The cross, Martin Luther wrote, was the devil’s mousetrap. The devil smelled cheese, and wham, felt steel. Thus, we see a little baby lying defenseless in a crib at Bethlehem, and a tortured man hangi...
1 Corinthians 12:8-12, John 1:, John 17:18, Philippians 2:6-11, 1 John 1:7, Romans 8:1, Colossians 1:13-14
The Cave One of the most famous passages in Plato's Republic is his "Allegory of the Cave," which is found at the beginning of book seven . Socrates imagines the human condition al...
Luke 1:26-38, Romans 16:25-27, 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 19-26, Luke 1:26-38, Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26, Luke 1:46, Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:19, Revelation 11:15, Luke 1:46-48, John 8:41, Luke 1:29, 1 Corinthians 1:23, 1 Corinthians 1:27-29
Advent 2023: Make Some Noise! AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the David...
James 5:15, Psalm 147:3, Galatians 3:28, Matthew 5:44, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 1 Corinthians 15:54-55, Ephesians 4:32
Gracious and loving God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We praise you for how wide, how high, and how deep is Your vast love for all people. Incarnate in Jesus, You offered Your life for the healing of ...
Lord and God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have only begun to comprehend the wonder of the Incarnation, that you in Christ would become one of us, that you in Christ would live among us and be ...
Luke 1:26-38, Luke 1:46, Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:19, Revelation 11:15, Luke 1:46-48, John 8:41, 1 Corinthians 1:23, 1 Corinthians 1:27-29
Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the Davidic line was the common narrative for how most peop...
Advent 2020: Tear Down the Heavens Tear Down the Heavens Updated & expanded for 2023 AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? Longing created by exile For the...
Luke 2:41-52, Colossians 3:12-17, 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26, Luke 2:41-52, Psalm 148:, 1 Corinthians 13:, Colossians 4:7, Philemon 1:11, 14
Preaching Commentary A Christmastide Community A recent podcast reminded me that there is no such thing as a “neutral” marking of our time—our minutes and our hours, our days and our weeks, our mon...
Mark 1:14-20, 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, Jonah 3:1-5, Mark 1:14-20, Psalm 62:5-12, Mark 1:14-20, John 3:30
Preaching Commentary John's Imprisonment, Jesus' Debut John the Baptist is as good as dead when we hear of Jesus’ splash onto the Galilean landscape in Mark 1:14. Mark tells us that Jesus a...
John 1:14, Philippians 2:6-8, Luke 2:6-7, 1 Corinthians 1:27-29, Matthew 18:2-4
The incarnation is a kind of vast joke whereby the Creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers... Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by i...
The cross is the center of the world's history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve. The testimony of Christ was ...
The last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have...
All these changes did the Merciful One effect: Stripping of His glory and putting on a body; For He had devised a way to reclothe Adam, In that glory which Adam had stripped off.
For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonish...
Philippians 2:5-8, John 1:14, 1 Corinthians 10:13, 1 Peter 2:24, Romans 8:3, Matthew 20:28
What self denial! What self abasement! What self emptying! He, whom no infinitudes can hold, is contained within infant’s age, and infant’s form. Can it be, that the great ‘I AM THAT I AM’ shrinks int...
John 6:53-56, Matthew 26:26-28, Colossians 1:19-20, Hebrews 2:14-15, 1 Corinthians 11:24-25, Philippians 2:6-8
The Incarnation [and I might add Communion] remains a scandal to anyone who wants religion to be a purely spiritual matter, an etherized, bloodless bliss.
John 1:14, Luke 1:26-38, Luke 2:1-7, Luke 4:18-19, Romans 5:8, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19
Without the incarnation, Christianity isn't even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. "Be nice to one another" is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me o...
John 10:17-18, Philippians 2:8, 1 Corinthians 1:18, Hebrews 12:2, Colossians 2:15, 1 Peter 3:18
He, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by...
Long since on Mars and more strongly since he came to Perelandra, Ransom had been perceiving that the triple distinction of truth from myth and both from fact was purely terrestrial-was part and parce...
If the phrase “theology of the body” seems odd, perhaps it’s because we haven’t taken the reality of the incarnation as seriously as Scripture does. There’s nothing surprising about looking to the hum...
Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body—which believes that matter is good, that God himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body ...