552 results for tag: Brad Jersak

Q&R with Brad Jersak – “Do people who die just sleep or are they in God’s presence?”

Question 1: Do you think when a person dies they just sleep or do they go to be in God's presence? Response: When someone dies, we know that they are are in God's presence, since Paul says, "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8) and they join the "cloud of witnesses" with Christ on "Mount Zion" along with all those "spirits of righteous men and women made perfect" (Hebrews 12). They are part of the great multitude who worship at God's throne (Revelation 5). We know from these passages that at the very least, those who died "in Christ" are now with Christ and are alive and conscious, as we see with ...

Q&R: The 10th Plague: if God isn’t the destroyer, is the destroyer the redeemer?

Question: In your books and articles, you cite John 10:10 to say that God is not 'the destroyer' but is revealed by Jesus as the life-giver. But in stories such as the 10th plague of Egypt or the fall of Jericho, God's victory seems to come through the destruction for the firstborn or the crumbling walls of the city. Curiosity and reason lead me to ask, if God isn't the agent of destruction, does that make the Destroyer the agent of deliverance? It seems like a pretty big coincidence. Response: Thanks for your insightful and VERY difficult question. This is exactly the kind of quandary that the Jews wrestle with throughout the text of ...

Q&R with Brad Jersak: “Condemnation in Mark 16?”

“God our Father, we find it difficult to come to you, because our knowledge of you is imperfect. In our ignorance of you, we have imagined you to be our enemy; we have wrongly thought that you take pleasure in punishing our sins; and we have foolishly conceived you to be a tyrant over human life. But since Jesus came among us, he has shown that you are loving, that you are on our side against all that stunts life, and that our resentments against you are groundless.” —Augustine of Hippo Question: "How do we read 'condemnation' in Mark 16:16 as other than juridical?" Hi Brad, I was wondering about Mark 16:16: "Whoever ...

CWR Video – Irenaeus and Scripture

In this CWR Video, Brad discusses how to rightly handle Scripture, as taught by an early Church father. https://vimeo.com/1018409274 If this post has helped you, please subscribe and share it freely. We also invite you to help us continue to help others with a donation. Click here if you're able to partner with us

Breakfast with Brad – 2 Cor. 2:10 Forgiveness is Giving Grace

2 Corinthians 2:10 Forgiveness is giving grace. https://vimeo.com/1007833787 We hope that our articles and resources bring comfort, hope, encouragement, and healing to our readers. If you’re experiencing that, please subscribe freely, share freely, and, if you’re able, please consider donating freely toward paying it forward by clicking the blue giving at the top of your screen.

Why Ask? Why pray for gifts God has already given? Brad Jersak

“Forgive us our trespasses…” “Lord, have mercy.” “Come, Holy Spirit.” The prayers of God’s people are replete with requests for that which God has already graciously and abundantly provided. So why bother? Is praying for the gifts God has already given an act of unbelief, a confusion of theology or an offense to God? Some seem to think so and in a sense, may be right. But both the question and answer are important and far more nuanced than an either/or knee-jerk reaction. What are the perils and what is the point of asking for what we’ve already been given? THE PERILS Two obvious perils accompany requests for ...

“Why Seek the Living Among the Dead” – Brad Jersak

Violated, Grieved, Relieved & Liberated A dear friend of mine recently experienced humiliation by patriarchal connivers in her church. It took me back to the era when unwed pregnant teens were forced to stand before their congregation for public shaming and shunning (no father named or present!). Their experiences were violations and overt spiritual abuse. But my friend is no teenager. She felt the violation, allowed herself to grieve, then relatively quickly moved on to relief and even liberation. Why? Because she can simply leave and, gratefully, safer harbours welcome her arrival. Her conclusion echoed the words spoken by angels at ...

When did the ‘Finished Work’ start? – Brad Jersak

"It is finished!" One of the beautiful catchphrases in the Christian tradition is "the finished work of Christ." We typically associated the phrase with Christ's decisive declaration from the Cross, "It is finished!" In this post, I'd like to ask what is finished and when it started. The words, "It is finished," in Gospel context are found only in John 19:30. The full verse says, "When Jesus had received the drink, Jesus said, 'It is finished.' With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." What was finished? First, the word we usually translate "finished" (Τετέλεσται) is rich in meaning. It could be accurately ...

CWR Video – The Wrath of God

In this CWR Video, Brad discusses progressive revelation and how the concept of Wrath has been used in Scripture. https://vimeo.com/1015771501 If this post has helped you, please subscribe and share it freely. We also invite you to help us continue to help others with a donation. Click here if you're able to partner with us

CWR Video – “Why Did Jesus Die?” – by Brad Jersak

Short video by Brad Jersak We hope that our articles and resources bring comfort, hope, encouragement, and healing to our readers. If you’re experiencing that, please subscribe freely, share freely, and, if you’re able, please consider donating freely toward paying it forward by clicking the blue giving at the top of your screen.

“The second is like it” – Loving God, loving neighbour – Brad Jersak

Matthew 22:35-40 "... and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ This teaching of Jesus is remarkable on several significant fronts! For example, we are actually hearing Jesus' own assessment of the greatest commandment in the Law: loving God wholeheartedly. And ...

Q&R: What is your take on the Nephilim? Brad Jersak

QUESTION"What is your take on the Nephilim?" RESPONSE: The brief mention of the Nephilim in Genesis is quite a mystery. The gaps in this fantastical story led to loads of creative fan fiction (the Jewish genre called 'midrash') and, more recently, bizarre conspiracy theories. Let's start with the initial text itself: Genesis 6: 1 When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, ‘My spirit shall not abide in mortals for ever, for they are ...

From Our Mailbox…

I’ve been reading A More Christlike God by Brad Jersak, and I want to thank you for encouraging readers/viewers/listeners to read his book.  Brad’s encouragement to "pause to think" at the end of each chapter, is thoughtful. I'm sobered, humbled, by how often I allowed others to do my thinking for me.       I'm shocked to discover that some of my "old ideas" marginalized Jesus Christ and his Cross, and some of my "old ideas," carried to their logical conclusion, "separate" the Father from the Son!       I'm not ashamed to admit I was once a gentile, idolatrous heretic. Jesus ...

Breakfast with Brad – Silly but Harmful

In which Brad eats Campbell's chicken noodle soup, spouts a silly (but harmless) childhood poem, then cites an example of a silly (but very harmful) theology. For the toxic citation, see below:  https://vimeo.com/1007830344  We hope that our articles and resources bring comfort, hope, encouragement, and healing to our readers. If you’re experiencing that, please subscribe freely, share freely, and, if you’re able, please consider donating freely toward paying it forward by clicking the blue giving at the top of your screen.    

Q&R: “How did Jesus ‘become sin’? Brad Jersak

What does Paul mean when he says, "Jesus became sin for us"?

CWR Video – The Theology of the Cross

In this CWR Video, Brad and Ed discuss the topics of The Theology of the Cross and Theodicy. https://vimeo.com/1015762438 If this post has helped you, please subscribe and share it freely. We also invite you to help us continue to help others with a donation. Click here if you're able to partner with us

Violence in the Hebrew Bible (part 3) – Violence as a Pollutant – Brad Jersak with Matt Lynch

Violence in the Hebrew Bible

CWR Video – Penal Substitutionary Atonement

In this CWR Video, Greg and Brad discuss the definition of and the error within the theory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement. https://vimeo.com/1015767239 If this post has helped you, please subscribe and share it freely. We also invite you to help us continue to help others with a donation. Click here if you're able to partner with us.

Violence in the Hebrew Bible (Part 2) – Ecocide- Brad Jersak & Matt Lynch

In my discussions in Part 1 on Old Testament violence with author and friend of CWR, Dr. Matthew Lynch, the biblical connection between human violence and damage to the environment came up. The word that Matt used for this was ecocide. Just as the murder of a human is homicide or the murder of a father is patricide or the murder of God is deicide, the word ecocide links ecology (the environment) with murder. The striking thing about biblical ecocide that it is not simply the murder of the environment, but the impact of human-vs-human violence on the land and its ability to sustain life. Matthew offered the ...

Breakfast with Brad – Is Preaching God’s Love Capitulation to the World’?

In which Brad prepares a 'normal' breakfast and answers an important question: Is preaching God's all-inclusive love capitulation to 'the world'? See text beneath the video for the extended Q & A. https://vimeo.com/1007825193 Question: I love your book (A More Christlike God) because it rings true that the "through line" of our theology must be love and radical self-giving. But how do you guard against the idea that God and/or Jesus may be more wrathful and judging than we like to believe? Response: Great question! First, I notice you're assuming that the problem is that God be more wrathful than we'd want him to be. ...