Rights and Wrongs of Grace
The nature of grace means that God doesn’t owe it to us. Grace is simply defined as undeserved favour. As such it cannot be owed; it would cease to be grace.
The nature of grace means that God doesn’t owe it to us. Grace is simply defined as undeserved favour. As such it cannot be owed; it would cease to be grace.
We all try to make sense of and explain the reality around us. Theists believe in God and attribute the world’s existence and working in some way to that God (or gods). Atheists, agnostics, and skeptics have a different explanation.
As Christians, we believe there are absolute values and morals because God who created this world has designed it to work according to His attributes of goodness and love. It malfunctions when people do not live according to His will.
The same power that first pushed up the mountains moves within the simple words of the Gospel: Jesus died for sinners and is alive today. Believe in Him, receive His forgiveness, and follow Him into the life God intended.
Too often we experience shame over the wrong issues or in too great a degree. Paul, in Romans 1:16, drew an important boundary around shame. He marked off the things of Christ, leaving shame to the realm of the sinful and disobedient.
There is a difference between opinions and fact/truth claims. When someone claims Jesus is not God, that’s an opinion. When Jesus says that He is God, that is a fact/truth claim. And the truth of His statement is based on objective reality.
From a pluralist’s standpoint, the exclusivity of Jesus as the only way of salvation is intolerant. It assumes the existence of absolute truth, that it may be known, and it delegitimizes all competing religious claims.
In a confusing world filled with signs pointing us down different roads of philosophies and religions, can we be sure we've placed our feet on the right path?
While much of the time our odd traditions don’t cause conflict, sometimes they do collide—especially when these traditions involve family or holidays. It’s in these times I’m learning we must fuse our traditions.
Traditions are nothing new. In fact, it’s because they’re not new they hold any value whatsoever.