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?…
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”. …
‘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.…
It has long been assumed that the chief emphasis in Romans is on justification by faith.
This was challenged in 1963 by Stendahl, who argued that pre-occupation with justification by faith was due to the church’s morbid conscience, based on the moral struggles of Augustine and Luther, which the church has read back into Paul. Justification, according to Stendahl,
‘is not the pervasive, organising doctrinal principle or insight of Paul,’ but ‘was hammered out by Paul for the very specific and limited purpose of defending the rights of Gentile converts to be full and genuine heirs to the promises of God to Israel.’ …
John Stott has some wise and measured words on this subject. He is, of course, writing from within an Anglican context. But I think that the principles he espouses are worth weighing in other parts of the church too.
…‘What should the contemporary church do with heretics? Is that a harsh word? I think not. A humble and reverent probing into the mystery of the incarnation is the essence of true christological scholarship. But attempted reconstructions that effectively destroy that which is supposed to be being reconstructed is christological heresy.Let
I was struck by John Stott’s comment about the concept of ‘spirituality’:-
…‘I confess that the recent evangelical adoption of the word and concept of “spirituality” troubles me for three reasons.
‘First, it is a traditionally Roman Catholic term, which means that inevitably it carries with it some Catholic baggage. Then we spread confusion by using the same language for different notions.
‘Second, the term spirituality threatens to perpetuate the disastrous dichotomy between the sacred and the secular, the spiritual and the material.
I hesitate to contribute anything on this subject, discussion of which tends generate more heat than light. But perhaps if only to demonstrate that there is a way of seeking to be faithful to Scripture which does not amount to a homophobic rant, I offer the following.
I remember that when I was at school in the 1960s, our class was informed that about 10% of the population was homosexual. …
It was Galileo who said, ‘I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.’
And A.W. Tozer reminds us, ‘the mind is good – God put it there. He gave us our heads and it was not his intention that our heads would function just as a place to hang a hat.’
But the mind is apt to be neglected by well-meaning Christians.…
Work occupies a significant place in many people’s lives. In some parts of the world there is little prospect of paid employment, because of civil war, famine or other forms of poverty. There are varieties of work: the shoeshine boy in Nairobi, the call-centre worker in Bangalore, the oil worker in Siberia, the child labourer in Beijing, the entrepreneur in Kiev, the barrister in London and the teacher in Memphis are all working. Some are oppressed and some are the source of oppression. …
