In the passionate pursuit of both correct orthodoxy and orthopraxy, let us put behind the old Synod, and press on to be a new blog worthy of the calling with which we have been called. Let us use this space to encourage each other, as long as it is called today, to strengthen quality doctrines, to call out faulty notions, and to challenge one another into the fullness of glory.
On the serious though…
I would like to give this another try, but it will have to be a group effort to maintain a biblical perspective on how we handle not just the issues, but the way we handle each other, myself mostly.
I would also like to change the format from less of an all-debate, and more to a semi-confessional daily walking with the Lord – slasl – debate thingy. So kinda what’s going on with you and God, how did/are/will things change, and why is Woody wrong. I would like this to be the place I can turn to for some the community I desire with each of you, but that is somewhat stagnated by locations, the fact that I’m an idiot who works at night, and the laziness that penitrates my existence.
I love each of you very much, and hope to type at you soon, and I leave you with this from my night last night (12/6);
“We turn now to the question of how people are wakened to the glory of God and are changed by it. One essential part of the answer is given by the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:18-4:6. He says, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are transformed from one degree of glory to another. This is God’s way of changing people into the image of his Son so that they reflect the glory of the Lord. To be changed in the way that glorifies God, we fix our gaze on the glory of the Lord.
How does this happen? (And here we are moving very close to the implications for preaching.) Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4how we behold the glory of the Lord.
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing [here is the fulfillment of 2 Corinthians 3:18] the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
We behold the glory of the Lord most clearly and most crucially in the gospel. So much so that Paul calls it “the gospel of the glory of Christ.” Which means—and this has enormous implications for preaching—that in this dispensation, when we cannot see the glory of the Lord directly as we will when he returns in the clouds, we see it most clearly by means of his word. The gospel is amessage in words. Paradoxically, words are heard and glory isseen. Therefore, Paul is saying that we see the glory of Christ not mainly with our eyes but through our ears. “Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17), because seeing the glory of Christ comes through hearing and hearing through the gospel of Christ.” (John Piper, T4G 2006)
For Our Joy, Mostly Mine,
Chris
