galatians on Death

By illustration, I have been told that when a cow is born, she innately senses that her departure from her mother’s warm womb to a cold, scary, unknown world outside is upon her. In response, she will...

A businessman, while away on vacation, was reading his hometown newspaper. He was stunned to come across his own obituary. Shocked and angered, he immediately called the editor on the telephone. I’m c...

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...

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...

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...

Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is ...

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...

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...

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...

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 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 ...

The content of the word “love” is given fully and exclusively in the death of Jesus on the cross; apart from this specific narrative image, the term has no meaning.

Life is short, and we can accomplish only so much. Much of what we do will remain unfinished. For now. In one of my favorite short stories of all time, “Leaf by Niggle,” author J. R. R. Tolkien provid...

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...

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end...

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...

When he found himself desiring to be treated as one of the pigs, he realized he was not a pig but a human being, a son of his father. This realization became the basis for his choice to live instead o...

What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neig...

Desire lies at the heart of who God made us to be, who we are at our core. Desire is both our greatest frailty and the mark of our highest beauty. Our desire completes us as we become One with our Lov...

Almighty God, by our baptism into the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, you turn us from the old life of sin:Grant that we, being reborn to new life in him, may live in righteousness a...

In their excellent book, Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “form...

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...

Stalin’s death is reputed to have been caused by a seizure suffered during a fit of rage brought on by an argument with Kliment Voroshilov during a Presidium meeting. Livid with fury, Stalin leaped fr...

But we must remember there is only way that we can participate in Christ’s victory over the demonic Powers. We can only do it by doing it his way. If we try to do it our way we will be back into the r...

In the vast, frozen wilderness of the Arctic, an Inuit hunter used a clever technique to trap a wolf. He took a sharp knife and carefully coated its blade with layers of animal blood, letting each lay...

Baptism is the prime sacrament, the foundation of them all…There are two things which baptism signifies, namely, death and resurrection…We call this death and resurrection a new creation, a regenerati...

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...

Context The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew occurs within a section where questions of Jesus’ identity are heightened. Two incorrect answers of who Jesus truly is are given in 13:55 (“isn’t this the...

Risk, Salvation, and the Fullness of Time Pharaoh’s daughter took a huge risk to raise and protect the child of a Hebrew slave, a child who should have been killed because of her father’s decree. Tha...

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 ...