Our rejection of the Imago Dei (Image of God, God’s thumbprint of His nature on our being) is fundamentally a rejection of Him, and we’re worshipping creatures by nature, and therefore must and will worship something.
Category: Theology Page 10 of 67
http://www.inc.com/amy-morin/science-explains-how-facebook-makes-you-sad.html
“They don’t recognize that it’s actually robbing them of joy.”
“Robbing them of joy.” That phrase stuck in my mind as I read this article about Facebook and the endless scrolling we can find ourselves addicted to, and how it sucks the life and joy right out of us. There is tons of spiritual application in this, especially during this Lenten season of self-assessment, confession, repentance, cleansing, and joy-renewal in the full scope of Christ’s person and work on our behalf.
“The great cannot subsist without the small, nor the small without the great. There is a kind of mixture in all things, and thence arises mutual advantage. Let us take our body for an example. The head is nothing without the feet, and the feet are nothing without the head; yea, the very smallest members of our body are necessary and useful to the whole body. But all work harmoniously together, and are under one common rule for the preservation of the whole body.”
Clement to the Corinithans
Something worse than famine and drought (from today’s Advent readings in the Book of Common Prayer Lectionary):
[11] “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD,
“when I will send a famine on the land—
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the LORD.
[12] They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD,
but they shall not find it.
Amos 8:11-12 ESV
There is a grand interconnection between the incarnation of Christ and his second coming. Graeme Goldsworthy gives a great summing up of the relation of the incarnation to eschatology or last things, when Christ returns in glory and brings to completion and finality all he has accomplished (inserts mine, to give context to the quote).
The structure of New Testament eschatology requires that we at least consider that [Christ’s return] is both fulfilled now in the incarnation and awaiting its consummation at Christ’s [second] return. That is, what happened in Jesus’ first advent as fulfiller of all God’s promises is the paradigm of what will happen at his parousia. Everything was fulfulled in him representatively at his first coming, and everything will be fulfilled in a universal consummation at his return.
Graeme Goldsworthy, Christ-Centered Biblical Theology, pgs. 184-185
If you ever had any hope of trying to please God with your good, moral behavior, put that notion to rest. Psalm 14:2-3 should lay you flat.
2The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,a
who seek after God.3They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
How then will you be able to stand in the last day, when God judges the thoughts and intentions of the hearts of all, when all must give an account? Especially in light of the passage above, that there are none righteous?
http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/11/defending-the-covenant-of-rede.php
http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/11/defending-the-covenant-of-rede-1.php
http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/11/defending-the-covenant-of-rede-2.php
Does the Covenant of Redemption Compromise Orthodox Trinitarianism? This is one of the criticisms Scott Swain answers leveled against covenant theology in a series of posts specifically on the covenant of redemption. The criticism leveled is that if there are multiple parties within the godhead who then make covenants with each other, the door is then open for heretical arguments of tritheism. Nothing could be further from the truth of scripture and reason as he shows. To see and grasp this doctrine from scripture is to see the beauty of God’s work in eternity in establishing the basis for the gospel, for from this everything else springs: the Father, Son and Spirit’s intentionality in carrying out the work of redemption. To unfold this doctrine is to unfold the very love of God Himself.
Paul Krugman wrote an article today that hits on something many have observed for quite some time: the spreading wave of despair and darkness over average Americans’ lives, in this case, particularly middle-aged whites. This is not a new revelation, but it is something mainstream economists and commentators like Krugman are starting to catch wind of in their thought, at least in the academic/statistical realm. On a side note, while eschewing any exacerbation of this problem by the left and then subsequently blaming the “volatility of right-wing politics,” he still makes some good points, without offering any solutions. Regardless, to point, Krugman writes this:
Reading scripture is (or should be) like holding up a mirror up to your own heart. It’s been said of scripture that you should not merely read it but let it read you. In reading through 1 and 2 Samuel of late, this very thing has been on my mind. Reflected in the lives of Saul and David is my own heart, my own life.
(Photo Credit: Jewett Photography – DFW Photographers http://www.jewettphotography.com/)
This is a great series of posts from R. Scott Clark on communion, how it has been desecrated through historical innovations, but then on the other side of the spectrum memorialized and in many cases completely trivialized in the larger, popular evangelical world. He then offers what is the historic Reformed view, a recovery of this means of grace.
http://heidelblog.net/2015/05/heidelberg-75-the-supper-is-more-than-a-memory/ (Part 1)