Who Will Stand?

When Athanasius thought the character of the Son was being impugned by the Arians, he stood strongly against it in his proclamation of the pure gospel, even at the risk of his own life. Eighteen centuries later, the character of the Father is being impugned by the presentation of a caricature of God, showing Him as an angry judge whose human-type-rage had to be appeased (and still does) or else He would come against us and destroy us. The character of the Son is being impugned by diminishing His finished work in suggesting that what He did has absolutely no eternal meaning unless we say so through a sinner’s prayer or a confirmation or baptism or other salvific sacrament that we’ve given more authority than the shed blood of Jesus Himself. The character of the Holy Spirit is being impugned by diminishing His communion with humanity and assigning him insulting roles ranging to everything from a silent partner to the court jester among the Trinity. Where are those who will stand?

(The paragraph above is an excerpt from what I plan to teach next week at the Grace Walk Leadership Summit in Ontario (Canada) Click here for more information: http://www.gracewalkcanada.org/ )

God Has Done It

Here's a great quote from my friend, Mike Quarles. It's in the book he and I are co-authoring entitled, Helping People Find Freedom From Addiction. The book will be released next year by Harvest House Publishers.

"Perhaps the best definition of grace is “God has done it.” The primary declaration of Christianity is not “this do," but "this happened.” The Gospel is not an announcement of something to do, but the good news of what has been done. Martin Luther says “The law says do this and never is it done. Grace says believe in this One and it is already done. We don’t do anything, we don’t give anything to God, but we receive and allow someone else to do all the work for us and in us and it’s God that does it”. God is the subject and we are the object. Of course it helps greatly to be a receptive and responsive object. The gospel is the good news of what God has done, not an announcement of what we are to do. What we are to do is to respond to what God has done. We respond by faith to God’s gracious provision for us."

What I'm Reading Right Now

Jesus is standing on the broken doors of hell. The massive portals lie crossed under his feet, a reminder of the cross that won this triumph. He stands braced and striding, like a superhero, using his mighty outstretched arms to lift a great weight. That weight is Adam and Eve themselves, our father and mother in the fallen flesh. Jesus grasps Adam's wrist with his right hand and Eve's with his left as he pulls them forcibly up, out of the carved marble boxes that are their graves. Eve is shocked and appears almost to recoil in shame, long hair streaming. Adam gazes at Christ with a look of stunned awe, face lined with weary age, his long tangled beard awry. Their limp hands lie in Jesus's powerful grip as he hauls them up into the light.

Behind Christ stand King David, King Solomon, the prophet Isaiah, and the prophet Jeremiah, all in gorgeous robes, clustered tightly like a standing-room-only crowd to see this marvelouse event. Among them is an air of joy, even conviviality. John the Baptist is in the throng, still clogthed in camel skin, now in full repossession of his head. Behind them are ranks and ranks of the righteous dead, who are dead no more, for Christ has set them free.

- From The Scandal of the Cross, edited by Mark Baker. This section is by Frederica Mathewes-Green and comes from chapter three.

The McGurk Effect

It's amazing how we all filter the things we hear through the lens we already possess and have used to interpret information most of our lives. And even if we've misunderstood what somebody has said, it's often the case that no amount of clarification or explanation will convince us that the person hasn't said what we would swear we heard. This video is an amazing example of that effect. It's called The McGurk Effect. I think you'll be amazed . . .

How People Who Love Christ Become Religious

Nobody wanders away from intimacy with Christ and gets caught up in a performance-based religious lifestyle in one giant step. It happens as Satan misdirects our attention from The Big Picture (Jesus) and changes things in our lives little by little until one day, everything has changed but we don't even realize it because we've been so focused on the details of what we're doing (our performance) that we didn't even realize what was happening. This video is an object lesson that illustrates what I mean...

Missing Christ In Plain Sight

It's not unlike the preoccupation that many have with consecrating so much on what they believe the Bible is telling them to do that we miss the Real Subject of the Scripture - Jesus Himself.