Category Archives: Christian Life

The call to Christlikeness

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A. God wants us to be like Christ

This is his

  1. eternal purpose – we have been ‘predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son’ (Romans 8:29).
  2. historical purpose – ‘we…are being transformed [or changed] into his image’ (2 Corinthians 3:18).
  3. eschatological purpose – ‘we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him’ (1 John 3:2).

Here, then, are three perspectives: past (we have been predestined), present (we are being changed), and future (we shall be like him), which all point to the same thing: that God wants us to be like Christ.…

‘I’m really sorry’

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[This is a repost of something I wrote in February 2008.  It kept attracting spam comments, so let’s see if re-locating it throws the spammers off the trail.]

Many psychologists emphasise the healing power of forgiveness.  Professor Aaron Lazare, Dean of the University of Massachusetts medical school, however, has written a book called On Apology. As reported at the time in The Independent, 28/12/04, Lazare says that saying sorry has the power ‘to heal humiliations, free the mind from deep-seated guilt, remove the desire for vengeance, and restore broken relationships.…

‘Blessed’ = ‘happy’?

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How should the Greek word makarios be translated in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3ff)?  It is tempting to use the more contemporary word ‘happy’.  But (writes Scott McKnight), this is problematic:-

“Happiness” is about inner contentedness and material flourishing. That is, many today think it is a right not only to have life but to have a good life. Here are several suggestions now about what happiness means.

1. Primarily happiness is understood as a subjective “feeling good about oneself and one’s life and one’s situation.”

…

‘A better story’ – 12

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Our ‘better story’ for sex and marriage begins as we are welcomed into God’s reality.

Five truths underpin this.

1. God has spoken.  We no longer have to strive to construct our our ‘reality’.  God has spoken in his Son and in his Scriptures.

2. We are God’s creatures.  This is his reality, not ours.  Our nature and purpose need to be understood in the light of our creaturely dependence on him.

3. We flourish when we work with the grain of God’s reality. …

‘If the church were Christian’ – 5

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If the church were Christian, then, according to Philip Gulley, ‘inviting questions would be valued more than supplying answers.’

Gulley says that he has come across ‘many’ Christians who are content to rest their faith on some decision, made years before, to ‘invite Jesus into their heart’.  They have no desire desire to explore, question, or deepen their outlook beyond that.  They are encouraged in this apathy by intellectually lazy pastors, teaching dogmatic truth as a package that must be accepted in its entirety without demur.…

‘If the church were Christian’ – 3

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By the time we reach chapter three of Philip Gulley’s book If the Church were more Christian, the procedure is becoming rather predictable: tell a story or two illustrating how bad ‘they’ (other Christians) are, and then tell a story or two showing how ‘we’ get it right.  Throw in one or two references to the Bible (don’t take too much trouble about how you select, interpret, or apply them).  Job done.  Next chapter please.…

Meditating on Christ’s sufferings

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Given the reticence and reserve with which the NT dwells on the physical aspects of Christ’s sufferings, it is certainly possible for Christians themselves to dwell too much on them.

F.F. Bruce comments on this subject in his fascinating book, Answers To Questions (p249f).

He contrasts this, by Charles Wesley…

1. O Love divine, what has thou done!
The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father’s coeternal Son
bore all my sins upon the tree.…

Biblical words for ‘love’

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In an article in the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, D.A. Carson warns against ‘word-based reductionism’:-

‘When Amnon incestuously rapes his half-sister Tamar (2 Sam. 13, LXX), twice we are told that he ‘loved’ her, once with agapaō and once with phileō. It is hard to see how this love differs from erōs, acquisitive and sexual love (though the word erōs is never found in the Bible). Twice John tells us that the Father ‘loves’ the Son, once using agapaō (John 3:35), once using phileō (John 5:20), and it is difficult to detect any difference in meaning.

…

Praying the Psalms politically

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John Goldingay writes:-

In his book Where Your Treasure Is: Psalms that Summon You from Self to Community, Eugene Peterson studies “psalms that shaped the politics of Israel and can shape the politics of America” [or Great Britain]:

2            the unselfing of America
87          unself-made
110        unself-centered
93          unself-government
46          unself-help
62          unself-assertion
77          unself-pity
14          unself-righteous
82          unself-serving
114        unself-sufficient
45          unself-love

He comments, “writing about prayer is not prayer; neither is reading about it.…

Psalms: Prayer Book of the Bible

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Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible (Augsburg Fortress, 1970, Kindle Edition).

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Do the Psalms, as Holy Scripture, primarily represent the thoughts, feelings, experiences and longings of those by whom, and for whom, they were originally composed?  Or do we draw a straight line from each psalm to our own experience, and appropriate each prayer as if ti were our own?

Neither, says Bonhoeffer.

In this short book, Bonhoeffer argues that the Psalms should be understood, first and foremost, as the Prayer Book of Jesus Christ. …