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Who is the New Jerusalem?

...defeating death and ushering in the New Covenant!   This is God showing that things work differently now. No longer is he only found in a temple, or a specific holy place (a lá John 4:21) – now he lives with us and in us!   This is why everything is new! Heaven will never be the same again, and neither will the Earth! God has set up a new temple where he dwells permanently now: in us, the Church!   Everything is New! If we go back to Paul’s letters for a moment and read 2 Corinthians, we can see that this is what Paul was getting at too. He had grasped this and was desperately trying to get it across to the Corinthian church. Oh, how slow are we o...

The Coming Kingdom of the Son of Man

...ut you to death"). The parallel account in Luke 21 words this persecution almost word-for-word with Matt 10:23 – "But before all this [the signs and destruction] occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name." Luke 21:12   Now, Jesus goes further with his explanation and shows how this ties in with Daniel's prophecy (Daniel 9:20-27), which his Jewish audience would have understood. Matthew's Gospel was written to a Jewish community, and so keeps this language: "So when you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy pla...

Understanding the Ultimate Ransom

...decay of death. Human riches, no matter how vast, are powerless in the face of the ultimate cost of redemption. As Christians, this message resonates deeply with our understanding of salvation through Christ’s sacrifice. The Cost of Redemption The Psalmist’s lament about the futility of relying on wealth for redemption points to a universal human condition: the insufficiency of human efforts to secure eternal life. The idea that “no ransom avails for one’s life, there is no price one can give to God for it.” (v.7) highlights that redemption is beyond human capacity and ability. The price is too high, and no payment is ever enough to achieve eternal...

Before The Pumpkins: The Day Two Women Defied Rome

...In the last post, we looked at Polycarp — a faithful bishop who faced the flames rather than deny his Lord. His courage in the face of certain death became a rallying light for generations of believers after him. But his story is only one among many in the long line of the cloud of witnesses who ran the race before us (Hebrews 12:1). Today, we step forward a few decades to another account of extraordinary faith — that of two women, Perpetua and Felicity. Perpetua left an account of her own martyrdom (technically a Passion) which is considered historically reliable. What makes it extraordinary is that Perpetua herself wrote a portion of it in Latin b...

Lent: Day 8 - Ignatius to the Romans

...event his death! From the way he writes, it sounds like the church in Rome had great influence and could have probably changed his sentence to have Ignatius set free. But he writes to them saying that he is “afraid” of their love, “lest it should do me an injury” because it was easy for the Roman church to “accomplish what [they] please” which, in his mind, would make it difficult for him to “attain to God” if they show their love to his flesh and thus cause him to have to run his race once again from the start. This letter is overall different in its tone and I found the things Ignatius said quite a challenge. Ignatius repeatedly says he will...

What did Jesus actually sacrifice?

...efore his death was a big deal, and it showed, as we can see from the Gospels when Jesus says to his disciples that he is “deeply grieved, even to death” (Matt 26:38). Luke 22:42-44‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.’ Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground. We can see from the quote above that Jesus really wasn’t looking forward to this, despite knowing its purpose. He even needed an angel to come to physically come to him to give him the strength to go o...