Imagine a remote village in Africa. No modern Westerner has ever set foot there. The natives live off the land, using the same ancient methods and tools as their forefathers used for the last thousand...
I learned about incarnation when I kept a salt-water aquarium. Management of a marine aquarium, I discovered, is no easy task. I had to run a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the nitrate levels...
It was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us.
O Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, look upon us and have mercy on us; you who are yourself both victim and priest, yourself both reward and redeemer. Keep safe from all evils those who...
John 12:1-8, Acts 9:1-19, Luke 24:13-35, Isaiah 53:5, Philippians 2:6-8, Hebrews 12:2
Dear Lord, I pray that You would open my mind to the truth of Your Word by means of the Holy Spirit. Open my eyes to see Jesus. Open my heart to love Him more and more. Open my will to do only that wh...
Mark 1:4-11, Mark 1:1-3, Isaiah 40:3, Mark 2:7, Philippians 2:7, Isaiah 53:null, Hebrews 4:15, 2 Corinthians 8:9
Preaching Commentary Enter John the Baptist John the Baptist enters the stage in Mark 1 as the “voice of one crying in the wilderness,” (Isaiah 40:3) whose message and ministry is to “prepare the w...
Hebrews 12:2, John 17:5, Romans 8:3, Isaiah 53:5, Hebrews 2:14-15
To achieve the divine purpose of becoming the Savior, the divine glory needed to be veiled. Christ voluntarily, moment by moment, submitted to human limitations apart from sin. The humiliation was tem...
1 John 1:9, Psalm 51:10, Isaiah 53:3, Luke 24:15-16, Hebrews 13:2, Matthew 25:37-40, John 1:10-11
Lord, you came to dwell among us, yet we did not recognize you. We still fail to recognize you. You show up in unexpected places and through unexpected people. We fail to see you in the people who are...
Mark 1:4-11, Isaiah 40:3, Mark 2:7, Philippians 2:7, Isaiah 53:null, Hebrews 4:15, 2 Corinthians 8:9, Mark 1:1-3
Enter John the Baptist John the Baptist enters the stage in Mark 1 as the “voice of one crying in the wilderness,” (Isaiah 40:3) whose message and ministry is to “prepare the way of the Lord.” Mark d...
Luke 23:34, 1 John 1:9, Isaiah 53:5, John 13:10-11, Hebrews 9:22, Romans 5:8, Luke 22:31-62
When Jesus holds up the cup and offers what is in it as the fluid of forgiveness, he is not talking to people with a short list of minor sins. He is talking to people who will turn him in, who will sc...
We trample the blood of the Son of God if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation for the forgiveness of God and for the unfathomable depth of His forgetting i...
Jesus, Lord—because you took on flesh, You know what it’s like to be us. You know what keeps us awake at night, or yanks us out of sleep in the early morning. You know what it’s like to have good days...
Ephesians 2:4-5, Hebrews 2:14-15, 1 Peter 2:24, Philippians 2:6-8, Isaiah 53:5, John 3:16-17, 1 John 4:9-10
Why should I, who have been living from all eternity in the enjoyment of the Father’s love, go to cast myself into such a furnace for them that never can requite me for it? Why should I yield myself t...
John 15:13, Romans 5:8, 1 John 3:16, Matthew 5:9, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 53:5, Hebrews 12:2
At a funeral Mass for a friend of Archbishop Romero who was murdered by the government because of her faith in Christ, Romero invited those present to follow this Lord who died, this God who sacrifice...
Philippians 2:8, John 12:32, Isaiah 53:4-6, Luke 23:39-43, Hebrews 12:2
Another example struck me forcibly during the 2014 season of Promenade Concerts in the Albert Hall in London. (The “Proms,” as they are known, make up a major annual festival, offering world-class mus...
Isaiah 53:3-5, Hebrews 4:15, Philippians 2:6-8, Matthew 8:20, John 1:14
The incarnation means that for whatever reason God chose to let us fall . . . to suffer, to be subject to sorrows and death—he has nonetheless had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine....
Mercy goes beyond justice, it does not undercut it. If I forgive you the hundred dollar debt you owe me, that means I must use one hundred dollars of my own money to pay my creditors. I cannot really ...
Though Christ was by nature divine, Christ did not cling to equality with God, but in utter self-emptying, took the form of a slave, and was born as a human. God have mercy. Appearing in h...
Pastor: Heavenly Father, as we draw ever closer to the end of this Lenten season of repentance and renewed devotion, we pray that You would remember us according to Your steadfast love and goodness ...
A Chinese Christian who heard me speak once asked me if I would write a tract about suffering for his fellow believers in the Orient. I told him I would think about it. But when I did, I realized that...
Luke 19:1-10, Matthew 9:36, Hebrews 3:15, Romans 5:8, Isaiah 53:6, Luke 15:4-7, Luke 15:1-32
Heavenly Father, forgive us when we are lost, and when we do not seek those who are. Forgive us when we harden our hearts and do not understand the magnitude of your love. Lead us with your Holy Spiri...
When I was in Moscow in 1990 preaching at the Moscow Baptist Church, just blocks from the Kremlin, I told a packed crowd of worshipers that all through human history, as far back as recorded time and ...
Lord and God, you know what we are about to say in prayer, you know what we ought to say, and even what we need to say but cannot. Our sins trouble us, though they don’t trouble us as much as they sho...
During spring 1981, one of my favorite persons at the time, Chicago mayor Jane Byrne, made the announcement that she and her husband were going to move into my old neighborhood: the Cabrini-Green hous...
Philippians 2:5-8, Luke 2:6-7, Isaiah 53:2-3, John 13:4-5, Hebrews 2:14-17, Luke 22:27, Mark 10:42-45
Humble. Before Jesus, almost no pagan author had used “humble” as a compliment. Yet the events of Christmas point inescapably to what seems like an oxymoron: a humble God. The God who came to earth ca...
As we call ourselves to worship, let us remember that our God is an awesome God, who in Jesus Christ has lived in our flesh, faced our temptations, gone to cross for, and lives today in heaven. In thi...
Mark 15:39, Hebrews 4:15, John 11:35, Luke 22:44, Psalm 22:1, 2 Corinthians 4:8-10, Isaiah 53:5
I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? . . . The point is that he felt huma...