Up

A popular animated movie has a retired widower attaching a huge bunch of balloons to his house and sailing off into the air, on "the adventure of a lifetime." Well, back around 30 AD, someone else rose up in the air, without the benefit of

In Simple Terms

I've been reading the Bible and hearing it taught for about 50 years. It's a very complex book!  But I'm the kind of person who tends to simplify complex concepts into more understandable ideas. So as of today, at least, here's how I see the story of the Bible, in simple terms. 

Invited Into our Father's Business

By Randy Bloom, Regional pastor for GCI

Trinitarian theology teaches us that God (Father, Son and Spirit) is “on mission” in the world and we are invited to participate! We participate as we actively engage with Jesus, by the Spirit, in

"Justified by Faith"?

Does your own faith save you?  Maybe we should ask, faith in what? And what kind of faith?

Note how T.F. Torrance explained Jesus’ faithfulness:

Jesus Christ stood in our place, taking our cause upon him, also as Believer, as the Obedient One who was himself justified before God as his beloved Son in whom he was well pleased. He offered to God . . . a perfect faith and response which we are unable to offer, and he appropriated all God’s blessings which we are unable to appropriate. Through union with him we share in his faith, in his obedience, in his trust and appropriation of the Father’s blessing; we share in his justification before God. Therefore when we are justified by faith, this does not mean that it is our faith that justifies us, far from it—It is the faith of Christ alone that justifies us, but we in faith flee from our own acts even of repentance, confession, trust and response, and take refuge in the obedience and faithfulness of Christ—“Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” That is what it means to be justified by faith. (“Justification: Its Radical Nature and Place in Reformed Doctrine and Life,” Scottish Journal of Theology, vol 13, no 3. pp. 225-246.)

As Joseph Tkach explains in this article, our faith is both active and passive. We trust in Christ, and we trust in Jesus' perfect faith on our behalf, not on our own imperfect (and sometimes missing!) faith.

"My Beloved Child"

Christ-centered, incarnational Trinitarian theology (more at this website) sees in Jesus the full picture of the Godhead; that in Jesus we can see the

A Union Carpenter

Jesus, son of God and son of man, was a carpenter by trade (Mark 6:3). I guess that makes sense, because the Logos was the builder of the universe (John 1:3) so maybe it made sense for him to be a builder when he was a human (John 1:14) also. But did you know he was a union carpenter?

Okay, not like a labor union. But he was the perfect union of God and humanity, and that's very important. It surprises me to realize that it took four centuries for the church to decide this question. But there are a lot of crucial issues hanging on the answer.

Here's the background: Jesus was obviously a man. But he claimed the title "Son of Man" from Daniel 7:13, which everyone of his day recognized as a claim of divinity. Matthew 1:22-23 says that he was Immanuel, God with us, fulfilling Isa. 7:14 and 8:8-10. Scripture gives the Messiah divine (meaning Godly) titles in Isa. 9:6. The early church recognized him as divine/authoritative/Lord/Savior, for instance in 1 Cor 8:6.

The argument arose over whether the Son of God was only divine, so that the human form he assumed was only an illusion; or whether he was only human, which kept God away from being polluted by flesh. There were good-sounding arguments for both sides, yet both sides also had scriptures contradicting them. But what became more and more clear was that Jesus had to be fully God and fully human, even though that sounds impossible to us.

Gregory of Nanzianzus wrote it this way: "What has not been assumed has not been restored; it is what is united with God that is saved." That is, if flesh had not been completely 'assumed,' or taken on, by Jesus, then flesh -- that's all of us -- could not have been saved. In 451 AD, the Council of Chalcedon decided that "Only God can save; only that which God has become is saved." So if Jesus the Messiah had not been fully God and fully human, salvation wouldn't have worked. Jesus had to be a 'union carpenter' as it were.

So by fully 'assuming' flesh, Jesus became our perfect representative before the Father; and the Father's perfect representative to humanity. Isn't that amazing? Because of Christ, our broken flesh is fully reconciled to the Father. Though we still have human weakness and sin, those don't exclude us from the Father's presence, because Immanuel (God with us) is our eternal advocate before the Father (Heb. 7:25), and his perfect death paid for all our sins. (And he's still Immanuel, God with us, by the way -- see Matthew 28:20.)

Can we fully understand that? Not really. But we can look with awe on the God who figured out how to do it, and thank him that he did it for us. And keep thanking God for a certain 'union carpenter', forever.