galatians on Crucified with Christ

A strong church once inscribed these words on an archway leading to the churchyard. Over time, two things happened: the church lost its passion for Jesus and His gospel, and ivy began to grow on the a...

A Lutheran pastor friend—the Reverend Bill Vaswig—and I once were discussing Galatians 2:19 and wondering what it means to be crucified with Christ. I mean, what are we actually talking about? Bill sa...

A magistrate regards someone as a criminal and punishes him if he catches him among thieves, even though the man has never committed anything evil or worthy of death. Christ was not only found among s...

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 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...

Only with great care. For thousands, carols will be their only link with a church. At the same time, sentimentality is perhaps the single most dangerous feature of our Church and culture-and the senti...

We should realize that the Bible never tells us to have ourselves crucified; it informs us only that we "were crucified."

In class I often use a show-and-tell example to illustrate the central point for the understanding of ministry. I invite a student to join me at the front of the class. I always pick a large, strongly...

preaching commentary A Tough Way to Start Ministry You don’t have to spend much time on Twitter or Facebook to be reminded that schadenfreude (taking joy from another's misfortune) is alive a...

Lent 2021: A 40-day Heart Restoration Heart Renewal Bonus Content: Video prep session with Jonathan Cornell on Jeremiah 31:31-34 . AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the his...

Lent 2024: Do This in Remembrance Remembrance and Gratitude AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? Ancient Boundaries The world of Jesus and of the early church sa...

A Tough Way to Start Ministry You don’t have to spend much time on Twitter or Facebook to be reminded that schadenfreude (taking joy from another's misfortune) is alive and well. Depending on w...

When Martin Luther discovered that some had begun calling the first Protestants “Lutherans,” he strongly objected. It is funny to think that some 500 years later, many are still known by his name: ...

Bonus Content: Video prep session with Jonathan Cornell on Jeremiah 31:31-34 . Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Covenants and Kings God’s people Israel lived in rela...

In 2000, the National Gallery in London put on a millennial exhibition entitled “Seeing Salvation.” That was a case in point—especially remembering that European countries tend to be far more “secular...

The resurrection affirms that sin and death do not have the last word. At the cross the finest religion of the ancient world (Judaism) and the finest system of justice of the ancient world (Rome), joi...

Christ is to us just what his cross is. All that Christ was in heaven or on earth was put into what he did there...Christ, I repeat, is to us just what his cross is. You do not understand Christ till ...

The early Christian writers used some stunning expressions of delight and gratitude when they mentioned Jesus’s death. Think of Paul saying, “He loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20), or “The ...

Your torture puts hostility to death Your broken body breaks down every dividing wall Your blood makes us blood What wondrous truth What dazzling grace Bring us near again, Jesus Help us remember an...

Almighty God, who because of your great love for humanity, gave your beloved Son to die for us upon the cross: Grant us a living faith in our Redeemer, and a grateful reminder of his death. Help us to...

Please know that when I take up my cross every day I am not talking about my wheelchair. My wheelchair is not my cross to bear. Neither is your cane or walker your cross. Neither is your dead-end job ...

God could have chosen any method to save us, but he used the cross. The cross is our spiritual centerpiece, the sign of our soul’s emancipation. However, the pre-Christian cross might offer a sliver ...

God’s means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. That is surely rather a peculiar way of victory, you say; but it is the divine way....

O God, who looked on us when we had fallen down into death, and resolved to redeem us by the Advent of your only begotten Son; grant, we beg you, that those who confess his glorious Incarnation may al...

It is a fact that the Lord Jesus has already died for you. It is also a fact that you have already died with the Lord Jesus. If you do not believe in your death with Christ, you will not be able to re...

The Incarnation through the death of Christ makes it possible for God to be "just, and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus." If God should be merciful without the satisfaction of jus...

You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, “Take up your Cross”—in other words, it is like going to be beaten ...

God became man that dehumanized men might become true men. We become true men in the community of the incarnate, the suffering and loving, the human God.

This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “super-death” that is a com...

St. Martin of Tours was a Frankish soldier in the Roman army who abandoned his military post to follow Jesus at a time when Christianity had only begun to take root in France. He later became the bish...