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Why do bad things happen to 'good' people?

...d for the glory of God - a sentiment that is echoed in Paul's writing to the church in Rome: "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God..." (Rom 8:28). Whatever is happening or has happened, if you love God, then he is actively working to turn all things for good. Later in the Gospels we find that there were others who had a similar question for Jesus too in Luke 13:1-5, as they also wonder how can God let such bad things happen to righteous and good people (and possibly to try and trap Jesus with a tricky question): At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the...

Was there death before the Fall?

...f God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being" (Heb 1:3), and so the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus ought to be the way in which we view the Old Testament's views on death and afterlife - which would lead us to viewing ourselves as having a "soul" in the spiritual sense, and that the death in Adam was also a spiritual death that only Christ can reverse by sealing us and renewing us with Holy Spirit in this life (2 Cor 5:17; Eph 1:13; Eph 4:30), and then by looking forward to the hope of the resurrection to come (Rom 6:11; 1 Cor 15:20-22; 1 Pet 3:18). Jesus did more than restore us spiritually by defeating spiritual death, but also by def...

God before ages becomes an infant!

...thed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness. For this He assumed my body, that I may become capable of His Word; taking my flesh, He gives me His spirit; and so He bestowing and I receiving, He prepares for me the treasure of Life. He takes my flesh, to sanctify me; He gives me His Spirit, that He may save me.Come, then, let us observe the Feast. Truly wondrous is the whole chronicle of the Nativity. For this day the ancient slavery is ended, the devil confounded, the demons take to flight, the power of death is broken, paradise is unlocked, the curse is taken away, sin is removed from us, error driven out, truth has been brought back, th...

Raised in the Heavenlies!

...ad by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. While these verses (and many others) make it clear that through baptism we die to our old selves and are raised anew in Christ, we must also understand that this prefigures our future resurrection when we finally “put on immortality”. Though we will eventually die physically in the body, we won't die at all because death is defeated and it has no sting nor power over us! What happens in death? You may have heard of the term “soul sleep”, which is the doctrine that when a person dies, their soul (or spirit) “sleeps” in the grave until the resurrection, knowing and experiencin...

Lent Day 18: Cyprian: On the Unity of the Church: 1-9

...ts former glory, he decreed that all Christian bishops be killed and any laity to be forced to recant in the face of death. Many Christians at this time were martyred but there were many who also abandoned their faith and sacrificed to the gods in exchange for their lives, or bought a certificate to say they had when they hadn't. This was all considered sin and blasphemy by the Church, though many felt regret and wanted to be forgiven and restored. “But how can a man say that he believes in Christ, who does not do what Christ commanded him to do?” Cyprian argues, since the faith of many had become weak. It is not “persecution alone that is to be fear...

Lent Day 19: Cyprian: On the Unity of the Church: 10-18

...r his own glory to show that which is genuine in contrast to the false, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians: 1 Corinthians 11:19Indeed, there have to be factions (Gk. Heresies) among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. Of these people, Cyprian makes reference to Psalm 1 as those who sit “in the seat of pestilence”. He has much harsher words about them too, which I just have to quote in full so you can really understand how serious this matter of creating heresy and schism was taken: [They are] deceiving with serpent's tongue, and artful in corrupting the truth, vomiting forth deadly poisons from pestilential tongues; whose...