440 results for tag: blog
Did Jesus’ Crucifixion Satisfy God’s Wrath? Greg Albrecht
An idyllic, beautiful setting surrounds a rambling country estate in rural England. It's 1935, and this pastoral setting provides the backdrop for the initial scene that plays out in Atonement. During the brief respite between the first and second World Wars, Cecilia Tallis, a rich young lady in her early twenties whose family owns the estate discovers she loves, and is loved by Robbie, a young man whose mother is the housekeeper at the Tallis home.
As the love story begins, we are also introduced to Briony, Cecilia's younger sister. Briony is an aspiring writer who is, in her coming of age 13-year-old way, envious of the courtship enjoyed by ...
Papa’s Love & Frightening Warnings – Brad Jersak
“Bradley, don’t touch. You’ll burn your little hanny [hand] right off.”
—Irene Jersak
The Lord God commanded the man,
“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
—Genesis 2:16
“If you’re right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off.”
—Jesus Christ
“Hot!” – Mom’s Warning
I was perhaps 6-years-old. Maybe at Uncle Henry and Auntie Florence’s house. I remember fixating on Auntie’s red-hot stove element. I recall my mother’s dire warning. “Bradley, don’t touch. You’ll ...
“Light & High Beauty” in the Shadow of Mt. Doom – Brad Jersak
In February of 2020, I had the great privilege of hiking the Tongariro alpine crossing, site of Mount Ngaurunoe, New Zealand's third most active volcano, made famous as the image of Mount Doom in the Lord of the Ring movies. My guide (or Sam Gamgee, if you will) was my dear friend Clinton Sanford, who trained me for the 12-mile, 9-hour trek, which included a 90-minute grueling climb up "the devil's staircase."
Good fortune or divine providence granted me the unexpected company of Brian and Peri Zahnd, whose travels coincided briefly with mine. We were also accompanied (and fed) by Sarah and Bruce O'Brian (from El Rancho Camp).
At first I had ...
I must confess – Ed Dunn
I must confess I enjoy a special tradition on the morning of each new New Year’s Day. With my college Sophomore, Lauren, upstairs and still fast-asleep, I like to bundle up, coffee up with a large “to-go” thermos and sneak quietly out of the house. The sun is rarely up as I do.
What could be my destination so early on the first day of each new year? That’s simple. I like to make my way with the crowds of excitable spectators hurriedly streaming southward towards a world-famous piece of real estate. I like to join in with one million or so other fans on their way to the narrow sidewalks of Colorado Boulevard.&...
Why the Father Didn’t Seek the Prodigal (because he did) Brad Jersak
“The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which is lost” (Luke 19:10).
There it is. The gospel of grace distilled perfectly through Jesus’ own words. That statement encapsulates the reason for Christ’s Incarnation, his earthly ministry and his final Passion, in which he pursues humanity even into death. Even hades could not separate us from the relentless love of the “hound of heaven.”
Christ describes his “seeking and saving” mission in the three great parables of Luke 15: the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost son. In each of the parables, the obvious punchline is how heaven rejoices when what was lost has been found. This ...
Pain, Belief & the Suffering of Children – Brad Jersak
PAIN.Has it crushed your faith or made you a believer?
Nativity & Massacre of the Innocents
As Christ-followers celebrate the Feast of the Nativity, we also anticipate the tragedy in Bethlehem known as "the massacre of the innocents," when King Herod sought to cut short the Messiah's life. The story is recounted in Matthew 2.
13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for ...
Our Final Authority: Bible or Jesus? Brad Jersak
Our final authority
It was one of my classic last-minute cancellations. A church whose pastor and elders had invited me to speak on prayer found themselves awkwardly withdrawing their invitation. The pastor had moved on and the interim minister had done some digging. He was offended that my church (Fresh Wind at the time) had nothing in our statement(s) of faith about the Bible. That was because our doctrinal statements were the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed. I told him that I was not comfortable with creating statements of faith or redacting the great creeds. In the end, what he explicitly demanded was this confession, similar to many confes...
The Logic (and limits) of “Christus Victor” – Brad Jersak
The Logic of Penal Substitution
As a young, gungho Calvinist in the 1980s, I composed a 180+ page M.A. thesis / apologetic for penal substitutionary atonement, titled "The Nature of Christ's Suffering and Substitution." In retrospect, I'm embarrassed by my anachronistic reading of the early church, my inability to distinguish the difference between "exchange" and "substitution," and my assumptions about the necessity of wrath-appeasement. If that's all gobbledygook to you, the reader, no worries. We'll get to the good stuff momentarily. I will say in my defense that at least I knew the Cross was central to Christian faith, whatever it might mean.
D...
“Be Perfect”? A Fragile Faithfulness, Fraught & Freighted Brad Jersak
Question:
In light of Christ’s revelation of God’s saving grace, how are we to understand his statement, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”? (Matthew 5:48)
Response:
Imagine trying to be the perfect human! Imagine striving to be perfect like Jesus was perfect! Imagine trying to be as perfect as God himself! If we were to take Jesus literally there, we’d either be deluded in our perfectionism or exhausted all the time. It’s just not possible and even seems completely pointless.
Religious or moral perfectionism makes for a fragile faithfulness … fraught with peril and freighted with crushing ...
Christ or Crake? Mortality is the Fear of Death – Brad Jersak
In Oryx and Crake, the first novel of Margaret Atwood's dystopic Maddaddam trilogy, a character nicknamed Crake argues that mortality is not merely death, but also the anxiety-inducing and violence-producing foreknowledge and fear of death. Crake's solution to mortality is profoundly catastrophic, but his diagnosis is in some ways, spot on.
Two great thinkers who've shed important light on the phenomenon of "death-anxiety" are Ernest Becker, in his 1973 work, The Denial of Death, and more recently, Richard Beck in The Slavery of Death. Both writers think about the ways we live in denial of death and how this creates deep-seated neurotic ...
Inter-faith Dialogue with Christian Atheists – Brad Jersak
In October, 2019, Paul Young and I were fielding a Q&R time at the Grand Embrace retreat in Aldergrove, Canada. It was the first time I've been asked for a response to "Jesus-following Atheists" (aka "Christian atheists"). The question was raised by another dear friend, musician Kevin Boese. He's a huge fan of the Canadian rock band, RUSH, and an avid listener of the Liturgists Podcast, which might be where Kevin first became familiar with this idea of Christian Atheists. I did my best to respond in the moment, but left unsatisfied. I feel that to engage them, I'd want to assume far less about what they believe and practice, and I'd like to ask ...
The Finished Work (before, during & after the Cross) – Brad Jersak
INTRO – “The Finished Work”
“The finished work” has become a popular catch-phrase among those who faithfully teach God’s unconditional grace. This reassuring phrase comes to us from Christ’s dying declaration of divine love’s great victory. “It is finished!” he cries with his final breath (John 19:30).
Although Christ’s last words were likely spoken in Aramaic or Hebrew, the Greek word John the Beloved uses to translate Jesus’ words in his eyewitness account is tetelestai (from teleo, the verb form of the noun telos). This bit of linguistic trivia matters because to John, Jesus was saying something far more than “it’s ...
Of Heretics, Kings and Foxes – Brad Jersak
The [heretics] act just like someone who finds a beautiful image of a king that has been constructed by a skillful artist out of precious jewels, and then breaks down this statue of the king into pieces and rearranges the gems into the form of a dog or a fox, and even then, does a poor job of it. And then they maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skillful artist had constructed. They point to the jewels that had been beautifully assembled by the original artist in the image of the king, but have now tragically transposed the king into the shape of a dog. And exhibiting the jewels, they deceive the ignorant who ...
Christian Polytheism – Brad Jersak
This article is an excerpt from A More Christlike Way (CWR press, 2019).
It was risky business for early Christians to hold up Christ as the image of the one true God. Their gospel confession demanded a rejection of Rome’s pantheon of pagan gods and the emperors’ demand for worship. And that meant persecution. But at least the choice was straightforward: Jesus is Lord and Jupiter is not. Jesus is Lord and Diana is not. Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not.
But today, how are we to navigate the problem of polytheism (the belief in many gods) within Christianity? Let’s say there’s still a militaristic god of war, a patriotic god of ...
Struggling with Moral Superiority – Brad Jersak
SELF-REFLECTION: Have you ever been tempted to think yourself morally superior in any way?
I feel morally superior to people who come off as morally superior. This is a big problem. I'm like a third party in the parable of the Publican and the Tax Collector praying in the Temple, and I'm saying, "Thank God I'm not like the Pharisee!" thus becoming one myself.
So ironic and similar to actor Michael Cain's line from one of the Austin Powers movies: There are two types of people I can't stand: "Those who are intolerant of other cultures ... and the Dutch."
Just as I'm becoming less intolerant of my Evangelical backstory (less shame at ...
What Do You Mean … The Narrow Gate? – Greg Albrecht
By Greg Albrecht—
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.—Matthew 7:13-14
This passage is often preached from the perspective of how hard it is to obey God and keep his laws—how hard it is to "make the grade" to get into heaven—how relatively few souls will be counted worthy of heaven while the broad majority will end up in hell.
Matthew 7:13-14 is one of those passages that is regularly preached to mean something altogether different than the meaning that God intends. ...
Dream On With Jesus by Greg Albrecht
I Have a Dream—given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963—is one of the most well known, most studied and most quoted speeches in the history of our nation. In that historic speech Dr. King used the phrase “I have a dream” eight different times as he called for freedom and justice for all people.
Daring to dream can be dangerous—particularly when your dream does not march in lock step with the political and religious establishment.
They killed Martin Luther King Jr. because he dared to dream, but they didn’t kill his dream.
Throughout history dreamers who ...
See How He Loves You – Greg Albrecht
There's a great story about a little boy who was trying to learn the Lord's Prayer. One night he was kneeling down by his bed, and he prayed: "Our Father who are in heaven, how do you know my name?"
St. Augustine, revered as one of the great theologians of the Christian faith, once said that Jesus loves each of us as if there was no one else to love.
Time after time we read in the four Gospels about people Jesus met who felt and experienced his radically personalized, individual affection—no one they had ever known had talked to them, treated them and spent time with them the way Jesus did.
The eyes out of which Jesus saw and ...
Grace Alone – Greg Albrecht
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who ...
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