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Service: The Church as the Family of God
In our last exercise, Service: The Church as the Body of Christ, we were introduced to the concept that the Church, like the human body, is composed of three parts serving on three different levels, with each part being delegated a specific role to fulfill in its service for Christ. As… The corporate Body of Christ, the Church is to reach outward into the world; bringing the good news of Salvation to the lost in order to bring them into the Family of God; The corporate Soul of Christ, the Church is to reach inward to the members of the Family of God; loving and encouraging them while helping…
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Sanctification: Regeneration Perfected
In our first set of exercises, we began stretching our spiritual muscles as we learned some of the basic principles of Salvation, such as… What it is and why we need it; How to obtain it through the New Birth; That it’s God’s destiny for everyone but that only those who “elect” to have it will receive it; and, Once it is received, it can never be lost or stolen. We also learned that Salvation is the process by which God redeems lost sinners—those who have been in bondage to the world, the flesh, and the devil since their births; buying their freedom for them through the substitutionary death of…
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More Blessing, Cursing, and Big Time Rebellion!
Now that we have had some time to digest the things that were covered in part one of Blessing, Cursing, and Big Time Rebellion, it’s time for us to get back to our analysis of Vignette #9 of Act 1, Scene 1 of God’s One Big Story. As a little reminder, just before our break, we were introduced to the idea that Noah, in his cursing of Ham and blessing of Japheth and Shem, was prophetically assigning them (and their descendants) to their respective roles as the corporate Body, Soul, and Spirit of humanity—roles naturally bringing with them some specific responsibilities. In this part of our critique, we will take a…
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The Way We Are Isn’t The Way We Were…
While it is true that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and while it may seem that we have been wandering off the beaten path during some of our recent visits together, I feel certain that if we take a moment to do a brief recap of our journey together so far, we will find that we have been traveling along a remarkably straight road. In fact, we should be able to see an orderly, even progressive, pattern starting to develop—almost as if someone had planned it that way! I wish I could take credit for it but, in spite of the fact that I…
