In Jesus, God acted first, even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:5).
Yahweh who is pierced and mourned in prophecy is Jesus who is pierced and mourned in fulfillment.
There is indeed a responsibility for the church to share the gospel in the world, but never at the expense of the church’s charity and mercy for those neighbors who are nearby.

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When we Christians shoehorn Creedal Christianity into any of these ideological positions we obscure the Gospel mingling it with the Law and strip the Good News of its catholicity.
Right now (and I would add, for quite some time) there has been a debate within Christianity about the whole issue of culture.
As every nail that Jesus hammered was a delight to his Father, so every email you send, every purchase you ring up, every table you wipe down, is a delight to the Father.
The only obedient son is shunned so that the disobedient one may return. Why? Because God loves sinners. He doesn’t leave them alone.
The force of our love is violent. It is love acted out as, “I will love you in a way that’s best for me, and you’ll like it, and celebrate it, and reward me for it.
We expect that if it is God’s word, it must have fallen out of the sky on golden plates.
No matter how loving we are, we don’t get bonus points with the Almighty for imitating Jesus. We love each other because we recognize that “this is one for whom Jesus died.
It can be argued that this scene sets a pattern for Christian activity on the first day of the week from that time until the present.
When guilt becomes our totem, it dictates our idea of right and wrong and enslaves us to the fear of what happens when we open our eyes tomorrow morning.
The first course is always humble pie because, at the table, there are just two seats: from humiliation to exaltation.
And your life, weary and broken as it is, is hidden by God in Christ—tucked away in God’s enduring and eternally given Word, in Jesus.
I have found that if I want to get people talking (especially guys), all I have to do is ask them about their father.