The cross where Jesus died became also the cross where His apostle died. The loss, the rejection, the shame, belong both to Christ and to all who in very truth are His. the cross that saves them also slays them, and anything short of this is a pseudo-faith and not true faith at all.
I read the Bible and know little of its history, but the human beings who wrote it were instruments of Divine Power, and Jesus forged a far stronger bond than the ten commandments: love. Birds and monkeys, or any of God's creatures, obey their instincts and merely do what they're programmed to do. In the case of the human being, things are more complicated because we know about love and its traps.
Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful!
Men have presented their plans and philosophies for the remedying of earth's ills, but Jesus stands alone in presenting not a system, but His own personality as capable of supplying the needs of the soul.
The plain message conveyed by the new administration is that George W Bush's America is a Christian nation, and that non-Christians are welcome into the tent so long as they agree to accept their status as a tolerated minority rather than as fully equal citizens. In effect, Bush is saying: "This is our home, and in our home we pray to Jesus as our savior. If you want to be a guest in our home, you must accept the way we pray."
The Christians believe that Jesus Christ died to save man. With you it is belief in a doctrine, and this belief constitutes your salvation. With us doctrine has nothing whatever to do with salvation. Each one may believe in whatever doctrine he likes; or in no doctrine.
A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.
I express my profound thanks to a loving Heavenly Father who gives to you, to me, and to all who sincerely seek, the knowledge that death is not the end, that His Son--even our Savior Jesus Christ--died that we might live. Temples of the Lord dot the lands of many countries. Sacred covenants are made. Celestial glory awaits the obedient. Families can be together forever.
The church of Jesus needs to wake up from the exile of passivity and embrace liminality and adventure or continue to remain a religious ghetto for culturally co-opted, fearful, middle-class folk.
If all it took was someone proclaiming I believe Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins, and that was all there was to it, people wouldn't have to keep coming to church, would they.
One thing I gained in my life is just the need for more Jesus in my life. You never come to a place in your walk with Jesus where you feel like you've had enough. That's a dangerous feeling to have.
God keep me from the divinity of Yes and Nothe Yea Nay Creeping Jesus, from supposing Up and Down to be the same thing as allexperimentalists must suppose.