Salvation

On Palm Sunday (or, “Oh, the Glory, the Beauty, & the Tragedy of Being Human!”) [REPOST]

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

This past Sunday was Palm Sunday, the Christian holiday that ushers in Holy Week. It celebrates the “triumphal entry” of Jesus into Jerusalem (Mk 11:1-11). Seen with the insight of hindsight, though, this is one of the oddest “triumphal entries” one could imagine. It is the triumphal kick-off for what will be the death of the Son of God.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the common “courtroom” analogy for the Gospel. You’ve surely heard it: You are standing before a judge. You are guilty. The punishment is death. It is a right and just penalty for your crimes. But then Jesus comes in and freely offers to take your punishment for you on your behalf so you can be set free. Will you accept this gracious offer?

Many an atheist has pointed out the logical flaws in this analogy, but I think there are even bigger issues I have with it. Really, it only works if the parties involved in this switch are seen as equals. A pure man for a guilty man — seems like an even trade, right? But how then does the death of this one man absolve the sins of a multitude? How is this even just?

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The Slain God of Evolution | Lent {6}

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This Lent, we’ve been going through a series meditating on some of the implications of the fact that we worship a God who was “slain before the foundations of the world”–in eternity past–and therefore has some aspect of “slain-ness” to his very nature.

In the last couple of posts, we’ve been focusing on what this means for the many references in which the Bible says that the world was created “through Jesus”. What might it mean that the world came into being through a suffering and slain Lord? What might it mean for our own suffering?

This got me thinking about Evolution.

Obviously, the main vehicle driving Natural Selection is death and dying. This is one of the biggest hindrances that Christians have to the idea of Evolution. If our usual categories are correct of a “good” creation “falling”, and only then ushering “death” into the world, how does the thoughtful Christian deal with the realities of Evolution?

I think this Lenten idea of God’s “slain-ness” can help.
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Christ’s Heart Breaking in Us | Lent {5}

/ Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

Lent is a season in which God’s people meditate on the slaying of Jesus on the Cross and all that is within them (and outside of them) that made that Cross necessary. So to that end, we’ve been doing a series meditating on the fact that Christ is the Lamb who was “slain before the foundations of the world”. We’ve been thinking through what it might mean that Jesus, in some sense, has been suffering for all time.

[suffering]

We’ve said that the Cross was an in-breaking of the suffering essence of God into our world. Think of it as a volcano that emerges after a millennia of quiet tectonic plate shifts. Eternity and infinity–past, present and future–break into the world at the Cross; eternity is the backdrop against which the death of Christ occurs.

We’ve also said that the world has a certain “slain-ness” to it as well, due to being created “through” a slain and suffering Christ.

Today I want to ask: What might that mean for our own suffering and death?
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The Cross: eternal Beauty made present | Lent {2}

/ Paul Burkhart / 12 Comments

Earlier this week, I kicked off this year’s Lent series with a question.

This season, we’ll be meditating on the biblical idea that Jesus, in some mysterious way, was slain in eternity past. And so, I asked what this means for the Cross of Jesus:

Was it an eternal truth breaking into the temporal realm, or was it itself such a powerful event that it echoed backwards and forwards through the past and future?

My vote? Jesus’ suffering and “slain-ness” is an eternal attribute of who he is, and the Cross was this aspect of the nature of God breaking into our reality. The Crucifixion was, in effect, God drawing the curtain back on a heavenly reality that had, until that point, only been hinted at.

I side with this for two main reasons: the essence of God, and the election of God.

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God, eternally-slain | Lent series {1:intro}

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“…the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world.” –Revelation 13.8

“…you were ransomed…with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot, who was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last time for your sake.” –1 Peter 1:18-20

“Jesus Christ and him crucified… a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” –1 Corinthians 2:1,7

Today, I just want to briefly introduce the Lent series I’ll be doing (while listening to some free Lenten music!). It will be a meditation on an idea that only explicitly appears a few times in the Bible, but it’s truth echoes throughout the Scriptures. It’s mind-boggling in both its scope and implication, and yet gets so little treatment from mainstream Protestantism.

The idea? That Christ was slain in eternity past–before anything was; before any sin had been done by a single human.
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liberti easter outreach: matching donation running out of time!

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

1,000 meals + 3 wells in celebration of the resurrection

I have the privilege of being a part of an amazing movement of churches in Philadelphia, seeking to “live, speak, and serve as the very presence of Christ” for the city (I go to the Center City one).

Last year, the churches gave away 1,000 Easter meals to familes in need. This year we’re trying to raise money to give away another 1,000 and to build 3 water wells in Africa

This week (until the end of Saturday), a donor is offering to match any donations up to $5,000.

There’s still a lot more to go to meet that goal. We need people to donate money to help us serve our neighbors in this city. So please donate if you can. Any amount will help. Remember, through church history Lent has been a time the church has given much to these sorts of efforts.

If you can’t give money, and still want to serve, we not only need money for the meals and wells (we’re trying to raise $35,000), we also need people to call families that would like the meals, as well as people to pack the meals and drive them. You can volunteer (and request a basket) at the website.

For more information or to sign up for any part of this initiative, please visit:

http://www.LibertiEasterOutreach.com/

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some gospel encouragement sitting in a coffee shop…

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

I’m sitting in this coffee shop, and across the room there’s this college-aged girl walking one of her friends (apparently from another country) through the story of the Bible and the gospel.

She seems like a pro. She’s teaching her friend the structure of the Bible, answering her questions, and having her read the Scripture. She’s talking about who wrote the different books and each of their stories. They’re even hanging out in the Old Testament a bunch.

She’s not over-anxious or pushy; she’s just hanging out. The friend seems engaged and they keep laughing, sharing stories, and engaging the Scriptures.

I can’t help but feel I’m watching the Kingdom of God breaking all the more into this world–the future flooding the present.
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Please help me give my money away! [UPDATED]

/ Paul Burkhart / 28 Comments

As I said the other day while introducing Lent this year, the Lenten season has historically been marked by three practices of those that participate in it. Prayer and fasting tend to get most of the attention, but almsgiving is another component of a Lent-historically-done-well. Almsgiving is the ancient term for giving materially of your resources for the purpose of charity, love, and grace.

I have never been good at giving my money away. Tithing has always been difficult for me to practice; giving to the homeless has been hard; and I always have a good excuse why I’m not able to give to some cause greater than myself. Sure, I’ll talk about the organization or even write a blog post in support of it, but it’s hard for me to part ways with my money.

This season, however, I wanted to try an experiment to fight against this and hope and pray that God meets me in it and grows me in deep, lasting ways.

This Lent, I want to give away some of my money everyday. For Monday through Saturday (the Church considers Sundays Lent “mini-breaks”), I want to give some amount of money to a non-profit or charity that can use it to help others.

But I need help.

If you have a non-profit or charity or social justice organization that you particularly like, could you leave a comment below telling me what it is?
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a beautiful quote on our security in the Incarnation (by T.F. Torrance)

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The stark actuality of Christ’s humanity, his flesh and blood and bone, guarantees to us that we have God among us. If that humanity were in any sense unreal, God would be unreal for us in him. The full measure of Christ’s humanity is the full measure of God’s reality for us, God’s actuality to us, in fact the measure of God’s love for us. If Christ is not man, then God has not reached us, but has stopped short of our humanity – then God does not love us to the uttermost, for his love has stopped short of coming all the way to where we are, and becoming one of us in order to save us. But Christ’s humanity means that God’s love is now flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, really one of us and with us.

— T.F. Torrance, Incarnation, 185

A good friend posted this on Facebook, and I just had to post it. It connects very well to a few of the Advent posts I did recently (namely the ones on Evolution, our Fallenness, doubting God’s “liking” of us, and how he makes us most human).

I’ve never actually read Torrance before, but I’ve heard a lot about him from people that were, at the time, reading his work. From what I understand, though, he is a theologian whose mind is brilliant and pen is beautiful–a combination sorely lacking in the Christian world today. I also hear that he is a theologian to which I would feel a certain affinity, so I look forward to reading more of him.

HAPPY ADVENT!! {10}

/ Paul Burkhart / 10 Comments

Well, it’s here. The day we’ve been building up to and meditating upon. This is the day we joyfully celebrate the King who broke into our reality and ushered in His Kingdom and our salvation by coming in the form of a little child.

Even though this time can be tough for some (my grandfather died a year ago tomorrow), I do hope and pray that we are all able to have at least one good laugh this year and see the smile of at least one person we love and that we know loves us. And eat good food. And drink good drink. And listen to bad, cheesy music. (On a side-note: the picture above is a picture of the wall-hanging that went up in my house every year as I grew up. And now I have it. I love it.)

Don’t worry, this isn’t really a whole other post. This Advent season has been an especially fruitful time for my writing (as my Facebook Wall obviously shows). I want to thank everyone that has been telling me how helpful these posts were–or even those that just told me they were reading them in the first place!. I can’t tell you how much it affects me, sticks with me, and encourages me. But anyway, I just wanted to write this post so I could put up all these posts in one place for you easy reading pleasure, should you so desire. Happy Advent!
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What is the True Gospel of Advent? {9} (hint: it’s not your salvation)

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

As I mentioned in my previous post, my church has been doing an Advent series called “The Other Christmas Stories” where we’ve been looking at various texts (outside of the traditional Christmas narratives) that comment on the Advent event. Last week, our pastor preached from the book of Revelation, including some of these verses:

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them!”
–Revelation 12:11-12

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God loves me. But does he like me? (on being “Christ-like”) | Advent {8b}

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[This is Part 2. Read Part 1 here.]

My church has been doing a series called “The Other Christmas Stories” where we’ve been going through other texts in the Bible that comment on and meditate upon the event of Advent. The first message was preached on that quintessential Advent text, John 1. The preaching on these verses really struck me:

But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
— John 1:12-13

The sermon went on to remind us that in these verses is a promise that the Advent did not happen in order to make us into something we are not, but rather to give us the power to become who we most truly are (children of God). Now, I want to be clear. I grew up in Church hearing that phrase “be who you are” (and hearing it in music), and in certain seasons that thought has been helpful to me, but I’m not quite trying to express the same sentiment.
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God loves me. But does he like me? (on being “Christ-like”) | Advent {8a}

/ Paul Burkhart / 8 Comments

UPDATE: Part 2 of this post is now up.

I have a quick confession. I technically ascribe to the “flavor” of Protestantism called “Reformed” that takes the roots of its doctrinal tradition all the way back to the leaders of the Reformation. The first church I really learned much of anything about Christianity and theology is Reformed…ish. The seminary I went to prides itself in being the bastion of orthodoxy for “Reformed” theology. My church is a member of the Reformed Church in America family of churches.

But, I’m not a good Reformed man.
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There is No One Like You (Adv, Days 23/24; HelloGoodBye 09/10) by David Schrott [GUEST POST]

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[Through college up through about a year and a half ago, I ran a little online magazine called Reform & Revive. It’s dead now. While it was going on, one of my best friends, David Schrott, was one of our contributors. He’s an amazing drywaller, photographer, writer, person, and boyfriend (also here, here, and here). This is a post he wrote for R&R back in 2009 at the end of a particularly trying year for him. It’s one of my favorite Advent meditations I’ve ever read, and so I wanted to share it with all of you. Enjoy.]

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“I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer.”
–I Timothy 2.8, NIV

There are these days, when it is so difficult to find words that wrap around concepts, that, no matter how concrete in one’s mind, find it impossible to find substance in the barrier we use to communicate called language. In those moments, it seems that experience does precede existence and existentialism, for a moment, seems fun (and fun is clearly the wrong word, but for to-day, for this beautiful-day-before-Advent, will have to do).
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