Reflections
If we fail to believe that Jesus was like us in every way, tempted as a healthy male with a body that worked, we readily forget the wonder of his present humanity: that his choice to be God the Son this way was a permanent choice on our behalf. In the end, this failure causes us to miss the heart of the gospel. This is, after all, the gist of the “good news,” the forward-moving plot of the story we inhabit and live out, the promise that we get our human lives back once and for all, permanently renewed, without any of the craziness of our present, broken experience. It’s all going somewhere, says Paul; it’s leading toward a finishing, our “completion,” when we become full-grown human beings conformed in love to the true image of the Triune God manifest in Jesus (1 Cor 13:10-12).
— Cherith Fee Nordling
- We’ve been taught “Personal Relationship with Jesus”, but we need to learn His story, rediscover His story
- We’ve been taught multiple small stories in Sunday school, but what about the bigger story?
- “Fully Man, Fully God”, we were taught, but we don’t necessary believe it
- “Getting our Humanity back” – the “Good News” seem to be making us less human, stopping humanity
- Do you see yourself as yourself in Heaven? or in some form of humanoid instead?
- “Realize Jesus” – being fully human, to know who we are, to know what we are to do
- Creation is the overflow of God’s love, not because God is lonely or bored, or to create companion
- “Creation -> Exile/Exodus -> New Creation”
- But we have hard time staying with the story
- Salvation = New Creation Life
- Cosmological Story – everyone has its own version
- YHWH’s Temple-Palace-Garden = Creation (Gen 1:26-27)
- Human Beings
- God’s Royal Representatives – to/within creation
- God’s Image-Bearers
- God’s “idols”
- We are all supposed to be like Jesus in the first place
- Embodied Image Bearers of God’s living presence — “Holy Spirit”
- Humanity is God’s Idol
- Seeing/speaking/hearing/acting with, for, and like YHWH
- We all know about the Salvation of our souls, less so about Redemption of our bodies
- Israel as God’s Image-Bearers
- You are my Son (Psalm 2:7, Isaiah 42:1)
- You are my queen (Ezekiel 16)
- Dead idols by human hands – deaf, dumb, blind, etc
- Ezekiel 10, 37:5-14, Joel 2:28, Matthew 3:16-17
- Our Christological Craziness Harms Us
- Jesus as Clark Kent – really superman (Docetism)
- Jesus as the over-achiever – divinized by God (Adoptionism)
- Jesus as the alloy – not really human or God (Eutychianism)
- Jesus as the Dude – fully human open to Spirit (Ebionism)
- Jesus as the Terminator – human body, divine mind/soul (Apollinarianism)
- Jesus as the Third Party – neither human or divine (Arianism) first creature of God to do the work for
- Cherith’s personal story on Gnosticism
- Image Bearer — Colossians 1
- Colossians 1:10 “worthy of the Lord”
- Colossians 3
- More people would die after D-Day than before D-Day
- Victory is coming, but still lots of work
- Our sins are already forgiven
- To love without intimacy as weapon or crutch
- Gorden D. Fee
- How to read the Bible book by book
- Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God
