The Atonement as Entertainment

                                                                (Cross, on my front yard)

Fleming Rutledge, in The Crucifixion, writes:

"The mocking and jeering that accompanied crucifixion were not only allowed, they were part of the spectacle and were programmed into it. In a sense, crucifixion was a form of entertainment. Everyone understood that the specific role of the passersby was to exacerbate the dehumanization and degradation of the person who had been thus designated to be a spectacle. Crucifixion was cleverly designed — we might say diabolically designed — to be an almost theatrical enactment of the sadistic and inhumane impulses that lie within human beings. According to the Christian gospel, the Son of God voluntarily and purposefully absorbed all of that, drawing it into himself." (pp. 92-93)

So what about the crucifixion today, in this Age of Show Business? (See here. And here.)

Cross By the Road (Visual Symbol of The Atonement)

I made this simple cross out of two tree branches, and placed it on our lawn by the road so it can be seen. If you make a cross and do the same, I invite you to take a photo of it, and send it to me. I'll post it, and attach your name(s) to it.

Clay Harrington at Redeemer - This Weekend - Sat - Sun

 

Clay Harrington 

Palm Sunday Weekend at Redeemer

Saturday Night April 9th at 7pm • Power, Authority & Healing 

Palm Sunday Morning, April 10th, at 10:30am 

Sunday Evening April 10th at 7pm • The Filling of the Holy Spirit

At an early age, Clay was taught timeless truths about God by his mother. But during his teenage years, he began to rebel and turned away from God to live a life of sin. 

It wasn’t until the age of 30 that he would turn from a sinful lifestyle to a life sold-out for Christ. Since his born-again experience, Clay has experienced a number of radical encounters with the Father and made it his life’s mission to stir the Church to live more on fire for the Kingdom than ever before. Today, Clay is committed to proclaiming freedom to captives, healing the sick, equipping the saints to live naturally supernaturally, and inspiring the church to live radically for Jesus.

Clay is married to his wife, Regina, and is blessed with two sets of boy/girl twins. Clay and his family reside in Ohio, where he serves as the Senior Director of Breakthrough Ministry at Vineyard Cincinnati Church. 

You can follow or connect with Clay on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or by visiting clayofgod.com.

Help for Worrying

(Cancun sunrise)

I still worry too much. My worry comes from losing spiritual focus. 

I can mentally acknowledge that God is with me. But there are times when this truth does not capture my heart. At that point, I am susceptible to worry.  

Here are things that combat worry.

• Spending solitary praying time with God. This restores my heart to its proper place. In His presence, my agitated soul finds rest.
• Being in community with my brothers and sisters. Authentic Christian community absorbs worry. (Thank God for the small groups Linda and I have been in over the years!)
• Reading Scripture and meditating on it. Scripture escorts my heart into His Kingdom. 
• Listening to experienced Jesus-followers, and learning from them. Many counselors dispense wisdom.
• Remembering how God has been with me.
• Counting my blessings. (I often carry a list of them, looking at them, and giving thanks to God for them.)
• Organizing and doing. Taking action, where I am able and available. 
• Walking in obedience. Living righteously secures my attachment to Jesus.
• Worshiping. When my soul sings, worry flees.

Doing these things recapture my heart. My renewed heart experiences God with me, working through me, assuring me that I am not alone, and that He is with me.

***

My Books

 Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

The Baptism and Filling of the Holy Spirit (This weekend with Clay Harrington @ Redeemer)

 

On this coming Sunday evening, at Redeemer, Clay Harrington will preach on "The Filling of the Holy Spirit." Clay is the Senior Director of Breakthrough Ministries for Vineyard Cincinnati Church. Clay will also speak at Redeemer on Sat. night,  7 PM, on "Power Healing," and he will preach at Redeemer this coming Palm Sunday morning, 10:30 AM.

Our weekly home group questions will focus on The Baptism and Filling of the Holy Spirit.

Here they are - blessings!

PJ

REAL JESUS QUESTIONS for WEEK of APRIL 4, 2022 

Theme: The Baptism and Filling of the Holy Spirit 

Read these verses from Acts chapter 1. 

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach ² until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. ³ After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. ⁴ On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. ⁵ For John baptized with^[a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” 

⁶ Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” 

⁷ He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 

What does it mean to be “baptized with the Holy Spirit?” 

What can we expect from someone when they are baptized with the Holy Spirit? 

What is the purpose of being baptized with the Holy Spirit? 

What happened to these disciples after they were baptized with the Holy Spirit? 

 

Next, read Ephesians 5:17-19. 

¹⁷ Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. ¹⁸ Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, ¹⁹ speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord… 

Why does God counsel us to not “get drunk on wine?” 

The alternative to getting drunk on alcohol is, “instead, be filled with the Spirit?” 

What does a Spirit-filled life look like? 

The verb “be filled” is, in the Greek language, in the continuous tense. It has sometimes been translated “keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit.” 

How do we “keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit?” 

 

In the Atonement the Wrath and the Love of God Meet

 

                                                           (Redeemer Monroe - 4/3/22)

Why can’t God just forgive humanity? Why is a sacrifice needed?

Because the suffering of Christ as a sacrifice demonstrates… 

…God’s hatred of sin...

…the depth of His love…  

...the extent to which He would suffer to win us to Himself.

God’s holiness and justice demanded punishment for sin, rightly deserved. If God would simply overlook sin, then He would not be perfectly just. We should be grateful that God is wrathful towards sin. 

Stephen Davis writes, “Our only hope is the wrath of God.” OK. We can debate this. But Davis means to say that our only hope is that God is perfectly just, and can be depended on to do the right thing. At the root of God’s wrath is retributive justice. It’s not just that God is angry. Rather, it is that His holiness and justice cry out for punishment for sin. 

My friend William Lane Craig writes: “At the cross, the wrath, and the love of God, meet, as we see God Himself, out of His love for us, paying the penalty for His own justice.” (Craig, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-zqN8gh9oE )

Preaching on THE ATONEMENT This Morning

This morning at Redeemer I am preaching on the Atonement.

Fleming Rutledge writes:

There is something deep in the human psyche that responds to the idea of substitution – someone who dies in my place so that I may live – and the loss of it from the preaching and teaching of the church would be grievous. (The Crucifixion, 466)

Atonement - Michael W. Smith

EXPLAINING POSTMODERNISM

Spiritual Formation and Transformation

Tree, in my backyard

My writing focus is now on my book on spiritual formation and transformation. This will be a phenomenology of spiritual formation; i.e., a description of what happens rather than a prescription of what we should do. I have 900+ pages of manuscript that I am working with!

Spiritual formation is the ongoing process of Christ forming himself in our heart (spirit); the ever-increasing heart-morphing into Christlikeness. Galatians 4:19 is a key verse here. It reads: 

My dear children, 

for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth 

until Christ is formed in you...

I like how Renovare's Life With God Bible expresses the meaning of this verse and the nature of spiritual formation.

"A hallmark verse for spiritual formation, Gal. 4:19 provides an image of the process of growth for Christians. In this picture it is Christ who is growing in us, rather than we who are growing in Christ. Christ is formed in us by the power of the Holy Spirit as we respond to his ever-present grace in our lives. This occurs in daily, ordinary life as we "practice the presence of God" in our work, our play, our relationships, and all of life. By the Spirit in our hearts we cry out to God "Abba! Father!" (Gal. 4:6) many times throughout the course of a day, acknowledging who we are and whose we are. Christ is also formed in us as we present ourselves as living sacrifices to him through the Spiritual Disciplines, which, far from being the binding legalism Paul condemns in this letter, are the loving response of disciples to God's grace.

Steadily, gradually, Christ looms larger and larger within us. We find ourselves thinking, feeling, believing, serving, and living ore like him. Not only are we becoming more like Jesus; we are becoming more human, more ourselves.

The work of spiritual formation is the subject of this letter [Galatians]. That the Galatians were submitting again to a yoke of slavery - the opposite of spiritual formation - prompted Paul to couch his commuication in the vocabulary of freedom. Spiritual formation and freedom have a dynamic relationship. Curtail one, and the other is stifled. Grow in one, and the other flourishes. Five dimensions of spiritual formation emerge from the text as a result of Paul's emphasis on freedom. These are seismic shifts in the core of his being as Christ is formed in him, in the Galatians, and in us." 

The locus of spiritual formation and spiritual transformation is the human heart. Here is the link to Dallas Willard's "Spiritual Formation: What It Is, and How It Is Done." 

Willard writes: "Spiritual formation in the tradition of Jesus Christ is the process of transformation of the inmost dimension of the human being, the heart, which is the same as the spirit or will. It is being formed (really, transformed) in such a way that its natural expression comes to be the deeds of Christ done in the power of Christ."

This means that one's heart is formed, or morphed, into Christlikeness (Gal. 4:19). Spiritual formation, Jesus-style, is not about asking "what would Jesus do?" and then trying hard to be like Jesus and do the things he did. If a person had the heart of Jesus, the results would be, inexorably, the kind of interior and exterior life Jesus had. With the "interior" being ontologically prior to the "exterior." As Willard says, "Christlikeness is established in the very depths of our being." This is about "change of the inner person, where what we do originates."

The interesting thing about this is that neither you nor I nor anyone can bring this about. To think that one could do so is to diminish the transcendence of the transformation. I might think that I could, given enough time to practice, transform myself into Lebron James. Had I this belief, you would question whether or not I have seen Lebron James play basketball. Who Christ is so far surpasses us that our formation into Christlikeness can only be achieved by Christ himself,

(Willard's entire article is profound, deep, and insightful. See also Willard's more recent "Spiritual Formation in Christ: A Perspective on What it is and How it Might be Done.")