Archive for the ‘Hope’ Tag
Who Is The Relational God Revealed In Jesus?
Part 1A
Part 1B
Scripture: Acts 2:33, 2 Cor 13:14
Summary and Goal:
On this Trinity Sunday, we proclaim the relational God-Father-Son-Holy-Spirit Revealed in Jesus. This is an attempt to clarify further why this is so important to grasp, and what it means for our Christian faith. Indeed, there is no Christian faith apart from this relational God Who, in Love, sent Jesus Christ into our humanity to reveal Himself and share His Love and Life with us.
Christ Connection:
Jesus alone reveals this God and, by becoming human, has given us human beings real knowledge of, and access to, God!
Photos compliments: trinityandhumanity.com (John Stonecypher)
JESUS: The Most Important PERSON and TASK For Everyone! Part 5 (Jesus’ Crucifixion / The Biblical Worldview)

Part 5A:
Part 5B:
Full Message:
Bible Verses: Mark 15 Psalm 22 Isaiah 53
Introduction:
On this Transfiguration Sunday we are reminded that the Whole God Father Son and Holy Spirit loves you/us so much that he has suffered for you/us in the Life of the Son made flesh! The Father-Son-Holy-Spirit-God loves you so much that together, in Their utter Oneness, Each distinct Person somehow shares in the humanity of the Son of God in Jesus (only the Son became human!), having suffered for you and having resisted all evil and every temptation on your behalf and in your place! In Jesus, Who sustains you from within his own human nature, you have victory over all evil principalities and powers. Even your present sufferings cannot and will not prevent you from receiving your victory in Christ! Christ’s victory is so full of the glory and love of God that you will consider your present sufferings to be light in comparison to the glory you will receive! Whereas sin and evil have no future, you have an immortal and eternal life to look forward to with Jesus in His eternal relationship with the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus Transfiguration is a picture of our transformation in Him!
Theological Theme:
On one hand is the non-relational, unfeeling god of our sinful imaginations; the God more interested in law and punishment and sin than he is interested in us. On the other hand is the One and only True God – Father-Son-Holy-Spirit – Merciful and compassionate! The Relational, loving God revealed in the Person of Jesus! The triune God WITH US & FOR US despite our sin! The God Who includes us all in His Life & Love, permanently, in Jesus – Who atoned for the sins of the world!
Christ Connection:
Do you have this great vision of the Gospel before you????? You are being made fit for eternal life, and by God-Father-Son-Holy-Spirit you WILL be fit with the spiritual muscle of Jesus Who has transformed our human nature in His own, turning it back fully to the Father. Our Father does nothing halfway! In Christ and by the Spirit you are becoming who and what you really are and you will be that (or you won’t be at all!) The death of Jesus means the death of death, and a nature turned from God and corrupted now turned back to God in a glorified and permanent way.
Missional Application:
As believers in union with Jesus Christ, and in the light of Who He is and what He has done, we proclaim and witness to others not yet in spiritual union with Jesus that, as George Hunsinger has well-stated “There’s always more grace in God, than there is sin in us!”, therefore, repent and believe, receive the Good News and enter a trust relationship with the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit!
Our Father’s Hope For all: In Jesus’ Body Being His Church! Part 9
Part 9A:
Part 9B:
Full Message:
Main Bible Verse: Acts 2
Introduction:
The Father has poured out His Spirit upon all that all will receive Jesus as Lord, personally, receiving His invitation that He might indwell them. Jesus, in His Father’s mission continues to go out in the power of the Spirit, drawing every person, everywhere, to Himself, and with the special participation of believers, His Church! Jesus, through His Church, still has an earthly and historical Body unified in the Spirit that worships Him, witnesses to Him, and joins Him in the ministry of calling all to trust Him as Lord and Savior in Relationship!
Theological Theme:
Even In the middle of pandemic, prejudice, police brutality, panic and pandemonium, Grace and Peace is upon us from God our Father through the Lord Jesus Christ! Jesus is the One Who baptizes in the Holy Spirit that we might participate with Him in His Life and relationship of Love with the Father! His is not just any old kind of love but Love as it has been revealed in the life, words and deeds of Jesus Christ as attested to in holy scripture. Jesus Christ is the Revelation of Who God is! Jesus Christ is the revelation of what it means to be a Real human being and, through His Holy Spirit, is intent to share his humanity with us that we might be more truly and fully human, glorifying our Father!
Christ Connection:
“The church is commanded to lift up its head in joy, for its ‘redemption is drawing near’ Meantime in all its waiting and expectation the church is commanded by its Lord to lift up its head in thanksgiving and joy, for its ‘redemption is drawing near’. The church of the risen Lord has no right to be a prophet of gloom or despair, for this world has been redeemed and sanctified by Christ and he will not let it go. The corruptible clay of our poor earth has been taken up in Jesus, is consecrated through his sacrifice and resurrection, and he will not allow it to sink back into corruption. Hence the whole creation groans and travails waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God, looking forward with eager expectation to the hour of final liberation and renewal in the advent of its risen saviour.” – Thomas Torrance, Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ, page 348 (Chapter: The Nature of the Resurrection Event)
Missional Application:
“The church must learn to take into its mouth the good news of the resurrection and new creation, for that must be its primary note, one of limitless joy and thanksgiving. That is how the church began its mission at Pentecost where the dominant emphasis in all its preaching was the resurrection of the crucified Christ and the astounding fact that because of Christ the Spirit of God himself was poured out upon men and women. They knew that the last times had overtaken them and that they were caught up in the onward and outward thrust of the resurrection of Christ toward the new creation in which all nations and peoples and all times would be brought to share. The involvement of the church in the suffering of mankind must never be allowed to stifle that supreme note of resurrection triumph or to smother the eschatological joy at the astounding events that have broken into history and pledged for mankind the final day of regeneration.” – Thomas Torrance, Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ, page 348 (Chapter: The Nature of the Resurrection Event)
Photo Compliments: turnbacktogod.com
Our Father’s Hope For All: In Jesus’ Reconciliation! pt. 5
Part 5A:
Part 5B:
Full Message:
Main Bible Verse: 2 Corinthians 5: 1-21
Introduction:
Celebrating Jesus as Our Resurrection
“Our Father’s Hope For All” emphasizes what Jesus’ reconciliation is for all, what it accomplished for all and how we, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit shared with us, can participate in what Jesus has done for all to the glory of God our Father.
According to T.F. Torrance (1992): “As our Representative and Substitute, Jesus Christ is our human response to God.’- T.F. Torrance: Union with Christ through the Communion of the Spirit
Theological Theme:
God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, sent Jesus Christ to humanity so that whomever believes in him, trusts and receives Him, would not perish due to trusting in Jesus and in His power by The Holy Spirit. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” – John 3: 16
“God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.”- (T. F. Torrance, “The Mediation of Christ,” 94)
Christ Connection:
Jesus Christ is “The Center Of The Center (of everything in Creation).” He is the world’s Lord and Savior. When you want to understand the central purpose for everything, you must look to Jesus Christ because, apart from Him, we can’t know anything as it should be known. We can’t know His Father, and we can’t know anything about his Holy Spirit, and we can’t even really know anything about ourselves or Creation.
Jesus is the Mediator between God and man. He is the One who mediates our humanity to God and who mediates God to fallen man. In total dependence we look to Him, look at life through Him, and receive along with Him His Father in the Spirit. Empowered by Him we look with Him beyond our own self-centeredness first to his Father and then in that love to our neighbors – loving them as we love ourselves and with the very love with which Jesus has loved us.
What Jesus did and does as The Resurrection is so that we might have a share in HIS LIFE, HIs Resurrection.
A life first filled with Jesus’s relationship with His Father in the Spirit. And then a life filled with his love for everyone and everything else.
Our identity lies only in Jesus Christ who has taken up our cause, our humanity, our human nature and Who alone has put us right before God, sending His Spirit that we might trust Him as the one and only source of life. JESUS – the center and core of our personal identity!
We are being encouraged by Jesus Christ, The Resurrection, to receive our new humanity in these feeble bodies now, while also looking with hope to the complete renewal of our human bodies in the future at His return. We are encouraged by our Father to prepare for the resurrected life in which we will be even more gloriously and fully human, in a human body, just like Jesus.
Jesus judged sin in sinful flesh. He killed sin thoroughly and by his life, suffering, death and resurrection. On the third day he raised up a new human nature and a new body in His resurrection. It is a humanity that is totally responsive to The Father in The Holy Spirit. This is what it really means to be a human being; what Jesus did, how He lives and responds in His human flesh.
Torrance (1986) writes: “Jesus Christ… embodies in himself what he mediates, for what he mediates and what he is are one and the same. He himself in the wholeness of his Person, Word and Act, is the content and reality of divine Reconciliation. He is the Propitiation for our sins; he is our Redemption; he is our Justification. It is in this identity between Mediator and Mediation that the living heart of the Gospel is to be found.” (pp. 475, 476)
Missional Application:
Every human everywhere has a great need for The Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the actual bond of love between the Father and the Son through whom it is possible for us to share in the love of the Father and Son. The Holy Spirit is also God of God and He is the One who makes Jesus and The Father known to us. He is the One who enables each person and all of us to trust Jesus. He is the One who empowers us to live with Jesus and to love our neighbors. In this time period where we can’t see Jesus, Jesus sends his Spirit to us to be an Advocate for us, to teach us what Jesus is doing so we can participate with Jesus, share in His power, and live transformed. We not only receive the Spirit personally, but encourage everyone else to do the same, for God desires all to be saved and to share in his love and life!
Conclusion:
When we declare that ALL are included, we are affirming:
Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior of ALL humanity.
Jesus Christ died to redeem ALL. He has atoned for the sin of EVERY single person. Through what He did God reconciled ALL people to Himself in Christ.
Jesus Christ is The Mediator between God and humanity.
Jesus Christ has made ALL His own by virtue of His redeeming work. He is for ALL and against NONE.
Jesus is The Judge of ALL so that none might experience the condemnation. His saving is done on behalf of ALL and that work includes His Holy and righteous responses to The Father in The Spirit. Responses characterized by repentance, faith, hope, love, praise, prayer, worship and obedience.
Jesus is in Himself EVERYONE’S justification and sanctification.
Jesus is EVERYONE’S substitute and representative.
Jesus is EVERYONE’S hope and life including eternal life.
Jesus is EVERYONE’S profit, priest and king.
ALL PEOPLE have been included in God’s love and life in and through Jesus Christ by The Holy Spirit.
Photo Compliments: https://myktis.com/
Our Father’s Hope For All: In The Resurrection Relationship! pt 4
Part 4A:
Part 4B:
Full Message:
Main Bible Verse: 1 Corinthians 15: 1-34
Introduction:
God The Father so loved the world that He gave His Son to us as Jesus (God in the flesh) that whoever believes in Jesus (The God Man) by the power of The Holy Spirit will not perish but will have eternal life. God’s life – the Life He talks about by which we will not perish but live and thrive – is life knowing The Father, and Son intimately in The Holy Spirit. That is Who and what Life and Resurrection is and is about.
Theological Theme:
All truly are included in God’s [Father, Son and Spirit] love and life. It doesn’t have so much to do with a decision we make but has something to do with a decision God made prior to any decision we can make and which is the basis for our decision. That decision is the Person of Jesus Christ, Who is God for us from within our humanity. The gospel is not primarily about us receiving God into our life. The gospel is primarily about the tremendous grace of God, through Jesus, receiving us into His life.
Largely it is relationship with The Father, Son and Holy Spirit by Whom you are guided about how you think about life, what you do, what you receive, and what you reject.
Christ Connection:
Resurrection means relationship with Christ and being reconciled to the Father in and through Jesus Christ. Being reconciled means being in relationship with The Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Forgiveness means reconciliation with God and it means the restoration of relationship with God. Forgiveness of sin doesn’t just mean that sin ends but salvation means that we are saved INTO the restoration of relationship with God, where new relationship begins!
Missional Application:
God the Father Himself IS your Salvation. Sharing with Jesus in His relationship with His Father IS Salvation. Sharing friendship with Jesus IS Salvation. Intimacy with The Holy Spirit IS Salvation. The Holy Spirit comes upon you to reveal Christ to you, to mediate Christ to you. You respond by receiving and believing what The Holy Spirit has to say and, as God directs, witnessing to others about Him.
Photo Compliments: YouTube