One In Jesus

Thanks to Kris’s comment, I’ve now listened to Dr. Rodney Plunkett’s excellent sermon on this subject. I’ve now added his thoughts to my own, thereby moving ever closer to the definitive debunking of the Nadab-and-Abihu argument.

For those not familiar with the Church of Christ argument that God damns those who worship in error, you can skip this. If you’ve already read my preceding post “Classes on Grace: Objections,” you just need to read the part starting after the underlined paragraph. Continue reading →

It took me a long time to figure 1 John out. It’s just such a different style of writing from, say, Paul or Luke. John is very non-linear.

And he doesn’t explain himself. Well, he explains himself, but indirectly. He seems to change the subject when he’s really tackling the question from another angle to help us deepen our understanding.

He says the simplest things–at least they seem simple–but when you ponder what he says for a while, you realize that John is quite profound.

However, at least for me, to get the profundity of what he’s saying, I have to read the entire book and add it all up. You see, John’s style is more circular than the very linear Paul. He returns to his topics again and again, shining light on them from different angles. In fact, of all the writers of the epistles, I find John the most like Jesus: pithy, insightful … and puzzling.

Continue reading →

After many years of thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the cinch point in Church of Christ thought is very simply our understanding of how grace works after our salvation.

We generally start with the assumption that the rules dramatically change after salvation. And to this extent, we’re right. But we assume the standard gets tougher, that God holds us to an ever-higher standard. But while there’s a germ of truth in that thought, it misses the much larger point. Although God does have very high expectations for his children, his forgiveness is far greater for the saved than for the being-saved. Continue reading →

This is a class for the converted. And it’s not a class on systematic theology. In other words, I’m going to skip lots of really, really important stuff, because I assume the class members are already convinced of such things as why they need to be saved in the first place and who God is. Rather, this class begins with a review and then an expansion on some very familiar concepts.

The five-finger exercise

We traditionally teach — pretty much correctly, I think — that to be saved we must hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized. This teaching goes back to the Restoration Movement’s first missionary, Walter Scott (not the author in the card game Authors, you know, the guy who wrote Ivanhoe and such. He lived in England. Our guy lived on the American frontier, in places like Ohio and Kentucky). Continue reading →