I often get told that the­ol­ogy is not really impor­tant and I should rather focus on appli­ca­tion. Sure, I can’t expect every­one to be a the­olo­gian, but I’ like you all to recog­nise that the way you inter­pret the bible DOES have an effect on your walk as a Christian.

I often heard from Chris­tians that “the bible says this and that”. But in real­ity they sim­ply read their ideas into the scrip­tures. Noone should make such a claim. Var­i­ous churches teach it var­i­ous ways. But if you get it wrong, will it not affect your con­duct, your walk with God? You might do some­thing that is actu­ally forbidden.

You see, faulty the­ol­ogy leads to a false sense of secu­rity. Dig­ging into the text HAS appli­ca­tions to every­day liv­ing. If, for exam­ple, it turned out that “faith” was a doing word rather than head knowl­edge, many Chris­tians would find them­selves in trou­ble. Sure, Mar­tin Luther read in Romans that “the just shall live by faith”, but he didn’t check where the idea orig­i­nates from in the Hebrew bible (OT) and whether it was cor­rectly trans­lated. (more…)

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I thought I need to write out some­thing to explain the prob­lems with the Keno­sis theory.

I sup­pose you are aware that the­olo­gians often speak about the Keno­sis (Gk for “emp­ty­ing”) of the prein­car­nate Christ in the Philip­pian passage.

Phil 2:
5 Have this atti­tude in your­selves which was also in Christ Jesus,
6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equal­ity with God a thing to be grasped,
7 but emp­tied Him­self, tak­ing the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the like­ness of men.
8 Being found in appear­ance as a man, He hum­bled Him­self by becom­ing obe­di­ent to the point of death, even death on a cross.
9 For this rea­son also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and that every tongue will con­fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

How­ever, if you search, you find many opin­ions in regards to what Christ emp­tied him­self from. Was it his deity, will or some­thing else? There is a lot of debate going on between the the­olo­gians of var­i­ous Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions, just google for “keno­sis” to see it for your­selves. (more…)

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In the pre­vi­ous post we have seen that the gospel (that is “good news”) is iden­ti­fied, for exam­ple, by Mark:

Mark 1:15
and say­ing, “The time is ful­filled, and the king­dom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

The mes­sage, that “the King­dom of God is near”, there­fore, is THE GOSPEL or GOOD NEWS — and every­thing else is commentary.

Of course, you will find peo­ple that claim that there is more than one gospel, such as

1. the gospel of the King­dom
2. the gospel of Christ

Their claim, how­ever, can­not stand because you can clearly see from the verses quoted in the ini­tial post that the gospel of the King­dom IS the gospel of God, which was preached by John the Bap­tist, Jesus, the dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles and also Paul, and it is also called the gospel of Christ. There is no other gospel. It is about God bring­ing about the King­dom pre­ceded by His judg­ment upon the world, from which judg­ment sin­ners had to be saved from, hence the urgency of the mes­sage. (more…)

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Chris­tians don’t do bad things. At least they shouldn’t. If they do they should repent and make ret­ri­bu­tion. Repen­tance with­out ret­ri­bu­tion is not gen­uine. It is self-deception. If one robs his neigh­bour he can­not repent unless he restores what was stolen. Ret­ri­bu­tion is a must. He can­not keep the stolen goods. (more…)

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Let me spare a few thoughts on the above pas­sage. These lit­tle essays are not intended to indoc­tri­nate, but to chal­lenge to crit­i­cal think­ing. Whether I am right or not is not important.

Rom 8:1 There is there­fore now no con­dem­na­tion for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weak­ened by the flesh, could not do: send­ing his own Son in the like­ness of sin­ful flesh and for sin, he con­demned sin in the flesh… (more…)

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