Analogies on Christ's Love

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The Sap, the Strong Bond of Love

Author

Keywords

Scripture

John 15:1-16, Luke 19:1-10, John 4:7-26, John 21:15-19, Galatians 5:22-23, Ephesians 3:17-19

The strong bond that unites the vine and the branches has to do with the sap that flows through them. Jesus does not here use the word “sap,” but nonetheless gives a lengthy excursus on love in a way ...

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Waking People up to Christ

Author

Bruce Larson

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 55:8-9, Jonah 4:1-11, Numbers 22:21-34, Matthew 9:10-13, Mark 2:23-28, Psalm 19:12-14

It takes a great deal of freedom and love to be therapeutic with a group. Many years ago when Emil Brunner, the great Swiss theologian, was lecturing in this country, it was reported that when he prea...

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Martin Luther King Jr. on Achievements

Author

Will Willimon

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 1:11-14, Colossians 3:14, 1 John 4:7-8, John 13:34-35, Romans 13:8, Matthew 22:37-39, Galatians 5:6

Not long before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the congregation at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church: If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. An...

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The Healing Power of Christ's Love

Author

Scott Bowerman

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 31:3, 1 Peter 5:7, Romans 8:38-39, Matthew 11:28, Isaiah 66:13, Psalm 27:10

James Loder, in his book The Logic of the Spirit, talks about a woman with whom he had been in a therapeutic relationship for years. This woman’s underlying issue seemed to be a complete sense of reje...

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The Justice and the Mercy of the Judge

Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

Judgment

We are all of us judged every day. We are judged by the face that looks back at us from the bathroom mirror. We are judged by the faces of the people we love and by the faces and lives of our children...

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Christian Love: The Antithesis of Envy

Author

Robert C. Roberts

Keywords

Scripture

1 Peter 2:1, Galatians 5:26, 1 Corinthians 13:4, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, Philippians 2:3-4

The Christian’s self-understanding is that she is precious before God—however much a sinner, however much a failure (or success) she may be by the standards of worldly comparisons—and that every other...

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Do Christians Live Differently?

Author

Christopher H. J. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 50:20, Leviticus 19:18, Ruth 1:16–17 , John 13:34–35, Acts 2:44–47 , Psalm 133:1

Now of course, none of us is perfect, and all of us fail in all kinds of ways. That is why we often protect ourselves a bit when we say things like, “Don’t look at me, or don’t look at Christians; loo...

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Christ, Too, Experienced Death

Author

Matthew Y. Emerson

Keywords

Scripture

John 11:25-26, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, Romans 6:4, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, 2 Corinthians 4:14

What, as Christians, can we say to those who face death, either their own or that of their loved ones? We certainly can give them the hope of Christ’s resurrection, if they or their loved one has trus...

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Love that Believes in Resurrection

Author

Alan Jacobs

Keywords

Norman Malcolm was an American philosopher who became close friends with Ludwig Wittgenstein (the founder of Analytic Philosophy, one of the most popular schools of philosophy up through today). In 19...

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Love Stories

Author

Mike Cosper

Keywords

Love

Scripture

Ephesians 5:32, John 3:16, 1 John 3:16, Romans 5:8, Ephesians 5:25-27, John 3:16

Love makes people do crazy things. The stories we tell in literature and film are full of examples of the crazy things people will do for love. Love empowers Odysseus through madness and suffering, dr...

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A View from Eternity on the Cross

Author

Jonathan Edwards

Keywords

Scripture

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...

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Depending on Crowds

Author

Elton Trueblood

Keywords

Crowds

Jesus refused to depend upon crowds for the obvious reason that He knew them to be undependable. There is nothing in all this to suggest any snobbishness or any failure to appreciate the importance of...

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Our Fascination with Descents

Author

Matthew Y. Emerson

Keywords

Holy Saturday

Descents are everywhere. From Hercules and Orpheus venturing into Hades, to Harry Potter following the pipes down into the Chamber of Secrets, to the Sheriff and Joyce Byers frantically searching for ...

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What the World Says

Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:25, Matthew 16:24-25, Luke 10:33-36, Mark 12:41-43, Matthew 5:38-39

If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, mind your own business, and Jesus says, there is no such thing as your own business. The w...

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A One-Dimensional View of Holiness

Author

Kevin DeYoung

Keywords

Holiness

With all the best intentions, we tend to flatten the biblical view on holiness until we squeeze out the dynamic nature of life with God. In an effort to own up to our own abiding sinfulness and highli...

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The Cross Set-Apart

Author

Dan Baumgartner

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:18, Isaiah 53:3-5, Matthew 27:45-46, Romans 5:8, Luke 24:6-7, Romans 6:4, 1 Peter 1:3, Ephesians 1:7

Our church has a large open field next to it, with a tall wooden cross in the middle– perhaps 15-feet high or so. I love that cross. I’m always struck by its isolation, abrupt in the midst of land wi...

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Where is God? Hanging From the Gallows

Author

Jonathan Cornell

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 27:46, Hebrews 4:15, 1 Peter 3:18, John 19:30, 1 Peter 4:13

In Elie Wiesel’s Night , Eliezer is a Jewish teenager, a devoted student of the Talmud from Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary. Increasingly repressi...

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Ghandi on Jesus

Author

Mohandas K. Gandhi

Keywords

Scripture

John 3:16, Romans 5:8, 1 John 4:9-10, 1 Peter 2:24, Colossians 2:13-14

It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate Son of God, that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life…my reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by h...

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The Love of God Wrapped About Him

Author

Thomas Kelly

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 4:1-3, Psalm 30:5, Romans 8:28, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Psalm 34:18, Isaiah 43:2, Psalm 23:4, Job 1:, Job 2:, Job 42:, 2 Samuel 11:, 2 Samuel 12:, Genesis 37:12-36, 1 Kings 17:8-24, Daniel 6:, Psalm 34:18

The sense of Presence! I have spoken of it as stealing on one unawares. It is recorded of John Wilhelm Rowntree that as he left a great physician’s office, where he had just been told that his advanci...

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What Christ Does

Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

Needs

Christ never promises peace in the sense of no more struggle and suffering. Instead, he helps us to struggle and suffer as he did, in love, for one another. Christ does not give us security in the sen...

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Christ Is to Us Just What His Cross Is

Author

P. T. Forsyth

Keywords

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 yo...

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Love Does not Insist on Its Own Way

Author

Dave Peterson

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Philippians 2:3-4, Colossians 3:12-14, John 13:1-17, Luke 10:25-37, Genesis 37:50, 1 Peter 4:8

Once, while on vacation, on our way to church, Terri and I got into a disagreement over something. When I felt I was losing, to make my point, I stopped the car and got out. We were on a country road....

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Cruciform Love

Author

Brett McCracken

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 22:51, 1 Corinthians 16:null, 2 Corinthians 8:null, Galatians 2:null

Cruciform love is welcoming the immigrant simply because they bear the image of God, even if the only thing they bring to us is hassle and possible harm. Cruciform love is praying for those who persec...

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Power, Love, & the Model of Christ on the Cross

Author

Graham Tomlin

Keywords

If power is the ability to get things done, to change circumstances and people, then this takes us to the heart of the Christian understanding of power: it is the power of self-sacrificial love and se...

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Wound With Mercy Round and Round

Author

James Bryan Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 8:38, Psalm 139:7-10, Luke 15:11-32, Isaiah 54:10, Psalm 103:17-18, Lamentations 3:22-23, Jeremiah 31:3

Nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from God’s love. St. Paul reminded the Romans of this when he wrote, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things p...

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I am a Christian

Author

Christian Wiman

Keywords

Scripture

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...

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Christians are Weird

Author

A. W. Tozer

Keywords

Christians

Scripture

Ephesians 3:19, 2 Corinthians 6:10, John 12:24-25, Luke 6:20-21, Matthew 23:12, Philippians 3:8-9

A real Christian is an odd number, anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, ...

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The Heart of Christian Virtue

Author

Richard P. McBrien

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 13:1-7, Galatians 5:22-23, Matthew 22:36-40, Luke 10:25-37, Ruth 1:16

If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without l...

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Living One-Thousand Lives in Christ

Author

Samuel Craig

Keywords

Christ was led by His love for others into the world, to forget Himself in the needs of others, to sacrifice self once for all upon the altar of sympathy. Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world....

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More Than I Could Believe

Author

Mohandas K. Gandhi

Keywords

Rejecting Jesus

Scripture

John 14:6, 1 Timothy 2:5-6, Colossians 1:19-20

It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate Son of God, that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life…my reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by h...

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