Rhythms Of Grace Community Fellowship

If we reduce the problem of sin to "wrong behavior" and try explain the cross simply as the answer to that - we will never get to the heart of the matter, nor will we fully understand how the cross dealt with sin itself.

The idea of "new age", which is so popular now, is a feeble parody of the reality which is this - that when Jesus burst out of the tomb on the first Easter Day, the history of the cosmos changed its course. That's when the real new age began.

Humans were made to be image bearers - to reflect the praises of creation back to the creator and to reflect the creators wise and loving stewardship into the world. Israel was called to be the royal priesthood, to worship God and reflect his rescuing wisdom into the world.

Questions and answers!

In Mark's gospel, he calls the church to abandon its imperialistic dreams on the one hand and its passive non-involvement on the other and to become for the world what Jesus was for the world. That is what discipleship, following Jesus, really means.

The love which Jesus incarnated, by which we are saved, is to become the love which fills us beyond capacity and flows out to heal the world.

Sin, for Paul, is not simply breaking the moral code - it is the missing of the mark of genuine humanness through the failure of worship or rather through worshiping idols rather than the true God.

In the Kingdom of the Son of Man, the power that counts is the power of love. It is the rule of Emmanuel - God with us. If we celebrate that fact, as we do the Eucharist - let us heed the call that goes with it - that we should go into the world to follow this Emmanuel.

Most people suppose that when Paul explains what is wrong with the human race, he focuses on "sin". This is wrong. What Paul says about sin in Romans 1&2 is secondary to what he says about idolatry. The primary human failure is a failure of worship.

The whole point of John's gospel is that this is how God's power, the power of self giving love, the power of truth and the power of God's kingdom is being established. Then the risen Jesus breathes the Spirit upon his disciples and says, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you."