Well, the old hymn says “double cure” — and some Church of Christ publishers have taken even that out, surmising that the phrase refers to, well, I don’t really know.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure;
Save from wrath and make me pure.
Anyway, it occurs to me that Jesus, in his death, took on three distinct curses. Continue reading →
Now, I’ve covered some pretty large chunks of the Bible regarding salvation in this age, and I’ve not yet mentioned the church by name. Of course, we know a secret: the Kingdom and the church are the same thing viewed through two different lenses.
The Kingdom is the new, spiritual Israel. It’s faithful Israel — the remnant of Israel that accepted Jesus as Messiah (Rom 11), with the faithful Gentiles grafted in by the hand of God. It’s Israel under the rule of King Jesus, being transformed by God’s own Spirit. So is the church.
Foy Wallace, Jr. correctly taught the Churches of Christ that the Kingdom is the church. His mistake was not understanding what that means about the church. And what it means about the church is what I just covered.
The church is about far, far, far more and more important things than Five Acts of Worship or being Scripturally Organized. Those things are not addressed by the prophets at all. They are barely referenced in the NT. The NT is far more concerned with teaching us lessons about the Kingdom, such as the Kingdom Parables, the Sermon on the Mount, and Romans 12. There are gobs of materials like that. Continue reading →
(Eph 2:4-7 ESV) 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
V. 6 says that God “raised us up with [Jesus] and seated us with him in the heavenly places.” “Raised … up” translates a word used for raising the dead. In baptism, we died to Christ and were raised to sit in heaven on Jesus’ throne with him.
“Seated” is about sitting on Jesus’ throne. We know this from Eph 1:20, which says God seated Jesus at God’s right hand, putting all thing under his feet, that is, all things other than the church. V. 22 says God did this “for” the church, not “to” the church. The church, rather, is pictured as Christ’s body (1:22) sitting on the throne, with Jesus as head of the body. That is, both Jesus and his church sit on the throne, constituting a singular being. Continue reading →
“Justice and righteousness.” Any good First Century Jew had a keen sense of these words, because they fill the pages of the OT. Let’s look at some examples, as they characterize the Messiah’s Kingdom.
Psalm 72 is captioned “of Solomon.”
(Psa 72:1-2 ESV) Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son! 2 May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice!
The psalmist prays that the king will rule with justice and righteousness. Meaning what? Continue reading →
There is a far kingdom
A ways from here
Beyond the storm and the sea
There will be no need of darkness
And none for tears
When that far kingdom I see
There’s a river we will know
Ever clear and ever full
From the fount that overflows
In the light of the King
And when we drink it we will find
That this joy, ever full, will ever rise
And it’ll rise on, in the kingdom
In the kingdom
There is a far kingdom
On the other side of the glass
And by a faint light we see
Still there is more gladness
Longing for the sight
Than to behold or be filled, by anything
There’s a river we will know
Ever clear and ever full
From the fount that overflows
In the light of the King
And when we drink it we will find
That this joy, ever full, will ever rise
And it’ll rise on, in the kingdom
In the kingdom
There is a far, far kingdom
There at the end of the sea
Where they know my name
And until that far, far kingdom
Calls me home
Oh, my soul, I will wait
For the river we will know
Ever clear and ever full
From the fount that overflows
In the light of the King
And when we drink it we will find
That this joy, ever full, will ever rise
And it’ll rise on, in the kingdom
In the kingdom
And it’ll rise on, in the kingdom
In the kingdom
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Gray Havens: “Far Kingdom”
With this background in mind, it now makes perfect sense for Paul to say,
(Col 3:9-10 ESV) 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
“Image” obviously evokes Gen 1:26-28, where God says, “Let us make man in our image.” Before sin entered the world, we humans were made in the very image of God. But we sinned, we fell, and we and the creation were subjected to futility and vanity. Righteousness and justice became hard to find among humans.
But through Jesus the Messiah, we who have been saved are being renewed “after the image of [our] creator.” We’re becoming like God. Continue reading →
Comments appear to be working. I’ve lost the features available through JetPack, such as the ability to check a box to follow comments for a particular post.
Hopefully that gets fixed tomorrow. In the meantime, though, you should be able to comment without problem.
Let me know if you have any problems.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Comments back up!
For reasons incomprehensible to me, WordPress turned off my JetPack plugin, which enhances the comments on the site. The result was to shut down comments altogether.
They’ve since solved their end of the problem, leaving me with a crippled site and a very kind note that I may now fix the mess they made. Which I don’t know how to do.
Hopefully, WordPress will be kind enough to clean up after themselves and return the comments to functionality shortly.
My apologies for the foul up. I’ll let you know when things are fixed.
Another key concept for salvation in this age is God’s kingdom. We meet the term in the Lord’s Prayer, but it goes back to OT prophecy.
Scholars like to debate whether the Kingdom is anything done that’s good or whether the good must be done in the name of the King, that is, Jesus. And yet if we were to read the scriptures carefully, we’d see the kingship of Jesus written all over the NT. There is no Kingdom without a King. If we don’t acknowledge Jesus, it’s just not Kingdom work — plain and simple. Continue reading →
In the NT, salvation has two elements — salvation in this age and salvation in the next age. It’s the same salvation, but its impact is felt at two different times.
Perhaps the classic expression of salvation in this age is found in the Lord’s Prayer —
(Mat 6:9-10 NIV) 9 “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.'”
This is just the beginning of the prayer, of course. I think the NIV (along with NET Bible) is right in treating this as a single sentence. As a result, “on earth as it is in heaven” modifies all three petitions: That God’s name be hallowed (be considered holy), that God’s kingdom comes, and that God’s will be done. That is, the prayer is — Continue reading →