Studies on Jesus' Death

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Ghandi on Jesus

Author

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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Did Jesus Really Suffer on the Cross?

Author

Gerhard Lohfink

Keywords

Jesus did not descend from the cross. He was powerless, delivered up to his opponents. There was a false and erroneous form of Christianity that refused to accept that. As early as the second century ...

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Do Not Fear Death

Author

John Chrysostom

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 14:9

Do not fear death; the Savior’s death has brought freedom. He endured death and thus destroyed it. He descended into Hell and destroyed it. Even as Hell tasted his flesh he threw it into chaos. Al...

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Cana and Jesus' Wedding

Author

Timothy Keller

Keywords

Scripture

John 2:

In Tim Keller’s sermon on John 2, he calls his hearers to think about their experiences of being guests at a wedding. If you are married, you are likely remembering your own wedding day. If you are un...

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And So Was Raised the Cross…

Author

Melito of Sardis

Keywords

And so he was raised on a cross, and a title was fixed, indicating who it was who was being executed. Painful it is to say, but more terrible not to say. . . . He who suspended the earth is suspended,...

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I’m Just Sleeping!

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 53:5–9 , Jonah 1:17 – 2:10 , Zechariah 12:10, John 19:31–37 , Luke 24:36–43 , Psalm 16:10

I remember growing up in the ’80s (yes, that dates me) when all kinds of fears and phobias seemed to be in the air—fear of the dark, snakes, scorpions, spiders. Someone in my own close circle was afra...

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The Cruelty of Crucifixion

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Exposed to public view like slabs of meat hung from a market stall, troublesome slaves were nailed to crosses…past. No death was more excruciating, more contemptible, than crucifixion. To be hung nake...

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From Action to Passion

Author

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 14:10, Romans 8:32, Matthew 27:1-2, Luke 23:1-3, John 19:16

I was invited to visit a friend who was very sick. He was a man about fifty-three years old who had lived a very active, useful, faithful, creative life. Actually, he was a social activist who had car...

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Someone to Blame

Author

Jerry Bridges

Keywords

Scripture

Leviticus 16:10, 21-22 , Genesis 37:18-28 , Isaiah 53:4-6 , John 11:49-52, Luke 23:13-25, Psalm 69:4, 7-9

The deep economic crisis that occurred in Russia soon after the collapse of communism resulted in a new wave of resentment and hostility toward Russian Jews. In times of crisis people look for a scape...

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Jesus & the Common Ventures of Life

Author

Richard J. Foster

Keywords

All of us share in what D. Elton Trueblood calls “the common ventures of life”—birth, marriage, work, death. Jesus, in his life and in his teaching, gave sacramental significance to these ordinary exp...

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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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Finding the Life You Were Made For

Author

Addison D. Bevere

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 10:38-39

Jesus, the hero of the world’s most well-known spiritual narrative, offers us a mysteriously clear path to the good life: “Anyone who doesn’t pick up their cross and follow after me doesn’t deserve me...

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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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Repentance for the Religious

Author

John W. Rilling

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 3:25, Hebrews 9:28, Matthew 4:1-2, 1 Peter 2:24, Psalm 51:1-2, 2 Corinthians 5:21

Written almost a hundred years ago, this excerpt from the Reverend John W. Rilling points out one of the main reasons we continue to observe Lent, a period of repentance and discipline for many who ca...

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Rescue from the Deep Dark

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 15:, Ezekiel 34:11-12, Colossians 1:13, Galatians -2:3-5, John 3:16-17, John 1:12-13, Romans 5:1-8

On October 13, 2010, Luis Urzua emerged into the open air after 69 days trapped over 2,000 ft underground (300 ft deeper than the height of the tallest building in the US). Luis, the shift supervisor,...

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Into the Fish Bowl

Author

J. Todd Billings

Keywords

Illness

Whether or not cancer patients intend to share their journey openly with others, they generally find that the cancer situation itself has put their lives into a fish bowl—for public viewing—whether th...

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A Deeper Look at Sleep

Author

Tish Harrison Warren

Keywords

Sleep reminds us of our helplessness. Asleep, we have nothing to commend us; we accomplish nothing to put on our resume. Because of this, sleep is a counter-formative practice that reminds us that our...

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The Power of Justification

Author

Fleming Rutledge

Keywords

There are few words in any language that can equal dikaiosis for theological depth and resonance. It has been at the center of scholarly debate for centuries. Known largely as “justification,” it is s...

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Suffering as Ministry Training

Author

Frank Viola

Keywords

Suffering

God’s idea of ministry training is a broken vessel. His idea of spiritual preparation is suffering, which includes rejection. Here is the biblical recipe for ministry preparation—a recipe that’s glari...

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The Importance of Orientation

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

Orientation is a fascinating word based on the Latin word oriri, meaning “to rise, as in where the sun rises. The sun rises in the east. Early Christians gave great thought and intentionality to what ...

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The Martyr's Mindset: Ignatius of Antioch and Death as Worship

Author

Ryan Bundrick

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 16:25, Romans 8:17-18, Philippians 1:21, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Psalm 116:115, Daniel 3:, Daniel 6:

How many modern Christians consider dying to be the worst thing that can happen to them? We pray for safety, healing, and protection, and rightly so. However, do we live in the truth that death has tr...

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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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The Resurrection Opened a Door

Author

Russ Ramsey

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 16:9-11, Psalm 110:1-2 , Psalm 118:22-24, Genesis 3:15, Isaiah 53:3-5, Ezekiel 37:1-14

Jesus’s resurrection opened a door between the fallen, groaning world into which he was born and the renewal of all things. That door was a stone rolled back by the very finger of God from the mouth o...

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Remembering who we are and whose we are

Author

Mia Levetan

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 8:1, Genesis 19:29, Exodus 2:24, Exodus 6:5, Exodus 13:3, Exodus 32:13, Leviticus 26:42-45, Deuteronomy 4:10, Deuteronomy 8:2, 18, Judges 3:7, Psalm 78:11, 1 Samuel 1:11, 19, Psalm 63:6, Psalm 74:2, Psalm 77:11, Psalm 78:35, 42, Psalm 105:42, Psalm 106:45, Psalm 111:5, Psalm 119:52, 55, Psalm 143:5, Isaiah 44:21, Isaiah 57:11, Jeremiah 14:21, Jeremiah 51:50, Jonah 2:7, Mark 14:72, Matthew 26:75, Luke 22:61, Luke 22:19, Matthew 27:33-55, Mark 15:22-41, Luke 23:33-49, John 19:16-30, 1 Corinthians 1:18, Philippians 2:8, Hebrews 12:2

God remembers Noah. God remembers Abram. God remembers Lot. God remembers the Israelites. The Israelites, in the book of Judges, do not remember God—this was their problem. God remembers Hannah. The P...

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Are You Afraid You'll Get Caught?

Author

Bradley Long

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 1:16, John 15:19-20, Matthew 5:10-12, Mark 10:29-30, Revelation 2:10-11, Matthew 10:16-18, 1 Peter 4:12-14, Romans 8:35, 2 Corinthians 12:10

An American pastor once asked an Indonesian missionary who works among Indonesians but with a different people group from his own, “Are you afraid you’ll get caught?” Christian mission work in Indones...

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The Shadow-Lands

Author

Chris Stroup

Keywords

On the final page of the final book of The Chronicles of Narnia, some of the children who have been to Narnia lament that they once again must return to their homeland—the Shadow-Lands. But Aslan (the...

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Blotting out our Sins

Author

Jerry Bridges

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 1:18, Micah 7:18-19, Jeremiah 31:34, Hebrews 8:12, Colossians 2:13-14, Psalm 103:11-12

In Isaiah 43:25, God says, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Here God uses two absolute terms to assure us of the complete removal...

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Tolkien on Happy Endings

Author

J. R. R. Tolkein

Keywords

Scripture

Titus 3:4-5, Ephesians 2:8, Luke 15:11-32, 1 Corinthians 2:9, Psalm 30:5, Ruth 4:13-17

J. R. R. Tolkien coined the term "eucatastrophe" to refer to the unexpected happy ending at the end of a fairy tale, achieved by grace rather than effort. The consolation of fairy-stories,...

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The Cross Was The Devil's Mousetrap

Author

Os Guinness

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:18, 1 Peter 2:24, Galatians 3:13, Revelation 5:9-10, Isaiah 53:

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...

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Jesus and Iron Man

Author

Casey Clark

Keywords

Scripture

Numbers 21:4-9, Isaiah 53:, John 3:14-15 , Matthew 12:38-41, Psalm 107:23-32

The symbol of judgment and death, the serpent, is lifted up as Israel’s symbol of life. Jesus draws this parallel for us in John, hinting toward the way the tool of Roman execution, the cross, will be...

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