Jesus likeness is not something you tack onto the outside. His is an inside job. His way of transforming us into his likeness is from the inside out. The white-knuckle approach to Christianity only leads to frustration and failure. We can only hope to live out the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount in …
A Christianity That Looks Like Christ
I warn you that the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), which is a condensation of some of the primary ethical teaching of Jesus, maybe above all his other discourses preserved for us in the New Testament, challenges our presuppositions about living the Christian life and calls us into the outlandish lifestyle of the Jesus …
What Makes Jesus Angry Enough to Stage a Protest?
Jesus the Activist (Part 1 of 4) “It is right to be angry at injustice, and problematic to be apathetic toward injustice.” Carl Gregg In the last decade or so I have attended a number of protest marches and rallies in San Francisco and Santa Cruz regarding gun violence, immigration reform, racial equality, environmental justice, …
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The Inescapable Web of Mutuality
Friendship is by definition a mutual arrangement, a two-way street. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of us all being bound up in an “inescapable web of mutuality.” They called Jesus a “friend of sinners,” which, for my money, implies more than that he was nice to bad people. He valued their friendship as much as they …
“If you confess with your mouth JESUS AS LORD…”
“If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” Romans 10:9-10 This passage, a favorite of many, I propose is one terribly misunderstood and misapplied for the …
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