Note: The good news for today is Chains of Grace received $654 in checks yesterday with a few more promised. We are now at $10, 429 in cash and pledges toward our goal of $20,000 for Debt Retirement. We can pay off our second of four houses with this amount.

Will you help? Go to our website at www.chainsofgrace.org. Find a Donate button and send what you can send. Please let me know your gift I for Debt Retirement.

Or

Send a check for any amount to

Chains of Grace

PO Box 1344

Midlothian, Texas 76065

Many thanks.

Commercial over, now to our subject.

Why am I posting daily on the doctrine of the Christ?

I do not hear preachers talking about Jesus much. Most sermons today seem to be self-help monologues with a bit of pop psychology. Jesus seems unimportant compared to Freud. God the Father seems to be a daddy old fellow ordering us off His cloud, or a friend who tolerates all our errors to prove His friendship.

It occurs to me that a Christianity working hard to diminish the role of the Christ risks its own demise.

Simply put, a Christianity without the C/hrist is exactly worthless. With Jesus we have all we need. Without Jesus, or with a diminished Jesus, we have nothing we need.

Where did we leave off Jesus?

The Christian church has a hard time with prosperity. When things are easy, or we are well set financially, we get rather vague about the blood letting that formed our faith.

In portions of our globe where Christianity grows one notices the poverty of its adherents means they have no problem confronting the same kind of want the early church experienced. Unable to depend on the world around them to act sympathetically, our global co-religionists fill the void with the blood of Christ, for Whom and with Whom the work to convert their culture.

Some time ago in an impoverished village in sub-Saharan Africa I was left off one day to look for a brother I was told I simply had to meet. As I approached his ramshcackle hut I noticed a sign that read Center for Global Evangelism. The reason I needed to meet this brother was for the sake of seeing his vision, which dwarfed my own.

Every time I think of him, it reminds me of the woman in Haiti. At the time I heard her story she was existing on a few dollars per day, living in a hovel and hoping for a next meal.

She was saving some of her money to go on a Mission Trip with her church.

“Everybody needs to hear about Jesus,” she said. “We are going to tell them.”

Jesus seems more real when you are a poor widow, a lonely teenager or an impoverished brother who intends to change the world. In the global scheme of things North American Christians are the spoiled child who knows everything. We are so worldly wise we know we can get by without Jesus, at least without the Jesus who does not coincide with our narrative.

We need a Jesus who will mostly leave us alone. We want a Jesus who will not be miffed if we leave Him alone.

So, in these posts I will push Jesus on you for the future, near and far. Ignore me if you want, but ignore Him at your great peril.

By peril I do not mean Hellfire, no small calculation of its own. No, I mean the very real peril we face when we lack the base foundation for moral insight, which is our religion, when our religion amounts to something. I hold to this; that our culture, as it seeks to liberate itself from meaningful Christian religion also removes its own support for moral reasoning of any kind.

I am told college courses in ethics and standards are overcrowded these days. Religion courses are empty. Ask any seminary teacher these days. I call them teachers instead of professors because the empty halls of seminaries will not feed a a healthy faculty. Churches want to field their own home-grown theological faculties these days, which seems fine but churches being churches the end result is a theological education based on “A hundred more in our worship hall.”

This is a problem because there is little depth in pragmatism and even less risk taking. Consider our (once) largest Free Church denomination, my old home, the Southern Baptists. Today listed as a declining denomination (it happened in a heart beat) the “resurgent” Southern Baptists are now embroiled in a controversy over female ministers and Calvinism. In short, this once vibrant body now wants to talk only about those Jesus does not love and live it out by disfellowshipping churches who dare to employ 54% of the population. Certain that their latest purging will so purify them God will be forced to favor them, they appear to have forgotten one important Person; Jesus.

Little wonder preachers put away Jesus these days. Jesus will not help you get a crowd in a hurry.

I risk no great backlash when I come out for Jesus. We do not mind being reminded about Him or the place He once held back when the world was young. We just don’t need Him like we once needed Him. The mega-church we left our neighborhood church for seems to be doing well, even if it does not seem to do much good. We can dismiss the fallen preachers who ignored Jesus because of their own great power. After all they are only human and, by accepting them this way, we excuse our own humanity.

Jesus waits. He works with those who cherish Him, all the while intending the day when He will get back in style. Responsibility, service and sacrifice are hard sells but the world cannot get by without them for long.

Jesus, after all, saves.

Note: Good news and a challenge.

We exceeded our goal for my birthday fundraiser for Chains of Grace. We do not have all the promised hard donations (checks) as yet, but we reached $1230 on a Victory Goal of $1200. I will let you know the final amount when all the checks arrive.

Now, for the challenge. We are now at $9575 cash and pledges toward a $20000 Debt Retirement Challenge. With the full amount we can retire the debt on one of our houses enabling us to keep our fees affordable for parolees, many of whom emerge from prison without, well, much of anything more than a criminal record.

You can help by sending a check for any amount to:

Chains of Grace

PO Box 1344

Midlothian, TX 76065

Or

Go to our website, www.chainsofgrace.org. You will find a Donate button or two. Just hit the Donate button and enter your information. Please be sure to let me know you intend your gift for Debt Retirement.

Thanks.

Now, commercial over, let us turn to our subject.

Yesterday we discussed how Christianity takes on the nature of the Christ, who is, after all, its founder. The Current Crisis in our culture (American and global) seems to me to grow from our overall ignorance of the Work and, so, the Person of the Christ. We major now on the Work of the Christ.

Jesus acts, as we cited Dale Moody’s writing, as Prophet, Priest and Potentate. He is the Prophet of Israel. His prophetic mission (every prophet has a particular, some would say peculiar mission) is self announced, He appears to “seek and save that which is lost” cf. Luke 19:10) by which He means those who are lost, not just in one place, time, ethnicity or nation, but in all places and times.

We also hold Jesus is the Priest. He demonstrates the mystery of God in worship, service and sacrifice. None of these three actions are terribly popular in today’s world. Worship takes time, effort and humility. Service costs so much we mostly stop there and, well, sacrifice, now really, if service costs too much, who will go on to sacrifice?

Finally, we recognize Jesus as the Potentate over all earthly elites. Jesus champions the Have-Nots as He admonishes the Haves. We learn not to compare Jesus to earthly “kings” or those wannabe kings who seem to pop up pretty often.

So, Jesus is a tough sell these days, most definitely for forgetful generations or for those with limited attention spans. Perhaps this is why preachers do not talk about Jesus much any ore. Popular politician dropped God from their speech some time ago. Now they refer to the “will of the people,” or to “the American people who deserve better.”

In this series, which I assure you will be quite long, we seek to help Christians (and those who are not) recover some insight into the Work and Person of Jesus, the Christ. Come along with us in our bight-size vignettes.

See you tomorrow.

Note: Thanks to all those who recognized my latest birthday (there have been so many) and to those who have given to Chains of Grace. We have raised more than $1200 as of last night. Some people do not wish to donate on line but have promised to send checks. Those are starting to come in to our hard mail address, which is:

Chains of Grace

PO Box 1344

Midlothian, Texas 76065

My current goal is to raise $20,000, which will enable us to eliminate the debt on one ministry house. So far we have cash and pledges for $8000, with more coming as we speak to donors. Please help us help our parolees.

Now, to our subject.

The Why question is always most helpful. When we ask Why, we acknowledge the validity for the Nietzche quote from yesterday’s post. You remember Nietzche opined:

If a man has a Why, he can tolerate almost any How.

Life is often difficult. Various world religions (and schools of philosophy) recognize the hardships life can put on us. I know some people who will not read Religion or Philosophy because they seem so dismal in their outcomes!

Christianity recognizes suffering. The exemplar of the Christian faith (Jesus, the Christ) even participates in human suffering. In fact, Christianity is alone among the major faiths of the world (and minor) in this sense: in Christianity God who is offended by sin pays the sin price to redeem the very race guilty of offending God. This is grace.

The Wesleyans teach of prevenient grace. This grace is the grace (xaris) that comes looking for us with the intent to do us good. Prevenient grace embraces our (self inflicted) suffering, washes it and starts us to a maturity of person able to exist happily and express compassion with open heart and mind.

Why? Well, Niethzche is right, so far as he goes, when he asserts:

Adventavit asinus puncher et fortissimus

Latin for “The donkey arrives beautiful and brave.”

By which Nietzche means all philosophies intimately partake of the nature of their leading proponent. Nietzche;s own mental illness, resulting in and from his loss of faith, leads him to despise other philosophers (all of them) and religious teachers as mere “donkeys,” seemingly in comparison to him. After all he is the man who boasts “I can write in a sentence what it takes others a book to write.”

I mention this because I believe for all his rightness he is wrong because he stops at the spiritual/emotional/intellectual place where he, faith lost and life in limbo, he fails to notice the superiority of the Christ and, so, of Christian teaching. Perhaps the Church of his day fails him at this point, so besotted by the social culture around them as they are (and as we are) but this is no reason to mislead oneself on the nature of the Christ

Jesus is the Agent of Creation (John 1:1-14) who chooses to live among Created Beings in order to reclaim us. In so doing Jesus reestablishes the ancient teaching on cosmology; this is the best of all possible worlds. We receive a world of meadows in which we sow minefields. This is the loss of stewardship over the world, which dominion is to be caretaker of the world, not master only. We are more dangerous to the world when we divide ourselves into waring tribes than we do when we start our cars.

Jesus pitches His tent among us (John 1:14). In so doing He refashions the ancient form of leadership, wherein the Leader walks in front of his/her people during the day, then camps among them by night. He is no Elitist or Communist. Jesus is among His people, night and day, at great personal sacrifice. Jesus establishes sustenance for His beloved, rather than teach us to divide by classes, or to hate those who have more or need more.

Jesus is the King of Kings, but that is a term too small for Him, as we shall see when we discuss Jesus as Potentate. To call Him King of KIngs compares Him to other, earthly rulers, inaccurate toward Him and unfair to them.

No one compares to Jesus favorably. He is just too good.

See you tomorrow.

Yesterday started early with a working breakfast with my dear friend from Tampa. All day I monitored the gifts coming in for Chains of Grace Debt Retirement. I am grateful for each gift. T/he day continued with a wonderful family time; all of ours were present. Then we ended the day preaching from John 21:25 in a wonderful worship time at Haven of Rest Ministries.

Now, to our subject.

Friedrich Nietzche, the much maligned, has a short saying I treasure:

“If a man has a Why, he can endure almost any How.”

What is the Why of Jesus? What purpose could take a saintly persons through life, enduring privation and torture, to benefit a race of person intent on His suffering?

Dale Moody in his book Word of Truth (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman’s, 1981, p. 367) refers to the “three-fold office” of Jesus, which gained great traction in the Reformation. In the “three-fold office” of Jesus, Reformers see Him as Prophet, Priest and King.” Moody s the alliterative Potentate in place of King.

No matter, the meaning is largely the same. Jesus acts from three-fold office. Each of the offices (Prophet, Priest, Potentate) is vital to the saving work of Jesus.

As Prophet, Jesus disrupts the status quo. His prophetic work is so visible His co-religionists recognize it, as in Mark 6:4, Matt. 13:57, John 4:44 and Luke 13:32f., The gospel writers understand the forth-telling work of Jesus from His own lips and call Him a prophet. We should know the work of a prophet is not so much to foretell (predict) as it is to forth-tell (announce the Word of God). Jesus disrupts the status quo by telling forth the intent of God to save, meaning there is a common need among humans to be saved from sin damage.

As Priest, Jesus is far beyond other Priests. He was/is a Priestly Messiah (Moody, p. 371). If we agree that. Priest is to offer sacrifice to atone for the sins of persons and to cover wrong-doers with the Blood of the Sacrifice to cleanse our sin, conservative Christians must recognize and glorify the works of Jesus to redeem us. We then accept His divine Person as Jesus, the Christ, the One who saves from sin, the Messiah. There is no other Priest like Him.

As Potentate (again, Moody, p. 378) Jesus has a title above earthly kings and lords. He is Potentate above all others who claim power for a while, because His power, place and position are eternal and over all, so I Timothy 6:15.

Preachers need to proclaim Jesus holds all three of these offices. His works are so far above and beyond! Self-help sermons wherein we hear Jesus is our good friend just are not enough. We live in the Best Of All Possible Worlds because God makes it and God does not make junk. We live in a dangerous world because of sin. We need God to save us from this dismal prospect and make the world a giant, happy meadow in instead of the mine-field men make it.

Jesus saves.

See you tomorrow.

Note; Today, October 5, 2024, marks my 71st birthday. I am celebrating by posting this blog, going to the gym (15 weeks now) and then collapsing.

If you can, go to my Facebook site, find my Birthday Donation site for Chains of Grace and make a donation of any size to Chains of Grace. My goal says $500, but I would really like to hit $1000 for Debt Retirement for Chains of Grace. We can pay off one of our houses by reaching just $20000 in donations outside the budget. This will be a big help to our residential ministry for men coming out of prison. Please help us help these returning citizens.

Now, to our subject.

We spend most of our screen time at this site on the subject of Jesus, the Christ. This is Day Six of our time on the subject of our Lord. Since I call Jesus our Lord you can instantly tell my bias. I believe Jesus is the Prophet/Messiah of Israel, Second Person of the Trinity, our Savior, Redeemer and Lord.

Yes, we will get to the Trinity soon. Evangelical Atheists spend a lot of time attacking us on the subject of the Trinity, so we need to spend some time on that particular part of Christian doctrine.

for today, accept this framework for life based on the Christian faith.

Your life is a ministry. You are not here for a career or an education or a job. Your life is a ministry.

The ministry that is your life belongs to God. Your ministry is not to be picked up and laid down at your convenience. Your life ministry belongs to God.

Since your life is a ministry and your life ministry belongs to God, when you get to the end of what you know, you can trust God to be there to show you what is next. You will not feel empty if you are filled with the presence of God. You will not feel forlorn if you have God’s expressed love. You will not feel directionless if you seek to do God’s will God’s way. You will never run out of people to help.

Happy day to you and yours. Please donate to Chains of Grace today.

Note: The Subscribe Button on my blogsite now works. It figures there would be some rollout issues after my long absence. Please let me offer my thanks to Tiffany, our IT helper for WordPress. Please let me also thank you for your patience as we work through our issues together. We are now on our way.

In our series on the study of Christ (Christology) we are following Emil Brunner and Dale Moody as we look at the work of the Christ and then the Person of the Christ. This makes the most sense to me because what we see, hear and handle with our hands of the Christ is His work. He is Savior, Redeemer and Rescuer. All of these words we use to describe His Person are in fact we discover in His work(s), so it seems to me natural we should scrutinize His work to describe His Person.

In no way do I demean His Person. Jesus often referred to His works in order to demonstrate His identity. The disciples of John the Baptizer came asking for evidence of His Messianic identity. Jesus might have given a long theological discourse. Instead, our Lord gives a Biblical list of His prophetic works to establish His credentials.

Only toward the end of His earthly ministry does Jesus stress His Person. Even then He is prone to announce His identity and then to point out to actions past, present and future to define His Person.

Simply put, Jesus is a Doer. He demonstrates how we may know how we ma approximate the image of God in our own lives. He asks us to follow Him, to imitate Him and even to take up our Cross as He carries His Cross.

The earthly ministry of Jesus divides neatly into two parts. Of HIs three years of works, see the time from the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee to the Mount of Transfiguration is eighteen months and from there to the Cross/Resurrection Event is another eighteen months. During the first half of His earthly ministry Jesus majors on miracles and also teaches. In the last half Jesus majors on teaching (usually with the closest disciples) and also performs miracles.

Ergo, as Jesus approaches His death and resurrection (and coming departure to Heaven) Jesus focuses His attention (to His people who must soon live without His earthly presence) Jesus acts in such a way as to point first to Himself and then to Heaven. His behavior would be natural if He believes Himself to be the only divine means by which the masses of humanity may come to Heaven.

Friedrich Niethzche, the early precursor of the pragmatic philosophers (Niethzche writes about love too much to be a true pragmatist) has this happy thought for us, to wit:

If you have a why, you can get through almost any how.

Jesus had a why, has a why and will have a why.

Jesus is The Way to Heaven.

Watch what Jesus does.

What Jesus does will tell use who Jesus is.

Housekeeping ,matter. My tech crew (Hi Tiffany) is working on the problems with the Subscription Button. We know it is a bit of an issue and we really want it to work for everyone. I am very serious about continuing this series. I truly appreciate the encouragement from so many.

And, yes, a year from now I may be sitting down to write Christology and the Current Crisis, Day 365.

Now, to the matter at hand.

In Matthew 4:17 we get the Vision Statement of Jesus. In Matthew 4:19 we get the Mission Statement of Jesus.

Vision Statement: From then Jesus began to preach, saying “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (at hands meaning present at this moment in Jesus Himself.)”

Mission Statement: Come follow me and I will teach you (how and why) to become fishers of Man.”

We can learn from the text Matthew has of our Lord’s first sermon. The first word of His first sermon; Repent.

You know the classical meaning of the word Repent. Repentance is a change of direction. We are going one way. The voice of God calls out to us. We turn our head, affix our eyes and our body follows to God.

Or, we ignore the voice of God (the word of God spoken or written or displayed on a screen). We keep right on going the way we are going because, after all, God is dead (by which Nietzche meant irrelevant; blame Niethzche), the Church is just about collecting power and Morality is Individualism. At that, it is Radical Individualism wherein any discussion of Responsibility starts and ends with Rights to one’s own way of doing/being.

For those who might consider turning away from license to something more deeply satisfying, there is, well, umm, God. For Christians,well, umm, we meeting God revealed in Jesus, the Christ. We believe Jesus is the Messiah/Prophet of Israel, not a Messiah as one might hold a station to be relinquished when one loses interest or someone better comes along, but the Messiah, the one and only, who keeps on being the durable Savior, through life and death and that which comes beyond.

What happens when we repent? Why is it even a matter for discussion? Am I not as good as anyone else (by which we may actually mean “as good as I need to be) without resorting to some stuffy old religion.

Theodore Parker was an American minister and leader of the Abolitionist Movement in the mid-1800s. His mother influenced him greatly. He recounts this story, to wit:

At the age of nine he was playing one day. He encountered a turtle. A mischievous boy, he readied his foot to stomp the creature, when he heard a voice saying, “But it is wrong.” He stopped.

Theodore recounted this occurrence to his mother and asked her about the voice he heard.

She replied, “Some people call it conscience but I call it the voice of God in the heart of man. If you listen for this voice you will hear it more often and clearly. If you ignore this voice it will become weaker and dimmer until you hear it no more.”

At nine Parker committed himself to listen for the voice of God. His sermons and writings influenced men like William Seward, Frederick Douglas and an unlearned unbeliever from Illinois’ who became our sixteenth President.

To repent probably means more than sparing a turtle (though the turtle might argue otherwise), but it certainly involves our actual morality. Good and Evil matter, be we this or that, turtle or fetus. The Current Crisis, it seems to me, has deep roots in our lack of moral intent to do more than just not hurt someone else, as important as that may be.

The first word of the first sermon of our Lord is “Repent.”

I am late getting to this post today. On Wednesday I drive over to Ft. Worth where I teach ReEntry skills in the Tarrant County Jail. Today ran a bit long. Sorry.

Yes, I watched the “debate” last night I do not believe the two interviewers dealt fairly with Senator Vance or his positions. I do not believe they pushed Governor Tim when he could not find words to explain his false statements about his time in China.

I did come away wishing Senator Vance was on top of the GOP ticket.

The Current Crisis reared its head again last night, of course.

The Current Crisis, our Great Division, is the result of one tribe or the other demanding we believe their narrative, without question, without nuance. When Senator Vance tried to explain the facts behind immigration issue, he found his explanation cut off by half and explained away as “the legal situation,” offered with a vocal sneer.

This does not sit well.

I don’t like it any better when Mr. Trump does it.

Sometimes I feel like we are in Oz. We seem to be expected to believe what the Wizard says, while we are forced to ignore the “man behind the curtain.”

It is in the end we find out they are one and the same.

Jesus maintains He civility throughout HIs earthly ministry. He would not identify with Herod, or the Romans, or the popular religionist of His day. He saves His rancor for the people who use religion for their own gains, in trending to purify Israel and His co-religionists in order to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.

I intend to voter for Jesus.

Yesterday’s post showed my desire to talk about Jesus more than the Current Crisis. Jesus is the lasting presence. The Current Crisis will pass. We just have to minimize its damage to vulnerable persons who cannot actually choose for themselves, either because of extreme pressure from those who should make good decisions for them or because they just lack the (developed) intellect to make good choices.

How do we accomplish this goal (to protect the vulnerable)?

We should urge vulnerable persons to avoid making choices they cannot change when their brain develops. This is more than a series of ink stains on the epidermis. Some vulnerable people feel capable of making decisions about body organs and drug regimens sure to have life time consequences.

Jesus is all about consequences.

Jesus is all about defending the vulnerable.

Jesus “takes up” for those who cannot take up for themselves.

Yes, I really think Jesus can fix things without chopping off body parts or confusing pronouns.

The various things people seem to want today in our muddled North American culture (community, emotional support, spiritual strength), well, Jesus ‘corners the market” on such items.

How?

The old folks got it right. We do frightful things to the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ through John but John is right. John (the human inspired to write the book of Revelation) says that Jesus is…”the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of kings on the earth” (Revelation Chapter One, Verse Five; the books of our Bible are named, arranged in chapters and cited by verses, like songs).

So, Jesus is the “straight shooter” and the only one to go through death into life as we can do because of Him and Jesus is bigger and better than the men/women who seem to rule over this world for a time. Jesus not only “Gets Us” but Jesus “Gets Us” because He pays the price to “Have Us.”

Jesus gathers us up to take us on the journey of salvation to life eternal. The voice of Jesus calls to us in to the time and place where we can make a choice for Him. We may have only a limited amount of free agency in the matter (sin is as limiting as it is captivating) but we only need to “want to want” to follow Jesus to start the trip.

In this series we will discuss the Work of Jesus and let that teach us about the Person of Jesus. In this manner we follow the literary example of Emil Brunner in his Dogmatics and Dale Moody in his Word of Truth. We will show how Jesus, in the old language, functions as Prophet, Priest and Potentate, while we seek to modernize the language without sacrificing the meaning.

See you tomorrow. We are going to talk about Jesus.