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Tag Archives: God is Love

God’s Mercy and the Problem of Evil

10 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Gerald Bray, Uncategorized

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Gerald Bray, God is Love, Grace, mercy, The Problem of Evil, Theodicy

Gerald Bray in God is Love has an interesting understanding of the problem of evil: Evil exists because God is merciful. This sounds counter-intuitive at first, but the argument is sound:

Logic and justice demand the appropriate punishment, but God’s love and mercy are greater than they are. In spite of everything his rebellious creatures have done and everything they so richly deserve, God has reached out to them and allowed and allowed them to remain in existence as a sign of his great love for them and of their continuing importance to him as beings he has made and over he he remains fully sovereign.

God is Love, p. 353. So we when we look to the cross, we must realize that it is the sheer mercy and grace of God that Pilate continued to exist and the soldiers were not instantly judged for their blasphemy. It is mercy and grace that the wood persisted and the nails could do their damage.

Bray pushes back and sees a greater wonder:

The preservation of Satan and his angels, and the limited but still significant authority given to them, is the great mystery of the world. If God had eliminated them after their revolt, there would be no problem of evil now because they would have been able to tempt Adam and Eve to fall away. The spiritual warfare in which they are engaged would not exist and the human race would presumably be fulfilling its God-ordained purpose in a world that did not know the power of evil. But this paradise was not to be. By allowing Satan to survive, God acquiesced in a situation in which a force opposed to him would hold sway over an important part of his created universe, and would hold sway over an important part of his created universe, and would be free to tempt the first human into following him. Why did God do this?

Ibid. Why indeed?

 

They will hear nothing.

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Gerald Bray, Ministry, Prayer, Preaching, Reading

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Christian Ministry, Gerald Bray, God is Love, Meditation, Prayer, Preachers, Preaching, Reading

But rightly understood, the daily discipline of Bible reading and prayer is essential for the growth of the Christian life. Those who abuse or ignore it suffer the consequences, and their ministry is adversely affected as a result. It does not take long for a discerning hearer to distinguish preachers who know what they are talking about those who do not, and intellectual attainment is seldom the deciding factor in their judgment. What people hear from preachers is what comes from their heart, and if that heart is not right with the Lord they will hear nothing. The weakness of preaching in many churches today has more than one cause, no doubt, but this must be on the main factors involved. “Practice what you preach,” is not simply a well-known proverb; it is the essential preparation for any truly successful gospel ministry.

Gerald Bray, God is Love, 99

An Occupational Hazard

11 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Gerald Bray, Ministry

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Christian Ministry, Counsel, Gerald Bray, God is Love, Occupational Hazard, Think

Preachers and teachers are under particular pressure, because they are constantly expected to be giving out and do not always have the time they need to refresh themselves. Forced to give an answer to every question, they can easily fall into the trap of giving a standard answer, when they have had no time to reflect on it or to put it into practice in their own lives. Getting ahead of oneself in this way is an occupational hazard of Christian ministry, and those engaged in it have a special duty to protect themselves by making an extra effort to put God first in their lives.

Gerald Bray, God is Love 98

Why Preaching?

08 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiology, Gerald Bray, Preaching

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Church, Church Definition, Ecclesiology, Gerald Bray, God is Love, Preaching

Gerald Bray asks, If anyone can buy a Bible and read, why preaching?

…the Bible, like any other aspect of the visible church, can be read and studied without any appreciation of the spiritual dimension to which it bears witness.

This is where preachers come in. They are men sent by God to bring his Word alive in the world. Their purpose is not merely to teach what the Bible says, thought that is important, but to challenge their hearers to receive that teaching in their hearts. A sermon is not a lecture but a plea to us to hear and submit to the authority of the Word of God. The problem with ancient Israel was not that they had not heard that Word but that it had not submitted to it in humble obedience. Unfortunately, what was true of them is also true of many people today because true preachers (as opposed to lecturers and pulpit entertainers) are few and their message is neglected. The true preacher is a man filled with the Spirit of God, who can bring his Word alive in that Spirit. As the fire in him spreads to those who hear him, the dry wood is set alight, and men and women come to know the power of The Lord Jesus Christ in their lives.

When this happens, the conversion of individuals leads to the creation of the new community that we call the church. Fire can exist only its own, but only for a time because eventually it will grow cold and be extinguished. Individual sparks need to find the full body of the blaze to which they can contribute and from which they will draw new life. That fire and that life can be found in the visible institutions which we call “the church,” but the two things are not identical. When we are alive in the Spirit, we live in the visible church but we see beyond it, knowing that our true home, and indeed the true Church of God is the spiritual body, which the Spirit’s heavenly fire brings to life in the world.

God is Love, 666-667.

Why the genealogies in the Bible?

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Hermeneutics, Image of God, Psalms

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1 Chronicles, 2 Timothy 2:11-13, alienation, Bible Interpretation, Calvin, Death, Ecclesiastes 1:4, Genealogies, generations, Genesis 1, Gerald Bray, God is Love, hermeneutics, image of God, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Psalm 8, Resurrection

Should you open the Bible to 1 Chronicles, you will find:

17 The sons of Shem: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram. And the sons of Aram: Uz, Hul, Gether, and Meshech.
18 Arpachshad fathered Shelah, and Shelah fathered Eber.
19 To Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg (for in his days the earth was divided), and his brother’s name was Joktan.
20 Joktan fathered Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah,
21 Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah,
22 Obal, Abimael, Sheba,
23 Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab; all these were the sons of Joktan.

1 Chronicles 1:17-23. It goes more or less in the same manner for pages. How is one supposed to understand such lists?

Calvin begins the Institutes of the Christian Religion with the observation that our knowledge consists of knowing God and knowing ourselves in relation to God (this is a gross simplification, but sufficient for our purposes). Gerald Bray in his book God is Love takes Calvin’s observation, turns it into three questions and then applies the questions to the text.

Bray first notes that a Christian must “make spiritual sense of passages like these” (59). Therefore, he asks three questions.

First question: “What do the genealogies reveal about God?” You see in the lists the names of human beings going from generation to generation — hundreds upon hundreds and thousands upon thousand whom God did not forget. Since the genealogies occur in the context of God’s dealings with humanity in light of God’s covenants, the genealogies, “tell us that he is a faithful Lord, who keeps his covenant from generation to another” (59). In Ecclesiastes 1:4, Qoheleth writes, A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

But above and greater than even the earth is the Creator of heaven and earth who remains faithful despite our failings:

11 The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us;
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful- for he cannot deny himself.

2 Timothy 2:11-13.

Second question, “What do the genealogies say about us?” Look at the lists: the men and women are nothing more than words, funny sounds – but we do not attach the sounds to any human being. Thus, the answer to Bray’s question is, “[F]rom the worlds point of view, most of us are nobodies” (59). That is a painful observation, but true.

It is painful, because we all know that we must be more valuable than to be a “nobody” — and yet, in the end, most of will be invisible to history. And even those who will be written down will become more and more obscure over time. Proof: Quick, name any ruler of the Hittite Empire.

Now, note Bray’s answer: It is in the eyes of all humanity that we are nobody — but the memory of the world is not the whole story. Think again: What if these men and women did not exist? What if they died without children? God has kept his words among human beings; and God has exercised his power before human beings, “We are part of a great cloud of witnesses, a long chain of faithful people who have lived for God in the place where he put them.”

Now, this does not end the analysis: There is knowledge of God and knowledge of humanity — there is also the point of interaction, “Finally, what do the genealogies say about God’s dealings with us?”

Before you jump to his answer, think for a moment. God has not abandoned history to blind forces. God has not gone far away and forgotten (even when we fear that we may be lost to space and time). But these lists tell us plainly that God has not forgotten, “They tell us that we are called to be obedient and to keep the faith we have inherited, passing it on to the next generation. They tell us that there is a purpose in our callings that goes beyond us” (59).

In short, while the genealogies demonstrate that we may be little in the eyes of men and women with little memory and little understanding; they also tell us that we part of the greater story of God’s work in the world.

There is then an application, We know that we exist for great things. We know that our life must be more than sensation, food, sleep. We all understand that there should be some magnificent about us. We desire such things, because we were made for such things. It was built into us when God created us:

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

Psalm 8:3-8. We were created as the capstone of creation — we were created in the image of God. Now sin and death have obscured that image, but the stamp is not gone. Indeed, God’s covenant and end have been directed toward restoring that image:

9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices
10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Colossians 3:9-11. Thus, when one is found in Christ, the gruesome weight of history which wears us down to invisibility is undone in Christ. Sin’s dominion is ended in the death of Christ. The waste of death is overcome in the resurrection of Christ. Alienation gone in the reconciliation of God and human beings in Jesus Christ. The genealogies with their endless story of death and death point us toward the need of Christ.

The Mark of a True Christian

11 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Acts, Discipleship, Quotations, Uncategorized

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Acts, Conversion of Saul, Discipleship, Gerald Bray, God is Love, Good Shepherd, love, Mark of a Christian, Paul, Quotations, True Christian, Uncategorized, Union with Christ

The mark of a true Christian is not a sheep who has gone looking for the Good Shepherd and found a man who seems to fit the bill, but someone who has been been looked for and found by God. ….Saul [St. Paul] had not found God; God had found him. Ananias did not persuade Saul to believe, nor did he argue about whether God exists. What he did was to claifyr for Saul something that he already new to be true form his experience but was unable to articulate. … The man who had told his disciples, “I am the truth and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” had met Saul on the road to Damascus, because he loved him. Jesus had given himself up to death so that Saul could live a new life in union with him. ….

Gerald Bray God is Love, 20-21

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