What can the brutal death of a single Jew, two thousand years ago, have to do with us finding peace with God? And why, if God wishes to forgive us, why does he not just do so, without all the paraphernalia of sacrifice?
As one sceptic put it: “Of course God will forgive me; that’s his job”.
It might further be objected that we are required by God himself to freely forgive one another. Why can’t God simply do the same with us?…
1 Peter 3:18-20 – ‘Because Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring you to God, by being put to death in the flesh but by being made alive in the spirit. In it he went and preached to the spirits in prison, after they were disobedient long ago when God patiently waited in the days of Noah as an ark was being constructed. In the ark a few, that is eight souls, were delivered through water.’…
Various answers could be given to the question, and there would be truth in all of them.
We could, for example, say that Christ died because of the actions of the Roman soldiers and Pilate. The soldiers ‘crucified him’, Mt 27:32-35; Mk 15:21-25; Lk 23:26-33; Jn 19:17-18. And Pilate, the Roman governor, allowed them to do so even though he knew Jesus to be innocent.
We could also say that Christ died because of the actions of the Jewish people and their priests. …
John Stott writes:-
‘Perhaps the most scornful rejection of the cross has come from the pen of the German philosopher and philologist, Friedrich Nietzsche (died 1900). Near the beginning of The Anti-Christ (1895) he defined the good as “the will to power”, the bad as “as that proceeds from weakness”, and happiness as “the feeling that power increases…”, while “what is more harmful than any vice” is “active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak – Christianity”. …
The story of Charles Darwin and his discovery of evolution has become as much a part of our culture as the story of Adam and Eve before it. It has become ‘common knowledge’ that living beings have evolved over millions of years, and that we occupy no privileged place in the animal kingdom.
The story of Darwin, together with that of Galileo, marks the turning-point when science dispelled the superstitions of religion and ushered in the modern world.…
Any sign of eloquence in public speaking is apt to be regarded with deep suspicion. As a result, many preachers have become lazy, and neglectful of even the basics of oral communication. The mood of the day may be very much against rhetorical skill. But it is disrespectful both to our message and to our audience to fail to communicate as clearly, interestingly, and persuasively as we can.
But perhaps there are a few signs today of a renewed interest in rhetorical skill. …
C.H. Spurgeon said of the Puritan Thomas Watson that he ‘was one of the most concise, racy, illustrative, and suggestive of those eminent divines who made the Puritan age the Augustan period of evangelical literature. There is a happy union of sound doctrine, heart-searching experience and practical wisdom throughout all his works, and his Body of Divinity is, beyond all the rest, useful to the student and the minister.’
The following summarises some of the things Watson has to say about God the Creator:-
1.…
John Stott has written about the Muslim attitude towards the cross of Christ:-
‘One of the saddest features of Islam is that it rejects the cross, declaring it inappropriate that a major prophet of God should come to such an ignominious end. The Koran sees no need for the sin-bearing of a Saviour. At least five times it declares categorically that “no soul shall bear another’s burden’. Indeed, “if a laden soul cries out for help, not even a near relation shall share its burden”. …
‘It is often asserted,’ writes John Stott, ‘that in the book of Acts the apostles’ emphasis was on the resurrection rather than the death of Jesus, and that in any case they gave no doctrinal explanation of his death.’
I have heard this assertion myself, and so was interested in reading what Stott has to say about it (in The Cross of Christ, 32-35).
Not only is the death of Christ often mentioned in Acts, but the seeds of the doctrine later developed in the epistles are there too.…
