Fall Semester All Wrapped Up.

Hi All,

Maria and I have officially entered into a time of rest as all our papers are handed in. Christmas is always a much anticipated time for me as a student – focused time with the family and friends, and time spent with the Lord are my priorities for these few weeks.

I’m reading a book called “To Love as God Loves” by Roberta Bondi as a soul-nourishing read. I find God impressing upon me the imperative to love, and to love as he loves, which is totally contrary to how humans naturally love. We, as humans, orient our love to that which is naturally pleasing to us, that which we enjoy as ‘beautiful’ or ‘desirable’ according to our standards, but God’s love is different. In speaking about this difference, Luther puts it this way in his Heidelberg Disputation:

‘[Jesus said] “For I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” This is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which turns in the direction where it does not find good which it may enjoy (like human love) but where it may confer good upon the bad and needy person.”

God’s love is the love of the cross, a kind of love which I am asking the Holy Spirit to produce in me. This is the love that comes all the way down to us in Christ and which sends the people of Christ all the way ‘down’ to love the ‘unlovable’.

……………
post script

Some recent papers and a sermon:

– The Presence of Christ in the Church (for Systematic Theology 1)
– The Seven City-Churches of Revelation 2 and 3 (for my Theology of the City class)
– “A Change of Clothes”; Romans 13.11–14 (sermonette for preaching class)