Jesus is not a god that we can manipulate and mold. Christ is the true God, the one who is.
Yahweh tells his people that they “shall have no other gods before me,” he’s speaking into a culture whose very fabric is made up of the worship of other gods.
Auden understands Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith not as a mere theological platitude, a trick of biblical grammar, or a catchphrase for men to rally around.

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How Leviticus 17 is a key passage for understanding atonement
We know that death does not have the last word in Christ.
God comes to us through the flesh and blood and spirit of Christ precisely where he promised to be manifest to us and for us.
This is an excerpt from “Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment” by Bradley Gray (1517 Publishing, 2023).
Only the resurrection of Jesus guarantees and facilitates divine presence and love to us as divine life for us.
If Jesus did not rise, then religion is just religion — a mere anthropological phenomenon.
The resurrection of Jesus encompasses the total and comprehensive glorification of a human being, not merely his restoration.
Jesus is the only answer to the nagging question. He is the only way to make sense of this unsettling story in Exodus 4.
If it’s all a fiction spun by disappointed disciples, if it’s a mere symbol for the idea of an inner awakening, if it’s not a fact that Christ has been raised, then our grief and loss have no end, and we have no hope.
This is the message of Lent. We are not called to sacrifice for Jesus in order to earn our salvation. Rather, we are called to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.
In Memory of My Friend, James Arne Nestingen