If the church is to be the non-judgmental, unconditionally loving, corporate body of Christ it is called to be, how will people be motivated and empowered to increasingly grow out of their sin and become more Christ-like? How do we practically grow in Christ-likeness when we are welcoming all into the celebration of the cessation of the ban? It is absolutely true that God has called us to make disciples, not mere believers (Matt. 28:19). How...

The cessation of the ban is only a celebration if it is centered on the life and love God offers to the people for free, without conditions. If we are proclaiming the cessation of the ban faithfully, the Pharisees of our day will be offended. How do we respond to the rage of the Pharisees? This is not something to be feared. It is rather something to be welcomed. The church can only be the conduit of God’s outrageous love if it stops being...

Fundamentally, the central purpose of the law was to drive us beyond it to Christ. By condemning us, the law exposes the impossibility of our ever living in perfect union with God so long as our relationship is filtered by our knowledge of good and evil. The law thereby prepares us to receive God’s judgment of our rebellious knowledge in Christ and opens us up to being reconciled with God in Jesus Christ. In his mercy, the all-holy God works...

As we are slowly unwrapping the dynamic between the truth and the lie in the Genesis narrative of the fall, we have found that the lie about God and the lie about us is overcome by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. God warned Adam and Eve that eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would bring death. Consequently, Adam and Eve passed from the realm of life, which is relationship with God, into the realm of death,...

We cannot know and love the truth about God without knowing and loving the truth about ourselves and our neighbors The very act that brought a false judgment about God also brought a false judgment about Adam and Eve, and thus about all of humanity. We cannot reject the truth about God without thereby rejecting the truth about ourselves and our neighbors. And we cannot refrain from loving God without thereby refraining from loving ourselves and...

Considering both our study, Repenting of Religion, and our approaching the beginning of a new year, I think the following video is worth a view. “Finding Peace in Surrender” – Jordan Peterson (38:55) Today is a good day to start anew. Not with some new diet or exercise plan, but with a new perspective on the judgments we make and the resulting actions or inactions from those judgments. First, in our relationship with God. By surrendering to Him...