Article for the Wednesday, December 21st Louisburg Herald (The Christmas Edition)
Selected Sermon Points and Tweets from 2011 at Eastside Church of the Cross (for more, follow me on Twitter @steverives)
- Theology is the study of God. In the incarnation, Theology became Christology, and now there is no Theology that is not also Christology.
- God has so identified himself with Jesus, that there is no way to identify anything in God that is missing in Christ.
- Jesus, in his divinity, is the God who acts in humanity. He is the God-Man. And at the incarnation, there was a new Trinitarian experience.
- When Jesus asked Peter, ‘Who do you say that I am?’, it was a theology question–the same as asking, ‘Who do you say God is?’
- We don’t look around humanity to find divinity, we look upon the face of Jesus, and there we behold God.
- The Trinity has taken on humanity, and Jesus still has a body. Over this the religious stumble, for they wish to encounter God unmediated.
- The Gospel is not merely about Jesus—as if it is external to him—for he is in such vital union with the message that he himself is the Word.
- The question, ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ only ever applied to one man, Jesus, who said, ‘There is none good but God.’
- God is not the God of second chances because he is not the God of first chances because he is not the God of chance.
- God came in flesh to reveal that God loves God (Jn 14:31) as the chief end of God in Christ is to glorify himself—Jn 17:4.
- God is whoever will raise up the wicked and destroy them for having kept the earth as a Christless wasteland.
- Love wins because God loves Christ and will trample out in the rage of his fury those who do not share in his love.