“Love Your Enemies”: Does God Do It?

A few years ago my parents became friends with a young man from their church who was studying to be a doctor in the Navy. He had finished medical school and was entering residency. He told them once that one of the things he did to prepare himself for residency was to intubate himself. I don’t know if it...

The Incarnation: More than the Cradle and the Cross

Though the cross is the main symbol of Christianity, I have talked with some people who seem to think that the crucifixion of Jesus was the saving event of the incarnation, and everything that came before was simply prerequisite to that saving event. Indeed, a lot of the language of the church would lead to...

There’s No “ME” in “Scripture”

Do you read the Bible egocentrically? You probably do, but in many ways it’s not your fault. Most of us were taught to read it that way. By egocentric I don’t mean conceited, arrogant, narcissistic, or selfish. I mean it in the purest sense of the word, that we regard the I and the me as central to the...

The Work of Redemption in All Creation

We humans are pretty self-centered. I’m not speaking primarily of us as individuals, though that is certainly the case for most people. No, I mean that we humans, as a race, a species, are pretty self-centered. Oh, not all of us, but a substantial number of us think that humans are the pinnacle of...

Having Faith to Work the Plan

Many of us have been taught that Bible doesn’t allow any mixture of works in the appropriation of our salvation, but Paul, James and, especially, Jesus don’t necessarily support that contention. Part of the problem is that we treat gaining salvation as a single point in time—one second I wasn’t saved, the...

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