The Surprising God

In this post we continue looking at the marks (identifying characteristics) of the Church as defined by the Nicene Creed . For other posts in this series, click a number: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ,  5 ,  6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ,  13 . We come now to the final clause of the Creed: We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.  Amen. In this post, we'll address the first part, one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. One baptism The framers of the Creed apparently took the phrase  one baptism from Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus ( Eph 4:4-5 ). Paul exhorts that congregation to a unity grounded firmly in the fact that there is but "one body and one Spirit...one Lord, one faith [and], one baptism." Why do Paul and the Creed highlight baptism but not the Eucharist? According to Thomas F. Torrance (in  The Trinitarian Faith ), it is because of the importa...

As Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films, is fond of saying, "Tell me a fact and I'll learn; tell me the truth and I'll believe; but tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever." How true (as every good teacher knows). Jesus, the Master Teacher, often made his point with a story. His stories pointed people to the greatest story of all:  The Story of God . At the center of this story is Jesus who, as Andrew Purves notes,"is the mediating center of revelation, whereby all of our knowledge of God is controlled" ("The Shape of Torrance Theology,"  Theology in Scotland,  vol XVI, p26). Because Jesus, who reveals God as God, has united himself to all humans through the Incarnation, his story is the story of all humankind. Our history is his-story. The story of Jesus as our representative and substitute, is the gospel. This story encompasses creation, fall, re-creation (redemption), leading to humanity glorified and dwelling with God in...

This post continues our examination of the marks (identifying characteristics) of the Church as defined by the Nicene Creed . For other posts in this series, click a number: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ,  5 ,  6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ,  12 ,  13 . We come now to the church's apostolicity, which Thomas F. Torrance (in  The Trinitarian Faith ) defines as follows: In its simplest sense the apostolicity of the Church refers back to the original foundation of the Church once for all laid by Christ upon the apostles, but it also refers to the interpenetration of the existence and mission of the Church in its unswerving fidelity to that apostolic foundation (p285). The Apostles were chosen and sent by Christ as a link between himself and the church. They would be this link by both teaching and embodying the truth of the Gospel (the deposit of faith), which is "the unrepeatable foundation on which the Church was built" (p286). This deposit includes the content of the Gospe...

In The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative  (IVP 2006), Christopher Wright leads us on a journey through the Bible using a "missiological hermeneutic." Concerning this journey, he asks... Is it possible, is it legitimate, is it helpful for Christians to read the whole Bible from the angle of mission?  The immediate challenge that bounced back was: it all depends on whose mission you mean. If by "mission" we are thinking of "missions," and the great and laudable efforts of cross cultural missionaries, then we would be struggling to defend an affirmative answer to the first question. While our human missionary endeavor can find ample justification and explicit textual imperative in the Bible, it would be a distorted and exaggerated hermeneutic, in my view, that tried to argue that the whole Bible was "about" mission in the narrowly defined sense of human missionary activities. He continues: The Bible renders and reveals to u...

Sunday, January 8, 2012 will be celebrated in many churches as Epiphany Sunday. This post about Epiphany repeats one that appeared here in  2008 . January 6 (the 12 th day of Christmas) is designated by church tradition as "Epiphany." It is celebrated by many churches on the following Sunday, known as "Epiphany Sunday."  The term epiphany means "to show," "make known" or "reveal." In some Western churches, it remembers the coming of the Magi (wise men) bringing gifts to the Christ child, who by so doing "reveal" Jesus as the Lord and King of all humanity (Jews and Gentiles included).  In some Eastern Churches, Epiphany also commemorates Jesus’ baptism by which he was consecrated in his mission as the God-man, sent from the Father, anointed by the Spirit, for the benefit of all humanity - indeed, for the benefit of all creation.  Epiphany powerfully presents the Gospel of the inclusion of all people (and all c...

To all Surprising God readers: Happy New Year! Here is a brief word for 2012: Jesus is alive! By this I mean that Jesus is not merely... A concept to be studied An historical personage to be emulated We are well advised, of course, to study and emulate Jesus. However, my prayer is that in 2012 we will experience and express even more fully the all-encompassing love and life of Jesus, our living Savior who is... The incarnate Son of God - fully God, and fully human. When Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, he did not shed his humanity. He remains human (now glorified) forever. Our Mediator . As both divine and human, Jesus continues to be the "go between" - the one who, in his own Person, unites humanity with God. Jesus is the Atonement.  Our High Priest . Jesus the God-man lives forever to make intercession for humanity. The One who sends the Holy Spirit to educate all humanity concerning who Jesus is, and thus who we are because of who he is....

This post continues our look at the marks (identifying characteristics) of the Church as defined by the Nicene Creed . For other posts in this series, click a number: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ,  5 ,  6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 11 , 12 ,  13 . We come now to the church's holiness and catholicity. Holiness As noted by Thomas F. Torrance in The Trinitarian Faith , though holiness is God's will for the church... ...[it] does not derive from any moral goodness or purity of its members, but from the holiness of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The holiness of the Church is thus objectively grounded in the utterly transcendent holiness, glory and purity of God's being (pp280-281). God comes among his people, the church, and in doing so sanctifies them - or as T.F. says, "implicates them" in God's own holiness. Coming among them as a holy God would annihilate his people, except that he comes with grace and mercy, and, ultimately, he comes through the incarnation of ...

Each Christmas reminds us anew of the glorious truth concerning the birth of Jesus Christ - God in the flesh come to rescue us through his life, death, resurrection and ascension. The video embedded below presents Christmas in this whole-gospel context. May your Christmas celebrations be similarly focused, leading to an even deeper appreciation of God's love for you and all humanity.

This post was contributed by worship leader Mike Hale. In The Lord and His Prayer , N.T. Wright says the word ‘Father’ in the prayer Jesus taught his followers (the Lord's Prayer) calls our attention to the revolutionary message and mission of Jesus that is the real Exodus message -- the message of the defeat of tyrants, oppressors and evil. It is the Father’s revolution that comes through the suffering and death of none other than the Messiah who is the Father’s Son.  Wright says our Lord taught us this prayer because the Advent message is that the Father’s revolution comes through the Messiah and his followers “sharing and hearing the pain of the world, that the world may be healed” (p 19). In John’s Gospel, Jesus uses the image of father and son to explain what he was himself doing. In that culture, the son is apprenticed to the father. He learns his trade by watching what the father is doing. When he runs into a problem, he checks back to see how his father tackles it. T...

One of the readers of this blog sent this question: Ephesians 1:13 says, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.”  How then can we say that the whole world is already included in Christ, when not everyone has yet heard the gospel? To answer, we need to note the larger passage in Ephesians chapter one (vv3-14, with v13 bold-faced): 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-- 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace 8 that he lavished on us wi...

The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry  by Andrew Root and Kenda Creasy Dean includes a chapter from Dean titled,  Ascension Deficit Disorder (Youth Ministry as a Laboratory for Hope). She masterfully shows that the purpose for eschatology (the study of God's ultimate purposes for humankind) is not to help us predict the future, but to give us hope - a commodity often in short supply due to what Creasy calls, " ascension deficit disorder (A.D.D.)," which is the tendency: ...to act as though the future God has promised in Jesus Christ is a fairy tale, which shrivels our ability to practice hope. When we don't believe that Christ's promise to secure the future is true, we live as people fearful for our own prospects, protecting ourselves instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to use us as Christ's witnesses. A.D.D. is the reason churches get distracted so easily from the work Jesus commissioned us for: to be his witnesses throughout the earth. Instead, we are sty...

In this post we continue looking at the marks (identifying characteristics) of the Church as defined in the Nicene Creed . For other posts in the series, click a number: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ,  5 ,  6 , 7 , 8 , 10 , 11 ,  12 ,  13 . As with the other marks of the Church, the Creed presents its oneness as grounded in its union and communion with the Holy Trinity. As noted by Thomas F. Torrance (in his book,  The Trinitarian Faith ), the Trinity is... The regulative center to which all the worship, faith and mission of the Church take their shape: from the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit, and to the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit (p263a).  The Creed thus proclaims a Christ-centered, incarnational (participatory), Trinitarian ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church). T.F. continues: Everything we say of the Church must be consistent with the consubstantial oneness between the Son and the Father and be an expression of the union and communio...

Is the God of the Old Testament a different God than the one portrayed in the New Testament? The answer is no, there is one God, who is revealed to us through Jesus as a triune communion of love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Certainly, the Old Testament is full of examples of God punishing various nations and people (including Israel, his own people). The following post from Surprising God reader Jerome Ellard, addresses this issue: "The Old Testament shows that God's punishments (or what he allows to beset his people) are the long, difficult road to restoration of relationship with him that he desires for them. All through the Old Testament we see the phrase "they will be my people and I will be their God." Here is a prime example, right in the middle of warnings and punishments: “Is not Israel still my son, my darling child?” says the Lord. “I often have to punish him, but I still love him. That’s why I long for him and surely will have mercy on him"...

This post was contributed by worship leader Mike Hale. In chapter one of The Lord and his Prayer , (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) N.T. Wright says that when we come to our personal place of prayer, among other things, we are coming to “lay hold of the love of God which has somehow already laid hold of us,” and that in our heart of hearts, we want to know and love him, and be able to truly call him Father. However the author also encourages us to ask what was going on in Jesus’ life when he called God Abba , Father, and taught his followers to do so too? What can we learn about who Jesus was and is, as well as about the mission of Jesus and all who Jesus taught to share in this prayer to Abba ? According to Wright, the word speaks to revolution and hope - the hope of Advent . True, the Lord’s use of the word Abba in the prayer reveals a new level of personal intimacy with God, but Wright also says the word drew into one point the vocation and salvation of Israel, noting The first o...

The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Durer, 1511 In this post we continue exploring the Nicene Creed . For other posts in this series, click a number: 1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 , 7 ,  9 , 10 , 11 ,  12 ,  13 . We come now to the section of the Creed that addresses the Church: [We believe] in the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Note that the Creed declares the church to be  one, holy, catholic  and apostolic . These identifying characteristics are sometimes referred to as the "marks" of the Church. It is vital to see these characteristics within the overall Trinitarian context of the Creed. One Church The Creed declares that the church to be one  in the sense that it is rooted in and thus expresses the essential oneness of the triune God. Reflecting on this, T.F. Torrance (i...

In this post we continue exploring the Nicene Creed . For other posts in the series, click a number: 1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 , 8 , 9 ,  10 , 11 , 12 ,  13 . We come now to the section of the Creed that addresses the Holy Spirit: The Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. As T.F. Torrance notes (in The Trinitarian Faith ), the Creed presents the Holy Spirit as... ...God himself...immediately present in our midst, miraculously and savingly at work, and through him God reveals himself as Lord , for God himself is the content of what he does for us and communicates to us. The Spirit is not just something divine or something akin to God emanating from him, not some sort of action at a distance or some kind of gift detachable from himself, for in the Holy Spirit God acts directly upon us himself, and in giving us ...

This post continues our series exploring the Nicene Creed (read other posts in the series by clicking a number:  1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 7 , 8 , 9 ,  10 , 11 ,  12 ,  13 ). We come now to important words defining the Person and work of Jesus Christ: Who for us men and our salvation, came down from heaven, and was made flesh from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God the Father. And he shall come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead; his kingdom shall have no end. A key point here is that our salvation is the act of God himself, who through the Incarnation... ...takes the concrete form of the actual historical man Jesus. As St Paul had expressed it: "God our Savior desires all men to be saved and to come to the  knowledge of the truth. Fo...

Here's a moving rendition of the Nicene Creed - a worshipful meditation with music. Enjoy! And for commentary on this important creed, click on the corresponding number of each post in a continuing series:  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 , 5 .

We must avoid the tendency to see our faith as what saves us, thus turning faith into a human work. For a related discussion (with a powerful illustration), watch the excerpt below from a You're Included interview with trinitarian theologian Dr. Elmer Colyer.  Click here  for more You're Included interviews.

This post is part 5 in a series on the Nicene Creed . To read others, click on a number: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ,  6 ,  7 , 8 , 9 ,  10 , 11 ,  12 ,  13 . In this post, we'll examine the section in the creed concerning Jesus Christ, God's Son: [ We believe ] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten from his Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father, through whom all things were made. Note how the creed defines Christ as  from his Father . In this eternal relationship, he is begotten   not made. The Father-Son relationship precedes any Creator-creature relationship. This, of course, was a key issue when the creed was written. All sorts of heretical ideas conceived of Jesus as some sort of creation of God rather than as true God . The creed shows such ideas to be false by asserting the biblical truth that Christ is the One through whom all things wer...

[Updated 7/25/2023] Can people get out of hell? To answer this question, we need to consider two others:  Is a person's fate determined permanently at death?  If not, on what basis might those in hell get out?  We'll address both questions in this post. "Dante and Virgil in Hell" by Bouquereau (public domain via Wikimedia Commons) Is a person's fate determined permanently at death? Many Christians answer "yes" to this question, typically citing Hebrews 9:27. In doing so, they understand this scripture to assert that upon death, a person is judged and the decision rendered at that time as to their eternal fate is then irreversible. However, in my view, using this passage in Hebrews to make that point is questionable. Note that the context of the verse is the universal scope of Jesus' substitutionary, atoning work, which he did "once for all" (Hebrews 9:26). He does not accomplish this work at some future time (such as some point p...