man–fully human–and lived under the control (“filling”) and power of the Holy Spirit, in exactly the same way we can, if we will permit him to do it. In this respect, the only difference between Jesus, as a human, and us, is that Jesus was never anything but fully under the Spirit’s control. Jesus invites us to live as He did, obeying the Spirit’s direction and living by the Spirit’s power.
A God who Speaks, God Acts by Speaking, God Never Stopped Speaking, God Speaks to Us, God's purpose for us, His Children, His Friends, Holy Spirit, Jesus the Son, Promises, Show us the Way of Truth, Son of Man, The Invisible God's Self-Existence, The Kingdom of the Heavens, Through Jesus, To be in his image, Trinity, Ultimate reality, What is God's Word
When Paul spoke to some disciples of John the Baptist in Acts 19, he pointed out to them that John’s baptism was a baptism to repentance–a changed way of life–not as an end in itself, but leading to Jesus and a life transformed by the Holy Spirit.
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.
When Peter preached that the people should “repent,” he explained that meant that they were to “turn away from their wickedness” and so, in their behavior, “listen” to Jesus. Jesus did not come to entertain us or to offer advice, but to turn us away from our own way to obedience to him.