Loving Jesus Style

Jesus ascends the mountain and, like Moses before him, delivers words that will define a covenant people—but he speaks not as a mediator relaying another's law, he speaks with the authority of the Lawgiver himself. The crowds are present, but Matthew is careful to note that "his disciples came to him" (v. 1); this sermon is first and foremost catechesis for those who already belong to him, even as it invites the crowd to consider what such belonging costs and offers. The Beatitudes are not eight independent virtues to be pursued piecemeal, nor a ladder of achievement by which one climbs into divine favor. They form a single, cumulative portrait of the same person—the regenerate citizen of the kingdom—viewed from eight angles. The order is not accidental. It begins on the inside, with the soul's posture before God, and moves outward into relationships and finally into suffering. Read as gospel rather than law, the Beatitudes describe what grace produces in a life, ...

Scripture: 1 Peter 1:3 (NIV) Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. Devotion: Peter, in this verse, proclaims the source of our hope in this life. That Jesus not only died to take the guilt and stain of our sin away, but that He was raised to new and everlasting life in heaven with the Father. Here, Peter, the apostle, lifts our eyes to the very heart of the Christian faith. He blesses God not out of habit or ritual, but because something has happened—something so decisive, so world‑altering, that nothing can ever be the same again. God, in His great mercy, has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Peter wants us to understand that our hope is not built on sentiment or wishful thinking. It is anchored in an event th...

  Scripture: Matthew 20:25-28 (NIV) Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Devotion: How counter-cultural these words of Jesus must have seemed to the first disciples. They lived in a time when there was no thought of equality among persons. Even today, in our culture, we still have vestiges of the notion that some people are better than others. Think of what it would mean if the President of the United States were to think of themselves as a servant of all the people. In my opinion, we have had very few presidents who have thought of themselves in this way. We see throughout the gospels, Jesus serving others. From the ...

Scripture: 1 John 4:9-10 (NIV) This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Devotion: These words from the Apostle John show us the depth of God’s love for us. In His grace, He sent Jesus to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. We do well to ponder that statement. God shows us love in a way that we, for the most part, are unable to show to others in any self-sacrificial way. We are always selfish, loving others for our own purposes. God’s love is selfless, always giving Himself away for sinners. This scripture before us today clearly states that we have a relationship with God, not through any merit of our own, but through the self-giving love of the Father. The Father loved the Son so much that He could part with the Son only for our salvation. We are truly in debt to God because He paid a ...

  Scripture: Isaiah 53:6 (NIV) We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Devotion: These words of Isaiah are part of what is known as the servant songs. These are verses whose immediate application in Isaiah’s time is unknown. However, the Christian church has claimed them, or parts of them, as prophecies of Christ’s passion. They certainly seem to fit this application. We, as Christians, marvel at these words written centuries in advance of our Lord’s death, which seem to describe the scene in great detail. As we approach our text for today, we are reminded that we are not like proud lions or other strong animals. We, in fact, are told that we are like the lowly, and somewhat stupid, sheep who constantly wander from our shepherd. The Spirit was speaking through the prophet to us today. Our society has wandered far from God. We no longer seek to know what God thinks about a controversy;...

How Not to Read This Book Revelation has suffered more at the hands of speculative interpreters than almost any other book of Scripture. Newsstand prophecy charts have taught us to read it as a coded newspaper, a puzzle to be solved by matching beasts and bowls to this week's headlines. But that is not how the book announces itself. Revelation calls itself an apokalypsis — an unveiling — given to strengthen suffering churches by showing them that the slain Lamb, not Caesar, sits on the throne. It is a pastoral book before it is a predictive one. Reading It as Symbol, Not Timetable I read Revelation as what scholars call an idealist, or symbolic. That means the visions are not chiefly a forecast of specific future events, nor merely a record of first-century persecution, nor a code for successive centuries of church history. Rather, John's symbols depict recurring realities that mark the entire age between Christ's first and second comings: the church's sufferin...