passion on The Early Church

The early church fathers named the primary sin patterns “passions,” borrowing a Latin term that could also be translated “sufferings ” As we live out a unique pattern or “face” of sin, we begin to thi...

It was this…intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety, that made the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you ...

The passion stories take up one-fourth to one-third of the total length of the four Gospels, and biblical interpreters generally agree that the material was shaped by the church’s oral traditions prio...

In the history of the Christian church, the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; [people] have sought to procure the carrying out of God’s order by a shortc...

Gracious God, you have called us to be a unified body, working together that which you have willed for the world. In our apathy, we fail to participate in the work you have called us to do. In our div...

In the second century before Christ the great rival to Roman power in the Mediterranean world was Carthage, the Phoenician city-state located on the north African coast. It had been founded in 822 B.C...

Pastor: The grace of our Lord + Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. People: Amen. Pastor: Blessed is He who comes in the name of th...

Preaching Commentary Introduction The lectionary text from John is an exceedingly long passage, but covers the main events that we commemorate on Good Friday. For that reason, I am going to break u...

The lectionary text from John is an exceedingly long passage, but covers the main events that we commemorate on Good Friday. For that reason, I am going to break up the text into manageable chunks. I ...

To just read the Bible, attend church, and avoid “big” sins— is this passionate, wholehearted love for God?

Preparation Depending on which parts of the service you will incorporate, you will want to gather the following materials. A wooden cross, paper, pen, nails, and a hammer (or pushpins). Eno...

Preaching Commentary What is “Good” about Friday? For the work-a-day world in the United States of America, Fridays are good. TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday!” is an interjection we use to convey reli...

[When you were baptized,] you died and were born in one and the same moment. This saving water was both tomb and womb. It is a strange thing, quite out of the ordinary. For indeed, at the moment of Ba...

Just this morning, my family attended church with our son who has autism. He was particularly enthused by the music today, and he was moving around quite a bit. A man in the choir noticed our son, and...

One of the things that is interesting about Lloyd-Jones’s testimony is that he was a royal physician when he became a Christian; he worked for Lord Horder, the physician to the royal family. If he had...

The Passion of the Christ opened up on Ash Wednesday, had a Good Friday.

Amazed, bewildered, they are gathered around him, whose pondered resolution comes to rest, withdrawing him from all the ties that bound him--a stranger gliding by with thoughts unguessed. He feels tha...

Our mission is the mission of Jesus Christ.  He lived as an ordinary human being. We will care for the common life of humanity. He served men and women. We are committed to working for human wel...

When the great theologian Jürgen Moltmann was sixteen years old in 1943, he was drafted into the German army and was soon captured by the Allied forces. He wound up in a prisoner of war camp in Scotla...

The story of Passion-Tide and Easter is the story of the winning of that freedom and of that victory over the evils of Time. The burden of the guilt is accepted (“He was made Sin”), the last agony of ...

Hugh Latimer was the Bishop of Worcester, England during the reign of King Henry VIII. On one occasion he preached a sermon that offended the king, who sat in the audience. The king commanded Latimer ...

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...

In June 2024, I (A. J.) had the opportunity to visit the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, Oregon, to meet with a group of inmates who had read one of my recent books. The experience was...

Pastor: Let us pray for the whole people of God in Christ Jesus and for everyone according to their needs. Holy Lord, all glory and praise are offered to You, for You are our Redeemer and King, o...

Pastor: Almighty and everlasting God, who willed that your Son should bear for us the pains of the cross and thereby remove from us the power of the adversary, help us to remember and give thanks al...

We gather today to remember To hear again the story of God’s suffering To hear the cry of our lives echoed on Jesus’ lips: My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? We gather today to remember That ...

I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.

O God our Father, who sent your Son to be our Savior: renew in us day by day the power of your Holy Spirit; that with knowledge and passion, with courage and love, with gratitude and hope, we may stri...

[Christ] gives the analogy of bitter labor and says: “A woman when she bears a child has anguish and sorrow” (John 16:21) and He applies all of this to His suffering, in which He so hard and bitterly ...

Pastor: Almighty and everlasting God, as Isaac once carried the wood of the sacrifice on his back up the mountain, only to be delivered, so You willed Your Son Jesus Christ to carry the wood of the ...