Podcasts about christ god

Episode Synopsis:I am reluctant to say that one portion of Scripture is more important than others.  But there are biblical passages packed with theological content and which have stirred much debate among the people of God across time, as does our text for this episode, 2 Corinthians 5:14-6:2.  In this section, Paul lays out what might just be the big picture thesis statement for Paul's Gentile mission–and perhaps even for the entire New Testament–1 Corinthians 5:19- “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”  Christ's redemptive mission is made clear–he came to save sinners, not help us become better people nor transform culture.  He also gave to the church our marching orders–preach the message of reconciliation, the basis for all Christian hope–the knowledge that God is no longer angry with us.Reconciliation is an important matter for Paul.  The term refers to removing the ground of hostility between two parties so that they might be reconciled.  In this case, the human race, fallen in Adam, is estranged from the holy God because of the guilt of our sins.  But Paul's emphasis falls upon the fact that we have been reconciled to God through the saving work of Christ.  This raises questions about the nature and extent of the atonement–a major point of contention between Calvinists and those who hold to some version of a universal atonement.  How can Calvinists affirm that Christ died for the elect only when Paul says Jesus died for the world?  But then how can those holding to a universal atonement (as do Arminians) affirm that Christ's death does not avail for all those for whom he died?  People can and do perish eternally (on this view), after Christ has died for them.  We'll discuss the debate over the nature and extent of the atonement in this episode because our text raises these important questions.A second issue raised by Paul is eschatology.  His “two Adams” doctrine (cf. Romans 5:12-21) and his eschatology of new creation culminating in a day of final judgment is set out in these verses.  In Paul's federal or representative categories, Adam represents the entirety of the human race (all), while Christ represents those truly in the new covenant (for our sake).  Paul ties the new creation to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (v. 17) and sees it as a present reality to be fully realized on the day of salvation, when our Lord Jesus returns to raise the dead, judge the world, and usher in the fullness of new creation–a new heaven and earth.  This leaves no room for a future millennial age as many assume.When Paul speaks of a favorable time before the day of salvation, he's referring to the mission of the church as assigned here.  Christians are ambassadors for God, and are given the assignment of taking the message of reconciliation (the cross of Christ) to the ends of the earth.  Paul's instructions not only define the church's mission and evangelistic endeavors, but he also defines the church's message– “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.”  Any message proclaimed by the church other than that specifically assigned by Paul will inevitably reflect pagan influences such as those against which the Corinthians found themselves struggling.  We are not to be gospel-peddlers, but preachers of Christ and him crucified!For show notes and other recommended materials located at the Riddleblog as mentioned during the Blessed Hope Podcast, click here: https://www.kimriddlebarger.com/

How will we escape the law if we neglect God's own testimony about His Son? God has shown us the way of escape and it is through the perfect high priest, Jesus Christ. We must not harden our hearts to Him. In this episode, Pastor Taylor talks about God's own testimony in Hebrews 2:1-4.Get Connected! https://linktr.ee/reachtulsa

2025-11-09 What is Biblical Forgiveness?by Pastor Chris BergScripture References: (multiple, including the following)Ephesians 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.Colossians 3:13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.Matthew 18:15-17 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.Luke 17:3-4 So watch yourselves. “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. 4 Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,' you must forgive them.”Isaiah 66:2 Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” declares the Lord. These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.1 Peter 5:5 In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”Leviticus 6:1-5 The Lord said to Moses: 2 “If anyone sins and is unfaithful to the Lord by deceiving a neighbor about something entrusted to them or left in their care or about something stolen, or if they cheat their neighbor, 3 or if they find lost property and lie about it, or if they swear falsely about any such sin that people may commit— 4 when they sin in any of these ways and realize their guilt, they must return what they have stolen or taken by extortion, or what was entrusted to them, or the lost property they found, 5 or whatever it was they swore falsely about. They must make restitution in full, add a fifth of the value to it and give it all to the owner on the day they present their guilt offering.1 Peter 2:23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.Ephesians 4:31-32 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.==================================================================================================================Mandeville Bible Church   "Where God's Word is Our Foundation"https://www.mandevillebiblechurch.org/Come and see that God's Word is alive and at work right here in Mandeville.. and throughout the world!All are welcome. 217 Carroll Street, Mandeville, LA 70448Church Office: (985) 626-3114Sunday Service: 9:30 AMAdult Sunday School: 10:45-11:30 AMNursery and Children's church available.==================================================================================================================

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptWell, good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are working our way through our membership commitment. Normally we're working our way through books of the Bible. We are taking this season as a church family to say, hey, let's remember the things that we've committed together and let's recommit to these. We have a membership commitment. It looks like this. It's a one sheet piece of paper. It's got 14 points on it. It is intentionally simple. We are saying, hey, we believe the Bible and we're going to practice the things that the Bible calls us to. And this is some of how we're going to practice that together. The first ones are just, the first seven are things that we believe that we hold to, to be true. Number eight says, I actually believe that. I'm going to go apply that. And then from there on we're saying, this is how we're going to practice that here.If you are a Christian, you should belong to a local church that has some authority in your life. You, you should be around Christians who you are beholden to, to walk out the things of what it looks like to be a Christian. And this is just us saying, this is how we're going to try to practice that together. Here we've made it to point number 12 of 14 and we are turning and saying, this is what it looks like as we kind of face outward as we work as missionaries together. I don't know if you know this and hopefully by the end of the day it'll be clear, but if you belong to Jesus, you are on his mission, you're a part of his mission, which means that you are a missionary out in a mission field. Do you know that? Well, now you do. Some of you are foreign missionaries. Welcome. Please help these Americans meet Jesus. Some of you are like, I didn't move anywhere. I'm not a missionary. I grew up here. It's like, well, you did grow up here, but that doesn't make you not a missionary. That just means God has you here for you to be a part of his work here. And so we're going to look at that together.I'm going to pray and we'll read number 12 and then we'll start seeing, where does the Bible say this, how does the Bible say this? And how do we practice this together? Lord, we ask for your to bless our time. We ask for you to empower your word. We ask that we would actually, as we follow you and walk in the Spirit, do these things so that so more people might come to know you in Jesus name. Amen.So number 12 says this. Empowered by the Spirit and partnering with my community group, I will obey Christ's call in everyday life to advance his mission of redemption by proclaiming the Gospel and making disciples. That's why we call it our membership commitment. We are committing two things. Let me read that again. Empowered by the Spirit, partnering with my community group, I will obey Christ's call in everyday life to advance his mission of redemption by proclaiming the Gospel and making disciples. That center phrase there, his mission of redemption is kind of what everything else is built into coming out of that. Jesus has a mission of redemption that he came to redeem sinners, to rescue, to make them whole, and that we're on this where John chapter 20, verse 21, he says to his disciples,> Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you."So the church, his disciples are sent out the same way that he was sent. We're joining him in his mission. This is the way Paul puts it in second Corinthians says,> All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.That what Jesus was doing was there was a lost world of people who were in rebellion and sin and Jesus died on the cross to pay for their sin. That he rose again so that we might have forgiveness and life. And there's forgiveness proclaimed in his name and hidden through his death. He is reconciling the world back to himself. That the gap between us and God because of our sin and rebellion is paid for. And then it says, he's given us the ministry of reconciliation that is in Christ. God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, meaning there's a way for us to find forgiveness through the work of Jesus and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. That that message has been given to the Church. This is why we say when we finish up on Sunday mornings and we're about to leave, we remind ourselves of this mission, this message, and we repeat consistently the Church's plan A for this message to go forward. There is no plan B. We've been entrusted with a ministry of reconciliation. We've been entrusted with the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal for through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. We're sent with a message to implore, to plead, to call people to be reconciled. This is something that we're Commissioned to go do this has been given to the church. We're joining him in this mission.So let's go back to that first phrase, empowered by the Spirit. Partnering with my community group. Now, that's tagging back to some of the things we've already said in our membership commitment, that we're empowered by the Spirit, we're equipped for mission and service. I will say this briefly. If you are a Christian and you're like, I just want to know what it's like to walk in the Spirit. I want to know and live in the Spirit, then you have to do the things of the Spirit. And you have to do things that you need the Spirit for. You have to go and join him in mission and service. And then the Spirit empowers that. The Spirit does not empower eating Doritos and watching football. There are things that we partake in in life that we don't need to lean into the Spirit for now, sometimes the Spirit empowers you, repenting of how many Doritos you ate. He helps us with self control, but he's not empowering some of the things that we're partaking in. And if we want to walk in the Spirit, we're supposed to join him in this. And so we're saying, I'm empowered by the Spirit. I'm going to. Then we put partnering with my community group.We yesterday had our fall festival. In a few weeks, we'll start our Give series, our Give project, together as a church. And that's really it. As far as the things that we say, hey, our whole church is going to go do this together. We very rarely say, hey, we want our whole church to go do this. Most of the time, our groups are just serving and working and laboring alongside of each other. So we have groups that serve at homeless shelters and groups that have partnered to feed people and work on houses or build wheelchair ramps or groups that are hosting parties intentionally to welcome people who don't know Jesus. We have groups all over the place doing things all the time. Every once in a while, we'll say, hey, this group bit off a little more than they can chew. And if other groups would like to join them, they sure would appreciate that because they got excited and committed to some things that are kind of expensive, labor intensive. They're going to get after it. But we'd love for two or three groups to partner with them. But most of the time, it's just your group. What are you gifted in? What are you good at? And y' all are partnering Together. And the mission is served by us going together. So that's what we're saying. We're going to do this.In this context, I will obey Christ's call. This is not an optional thing. It is a matter of obedience. Matthew 28. Jesus, after his resurrection, he says he came and said to them,> And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."He's talking to his disciples. Go, therefore, and make disciples. Okay? So he says, go do with them what I've done with you. Go make disciples. Go equip people. Do exactly what I've been doing with you. You're going to go do that with them. And then he says, of all nations, at this point, he had 11 disciples. It's a big ask of 11 guys. There's an assumption baked into this that as they make disciples, those disciples are going to go make disciples. That this is something that's given to all of those who are going to be brought into this. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. So it's for the entire earth until the end of the age. It's given to the disciples who are going to make more disciples, who are going to follow in this and continue. Which means that if you belong to Jesus, you are a part of the gospel going forward to the nations. Because this was not said in English, but it's made it here now. And if you belong to Jesus, you're here now as a part of this effort to join in.What does it look like to make disciples now, there are times in the Bible where someone is set aside for a specific purpose. We see that in Acts, chapter 13, there's a church, they're praying, and the Spirit specifically while they're praying and fasting, says, send Paul and Barnabas out to go do this, what I've asked them to do. So some people are going to stay and help send, and some people are going to go. That happens in Galatians. Paul talks about he has a ministry specifically to Gentiles, just like Peter has a ministry specific to Jewish people. That happens. My grandparents were missionaries to Nigeria. They learned Yoruba, trained to do medical work, and went and lived in Obama Shah to be missionaries. Which means that by learning Yoruba and moving to a Bomasha, they didn't learn Arabic and move to Lebanon. It's pretty straightforward. Seems Pretty self explanatory. But Ben Johnson, who is a part of our church and helps run 1040 Hope for the 1040 window, was in a class in Bible school and they were talking about the unreached people in the Islamic world. And he said he went back to his dorm and he wept at the idea that there were so many people following Islam, following Muhammad and not Christians. So he learned Arabic and moved to lebanon and started 1040 Hope. He works here now, helping send and equip missionaries. Sometimes people are set aside for specific tasks. But no matter where you are, where God has you, you're called to this, you're called to help send, and you're called to participate in this mission field, in this mission work, that we're a part of his mission of redemption. And I praise Jesus that there are people in Cayce and West Columbia and Irmo and Columbia that are here that know Jesus and are trying to reach people who don't know Jesus. So that's what we're saying, is that we're going to participate.That's what Romans 10 says. He just said,> For "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!"Somebody's got to go. Somebody's got to sin. Somebody's got to go. Somebody's got to say it so that they can hear it. Once they hear it, then they can believe. Once they believe, then they can call on him. But Paul says none of that happens if we aren't going and we aren't talking. So that's where we come to what we're committing to, which is that we're going to practice this in everyday life, that in your normal everyday life, you're going to take the call to Christ's mission seriously. We're going to be mindful of it, active in it, aware of it.So what we're going to do for the rest of our time is we're going to look at where Paul talks about this in Colossians. There's a lot of places we could go, but we're going to go to Colossians chapter four and we're just going to look and kind of walk through the way he says it, what he says, and try to grow together. And what does this actually look like, how do you be what we call everyday missionaries? How do I do that? What does that look like? So let's read Colossians 4.> Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison—that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.So that's what he says, I want you to be in prayer. Then he says, at the same time. So while you're praying, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the Word to declare the mystery of Christ. But that would be the first thing, is to be praying for an opening for the Word. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the Word. And now he's specifically saying, pray that for us. But he's told them to be praying. And it would be a good thing for us to be praying for ourselves as well. For you to be praying for your group, for us to be praying for our church, that there would be an opening for the Gospel.So we start there. If you are going, how do I be in everyday mission? I don't even know where to begin. You begin by asking the Lord, give me opportunities, open a door, help me to be in the right spot, help me to meet the right person. Help there to be a window for this. You begin to pray for the people on your shift. You begin to pray for the people on your road. You begin to pray for the people who work out at the same gym. You begin to pray, Lord, may there be an opening. May there be an opportunity. May you give me, put me in the right place. I know somebody who used to say they would pray, lord, you fill my plate. You just be the one who puts on my plate what I have today. And you're asking, lord, put me in a place where I can share the gospel. So we start by praying. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that. We've got more things we're going to spend a little more time on. But we begin there. We begin by praying.Then he says that we may declare the mystery, which means that part of being an everyday missionary is that at some point we have to open our mouths and see the gospel. I said that. My grandparents were missionaries in Nigeria. They went as medical missionaries. My granddad actually became an obstetrician, an OB GYN because they said we need more OB GYNs to go do mission work. Which means that primarily what he did with his time was helped run a hospital, deliver babies. He would ride a bicycle around and help give out vaccinations. And he passed away this past November. And I was looking through his journal of his time there. And the very first page says, as you go preach, it's a reference to Matthew 10. You go to the next page and he talks about, I know I'm going to do mission work to medical mission work. I know I'm going to help run a hospital. But as I'm on my rounds and as I go village to village, I'm there to tell them about Jesus. He understood that it wasn't just the work of serving people who needed real, tangible earthly needs met. It wasn't just the in breaking of the kingdom, in a kindness and a service for the sake of healthy born babies, but that he was there to be able to articulate the gospel. And without an articulation of the gospel, it's incomplete. So we want your group to serve at a soup kitchen. We want your group to host a party. We want your group to do whatever it is in front of you that you're gifted to do. We want you to go be a part of a prison ministry. But we want, as you do these things, to love others, that you would articulate the gospel because at some point we have to declare it.Which brings us to the next thing that Paul says, which I'm very thankful that he says it. He says, pray also for us so there'd be a door open that we may declare the mystery of Christ and that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. The reason I love that is because Paul was aware that there were times where he had tried to share the gospel and it was unclear. There were times where the Apostle Paul was like, oh my gosh, I rabbit trailed all over the place. What was I even? How did I get from here to there? Or I made that way too complicated, Or I jumped this thing. Like I'm so thankful that he's aware this is something that I should practice, prepare in. That's what Peter says. Be prepared to give an answer. Which this means is one if you think, well, I'm not good at it. I tried that and I did a poor job. Cool. You're in a club with the Apostle Paul. That doesn't mean that there's some people who are just always good at it and some people who aren't. It means that this is a normal thing when you're trying to articulate the gospel to people, that you might mess it up a little bit. You might not exactly know where to what to say next. But it also means that we should pray about this and get better at it. You should work on how to clearly articulate the gospel.So I'm going to give you a starting place for that. This is where I think you should start. If you're like, I don't know how to share the gospel with somebody. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Pray and then do this. These are my starting places for you. I'm going to walk you through these briefly, and then I'll show you a little bit of how they work. First is if you're like, I don't even know where to go. In the Bible, if somebody walked over to you and said, hey, will you share the gospel with me? Where does the Bible say this? And you're like, okay, hold on. And you just. Romans Road is what people call it. But it's just verses in the book of Romans that clearly articulate it. And you can just kind of go to the book of Romans and work your way through. So it's Romans 3:23, 5:8, 6:23, 8:1, and 10:9. You can do 10, 9 all the way up to 13 if you want.> For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.> But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.> For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.> There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.> If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.You can do 10, 9 all the way up to 13 if you want. Romans 3:23 says that everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Five, eight says that Christ loved us in that while we were still sinners, he died for us. 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus. So you're going to say you're a sinner. There's hope because he loves us enough to die for us while we're sinners. There is the wages of sin. What you've earned your wage, your paycheck for sin is death. But there's a gift that's in Christ. Then Romans 8 says, there's no more condemnation for those who are in Christ. So that if you're in Christ, if you actually belong to him, then you don't get the wages of sin, but you get this gift of eternal life. You get no condemnation. And then 10, 9 says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. So then you get to go to Romans 10, 9 and say, do you believe that? Do you want that? Do you want to trust him? Do you want to confess? And it's just a way to say clearly a picture of the Gospel. So if you have nowhere, start there, learn at least the references so you can get a Bible out and show them. You have your phone in your pocket. Get a Bible app. That's a good place to Start.The other ones are concepts. There's a lot of people around you who do not know the basic storyline of the Bible. They think they do, or they think that we've all collectively moved on past Jesus and they don't need to know this information. It used to be you could start off by assuming people knew that the Bible, the basic storyline of the Bible, and you could start with just you're a sinner. And sometimes that would connect with people. But now a lot of people don't even know the basic storyline of the Bible. This is the basic storyline of the Bible. Creation, fall, redemption, restoration. Creation is that God made the world good. And we see this. You can connect with people on this all the time. There's a lot of really beautiful, wonderful things out in the world. Flavors, you guys. God designed the world and he made it to where food gets to taste good. That was nice of him. He didn't have to do that, but he made food good. Some chilies win awards. There's flavor, there's good, there's beauty in the world. Then there's the fall, which is that our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned, they rebelled against God and the curse enters the world and the world is broken. And we can see that clearly too, that there's so much wrong in the world. And some of the reasons it's so painfully wrong is because how beautiful it was or how much promise it held or how it could have been great if it weren't for blank. So it's creation and fall are seen clearly all the time. Redemption is that Jesus comes to fix that. He comes to reclaim the garden. He comes to buy back the people in rebellion. That there's this storyline of redemption. And actually we're all trying to live that out. We're all looking for something to fix the problem. And we're told that Christ is the only one who can. And restoration is that at some point all the sin and all the evil and all the brokenness is gone and it's fixed. There's no death, there's no pain, there's no suffering. That's the basic storyline of the Bible. And everybody's living in that storyline, whether they know it or not. We'll talk a little bit later about how to filter that into conversations, but I just wanted you to give the concept.The next one, which is more of a zoomed in version of the same kind of thing, is that there's a functional hell, a functional savior, and a functional heaven. So this is, if I'm trying to talk to somebody. And I'm trying to filter in these basic concepts. Functional hell is just whatever's really broken in your life at this moment. Or what would be the worst thing, the thing of nightmares that's chasing you down. There's something that is just, if I get stuck in this, it'll be awful. And then functional heaven is where that's not the case anymore. And so your functional savior is whatever gets you out of functional hell and into functional heaven. Functional meaning practical, current. Let me give you an example. You might have a co worker or a friend who grew up really poor and poverty for them is their functional health. They might be currently really poor. And that's all that, that's affecting them in life. They just don't have the money to handle the next thing that's coming. And so they're constantly talking about their functional heaven, which is, if I just had enough money, I'd be fine, then I'd be okay, everything would be fixed. And so their functional savior is their job that they currently have. But this could be as someone who's not poor anymore. It could be someone who's currently in the middle of poverty and fighting it. But their job, they want the job. They have some vague future job. Like they're just, they've got something that's going to get them from point A to point B. And as we're listening to them and relating to them, we have opportunities to understand. Well, actually Jesus is a better answer for these things. He's a more complete answer. He's actually a real response these things. Like he works in all this stuff to undo all of this and we have the ability to begin to speak in. So I'm going to give you examples of that in just a second. But let's keep following what he says so that you would make it clear and you'd learn some of these basic things. I think that's a good place to start. And again, like I said, I'm gonna show you two examples or some examples of the how that works in a conversation in just a moment when we get there, alright?Verse 5. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders making the best use of the time. So he says, be praying for an open opening for the gospel, that we might declare it, that we might make it clear. And then he looks at the church and says, walk in wisdom towards outsiders making the best use of those are those people who are outside of Christ that you should use your wisdom, ingenuity, intentionality for the sake of. How do I relate to people who don't know Jesus, and that you should make good use of the time. So when we talk about being an everyday missionary, this is some of what this means practically for us. We don't do a lot of things in this building. We meet on Sundays. We meet in community groups. We want you to walk in church, family. We don't have a ton of things on our calendar. This is a constant thing. When we go to add anything to the calendar, we sit and debate whether or not we should ever have anything on a calendar. We know that meeting and doing things is good, but, boy, we don't like it every time we plan something. It's just your pastors, just so you know. We don't want things on the calendar because we don't want you having a whole bunch of things to do here and missing out on being in the places where the people are that don't know Jesus.There are a lot of churches in this city. If someone wants to come follow Jesus, if they're looking for Christ, they'll come. They can show up. But there are a whole lot of people who do not want to be here. No, thank you. They don't want to come to your group meeting. They don't want to show up on Sunday. We have to go where they are. So we want you to coach a Little League team, join a bowling league. We want you to go be out in the world around people who don't know Jesus for the sake of being a missionary. So when we talk about making the best use of the time, what we'll do with people. I've done it consistently being a pastor here is we'll sit down and just go, hey, what time do you wake up in the morning? What time do you go to bed? What happens in between? What does Sunday look like? What does Monday look like? What does Tuesday look like? What's your schedule? What's your job? Because it's possible that you work out four days a week and you see the same people repeatedly. Okay, learn their name. Start praying for them. Take your headphones out, Start talking to people. And you might say, well, that's weird. Okay, be weird for the sake of people knowing Christ. Some of you work jobs where someone is stuck with you 40 hours a week. The only way to get away from you is to quit. And they need this job. So start praying for them and start talking to them. And start asking for openings for the gospel to make the best use of your time, we say things like, don't go eat in your car. Eat in the break room. If someone invites you To a thing, go to it. And you can complain to the Lord. You can lament to him. You can say, lord, I'm going to be really stressed out. I'm not going to know anybody. This is going to be really hard. And then you can say, so empower me with the spirit. Help me to get over that. Help me to go have a good time. Help me to make a friend. Open the door for the opportunity. Let me find the other person who's standing around awkwardly. I'll go talk to them and then go, we don't want to have a church kickball team. We want you to go join a kickball team with pagans and become real friends with them so that you might share the gospel with them.So if you look at your schedule and you go, I work from home. I don't have any roommates. I'm not in class with anybody. I don't know anybody. Then we just start going, okay, well, then you've got to get creative to make the best use of your time. And we'll help you plot on that. And you can talk to your group. But also you might say, I don't know anybody. I don't know how to make a friend. I've never made a friend in my life. Then we would say, join a community group. Those people have to be your friends. Step one. And then ask the people in that group, who are your friends? I'm gonna need to hang out with you. I want to join you in what you're doing. I tell my group this all the time, but if you invite someone to lunch and they'll go to lunch with you, you can just bring someone from our group to that lunch. They can't stop you. You can just be like, oh, so good to see you. Also got Logan to join us. Have a seat. What are they going to say? I thought it was just going to be us. They're not going to say that. And now they know someone else in your group. You're going out of your way to make the best use of the time. You're working together. Like, we get to do these things. But you're trying to think through, who am I around, where am I at, who's stuck with me, and how do I get to be on mission with Jesus there? Because those people need to know Christ, and we want you there. We want you to gather with us on Sunday, study the Bible, pray together. We want you to get with your group. This is why we have a review, the mission section where we're trying to talk through how's it going? What are you doing? Praying with each other, thinking it through. But then we want you out doing this. Okay? Making the best use of time.Then he says, let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Okay, Ought to answer, meaning that there is a. We are things that we're supposed to be saying. We already know that. So there are things that we should be including in conversations that we have conversations where we should be gracious, grace filled conversations and seasoned with salt. I don't think that means just be interesting. You know, he's not just like, bam, flavor your conversations up. I think he's saying be intentional about how you speak to people making the best use of the time to declare the gospel.You know how like 95% of news anchors have worked to have this like generic American accent? Like they, they've gotten good at it, they practiced it, they just have neutral American. I think that most of us also have a practiced neutral American way that we talk to people who are not Christians. That if someone asked you who was in your community group that you've been walking with, trying to follow Jesus, if they said, hey, you know, I'm about to get married, do you have any advice? You might say something like, well, Ephesians 5 says, Matthew 19 says, here's one of the things we know as we follow Jesus, you might just. But if someone at work says, you got any marriage advice? I think a lot of us are more likely to jokingly quote a movie before we are to talk about anything that has to do with Christ because we know what we're supposed to do, have our generic American answers. Stop that. I've told this story a lot, but it was pivotal for me in my trying to figure out how to do this. I was in seminary. I was working at Sears selling appliances and yes, Fortune 500 company. You're right. It was a very excellent place to be. I'm not trying to brag. All right. Anyway, just trying to make ends meet. Was working there. And there was a guy I worked with who we would just be talking about, whatever, shift slow, or just having discussions about sports, money, life, whatever. And he would consistently say, well, I'm a Muslim, so we. I'm a Muslim, so I. Well, the Quran says he just did this all the time, all the time. And I had known him for months. And then suddenly one day I was like, wait a second, I can do the same thing. He's been teaching me Islam for like three Months. And I can be saying, well, I'm a Christian, so we believe I'm a Christian. So the Bible says I'm a Christian. And just applying it to me, that was part of it. He was just applying it to himself. He was just telling me, here's why I would think about it this way, because this is what I'm taught. And every time, I just found it interesting just listening to him, being slightly discipled at work on how to be a good Muslim. That's what I was doing. And I was like, this is. This is excellent. I can do this. So I started just responding, well, I'm a Christian, so we believe this, we think this. And it's a way to just incorporate it. It's pretty neutral. I'm just talking about myself, but I'm getting to articulate the gospel. I'm getting to articulate how the Bible influences my choices. I'm getting to have my conversation seasoned with salt.All right, let's talk through some of. Like, if you're thinking, okay, I want to do this. I want to figure out how to get this into conversations. It feels really weird, feels really hard. I want you to understand that this is some spiritual warfare stuff. The enemy doesn't want you to do this. There are some opposition things to this. It's not going to be the easiest thing. You're going to feel tense, adrenaline. You're going to have to lean into the spirit for this. All that's true, but I also want to just give you some practical things to consider and ways to apply some of this. I want to tell you a story about. I don't think I'm the best at this, but I trying to relate some of the stories, some ways that I've seen this work and some of the ways that I've been able to have this conversation.There was a guy who was putting in a panel at my house, and he was struggling. He's on, like, his fourth hole that he had drilled into the wall. He's over there, I mean, fighting it. And he's got some work to do to fix the problems he's causing at my house and to do the thing. But he's made more problems since he got here. He hadn't even done the thing he was supposed to do. That's what he was doing. But, y', all, he's stuck at my house. He can't leave unless he wants to quit his job. So I'm like, well, I better make the best use of the time. I have no real desire to like, talk to him. Just so, personal. If you're like, my personality is not like yours. My personality is to go live in the woods. My wife and I daydream about that. What if we just lived somewhere and didn't know people? We've gotten over it. We love y' all dearly, but we've had to work to get past that. And some days, we still want the woods, you guys. But I'm going, okay, I gotta. He's here. Let me try to, you know. And so what I said to him, I did. Creation, fall, redemption, restoration. I said, man's it fighting you? He's like, you know, he's trying not to be like, I'm ruining your house. But he was like, yeah, it's not going great. And I said, yeah, you know, I'm a Christian. And the Bible starts off. It says that God created the world and it was beautiful and that Adam and Eve rebelled. And it tells us that because Adam rebelled, work is cursed. So it's always like this, man. Most of the work, I always find that most of the work I'm doing, I can get 80% of it done in 20% of the time. And then I have, like, one screw that. I fight for four hours and go to Lowe's six times. And it takes it because it's cursed. It fights me. I was like. And that's one of the things that I think is wonderful about being a Christian is it says, jesus has come to redeem all this, to fix all this, and one day, it's not going to be a thing anymore. We ended up having a bit of a conversation out of that, but it was just. Anywhere there's brokenness, anywhere there's beauty, we can connect to creation and fall. And this happens all the time. We see beauty all the time. These are things that people point out to you all the time. They'll point out beauty to you all the time. Look at how wonderful that is. And we get to respond. Yeah, you know, I'm a Christian. The Bible says God designed all of this good and beautiful. And it's the beginnings of a conversation. It's seasoned a little bit. Somebody points out brokenness to you. They do this all the time. This is the worst. This is awful. Can you believe this? Yeah, I can. We've entered into a conversation about the fall. I can enter right into that. The Bible has a lot to say about fear and doubt and injustice and brokenness. And it also has a lot to say about the person who fixes that. The hope that we have to think through the functional savior thing.I had a friend who, the more I knew him, a big part of his story was how broken his home life was growing up. And it just factored really big in his life. Makes sense. And then he would daydream and he would talk about like his, his whole hope. The storyline of his life was get married, white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and not do the stuff my parents did. He was on a redemption arc. And so in that story, he has a functional hell and he has a functional heaven. So I can start listening for what's his functional savior. Some of it was him being a good father was going to come later, but it also was whoever he was dating at the time was going to take him from hell to heaven. Which meant a couple of things. He was going to put either way too much pressure on this person because he needs them to save him, or he was going to be too excited about the concept, the prospect of who this person was. That he was going to overlook a lot of things because this was his chance and it could be really bad, but he was just going to let it be really bad because this is going to be. Because it's not the reality of the situation, it's what it represents. And so I now, knowing the gospel, knowing this person, knowing their story, have ways to begin to fit in. Hey, man. I can agree with him on the brokenness. I can agree with him that this is good, but I can't agree with him that it'll fix everything. There actually is a better family and a better hope and an eternal one. And there's a better savior who actually can undo this in his heart in a way that this can't. She can't. There's a God who can speak to these things that are broken deep inside of him that she can't, won't ever be able to. And the expectations of that will crush her. So I have the ability to begin to speak in because I understand functional health, functional savior, functional heaven. And so this is a helpful way for you to begin to listen to the people that you're around and try to understand what are they thinking will fix this? What are they thinking will make this better? What are they thinking will save me? What do they think is broken? What do they think would be good? I had someone who's group leader in our church recently say this has been one of the biggest benefits of being in a community group for them is that we're consistently sharing the gospel with one another in our groups and it helped him understand how to do that at work, how to apply the gospel to all these different situations, how to begin to speak the gospel in all these different situations in a way that made sense.Okay, so we're going to turn off generic American responses. We're going to be praying for the Lord to give us some opening. We're going to have some mental preparation on how the general storyline works. We're going to begin listening for these things. And then here's what we're going to do. We're going to make some conversations kind of awkward, but not terribly awkward. But you actually have openings for these types of conversations all the time. Because people constantly ask you to agree with them. Constantly. They talk and talk and talk and then they say, right, you know what I'm saying? Isn't that what you would do? Don't you think? And how often have you listened to someone say things that no, I don't think. No, not right. No, that's not what I would do. And how many times have I just gone. Does that just. Why do I need to get in the middle of this mess? I'm like the kid in Christmas Story who just goes football even though he wants a red Rider carbon action single shot air rifle with a compass in the stock. Like he just is. He's got something he really wants, but he's lost. He's just not paying attention. He's just dumbfounded. Like this. So they say, right? Isn't that what you would do? Just go, no. First of all, it'll be fun, don't you think? How would you handle that? Whatever. They ask you this all the time, you know what I'm saying? No, I wouldn't do that at all. But we get these situations all the time. Someone says, you enter into a conversation where they're talking about what they would do if they won the lottery. Now pause for a second. I have my locker room, Sears job answer to that. But that's not actually what I would do if I won the lottery. And that's not how I would talk about it. If I was with my community group. If I won the lottery, first thing I would do is be terrified. I don't know if I can handle that amount of money. That sounds scary. Which is a weird thing to say to your co workers. They'd be like, what? I could absolutely handle millions of dollars. I don't think you could. I've seen you handle this paycheck bad. You guys, you've made a lot of bad choices since I've known you you get these opportunities where they ask you, what do you think? What would you do? What would you. How would you handle this? What would you do in marriage? What would you. I have people come say, hey, you got any marriage advice? You got any whatever? And these are these moments where we get to go, yeah, I actually do have a lot of thoughts on marriage, but I'm a Christian, so it's all informed by the Bible. Do you want to hear that? Oh, yeah. The Bible says. I'm a Christian. So the Bible says a lot about how we handle money. So I can tell you how I'd handle, you know, $2.5 billion. You're going to be annoyed with me, but here we go. And you can start those conversations. Someone says, am I right? And you can go, I don't think so. So. And they'll say, what? And you can go, I'm so glad you asked. But you have these moments all the time. And if you actually think about it, if you actually have your radar up, you've gotten a lot of windows, a lot of doors for you to begin to share the gospel, for you to begin to have conversations that are real. And the truth is, some of these people, you're like, I'm building a relationship with them. I'm building a friendship with them. And if I asked you why, you would say, so that I can share the gospel with them. Okay, and now you have these doors, these openings, these opportunities, and you're like, but if I do that, they won't be my friend anymore. Okay, well, then you're not making the best use of the time. If you're in these friendships for the sake of sharing the gospel, and you won't share the gospel, that's odd. But when you begin, if you say, well, they'll stop being my friend, well, then, okay, go make a friendship with someone who wants to hear this and pray for that door to be open. But you also don't know that that's true because someone shared the gospel with you. And it was like someone had brought water to a desert. And you would declare that it's the greatest news you ever heard. And there's somebody that you're around that you have a relationship with that you have an opening for, you have an opportunity with that you love dearly. And you might could begin to tell them something. And the spirit go to work in their heart because Jesus has bought them with his blood. And they suddenly go, thank you so much for sharing this.So we're going to go be active in this, and y' all you gotta understand there are some energy level things that happen in relationships and invitations there, your invitations to people, the things you're asking people to participate in, take energy level. There's energy level differences. So some people will be like, I invited them in my group, they don't want to come. Okay, first of all, invite people to your community group. That's one of the best places for them to be and hear about the gospel. But if they don't want to come, that kind of makes sense. Would you like to come to someone's house you don't know, meet people you don't know, discuss, eat food that was cooked at their houses that you haven't seen? You don't know where that came from. Just add a little bit of mystery. Discuss a thing you don't care about. Pray to a God you don't believe in for three hours. No. No. Well, that's weird. It's like that actually, they might not want to. That energy level, you know, there's a different energy level from can we grab lunch together to do you want to come to my community group? Do you want to get matching tattoos and move to Colorado with me? Like, energy levels on invitations change, you guys. And so start figuring out what will they say yes to. Some people would much be much more willing to come eat dinner with you at a restaurant than at your house. Some people would much rather eat dinner with you at your house. Some people don't want to come eat dinner with just you at your house because they have to carry the conversation. They'd much rather come to a party. Some people don't want to come to a party because meeting a bunch of new people scares them. Be wise, use the best. Make the best use of the time and start figuring out who am I around? What kind of invitation will they say yes to? How do I get the rest of our group around them? And how do we begin to be everyday missionaries together? But let's take this seriously because someone once told you the gospel and you will never be the same.And God has us around people where he has already infiltrated with missionaries and we're supposed to tell them, let's pray. Lord, may we be blessed in our everyday mission efforts. Lord, may your spirit be at work to convict and to send and to equip. And Lord, may when the gospel is proclaimed, people respond in belief. Help us to take this seriously and obey. Lord, we ask for open doors and for clear presentations, for fearlessness that we would be unashamed of the gospel. It has the power of salvation for all who will believe in Jesus name. Amen.As we conclude our time together, we're going to sing in a moment, but we're going to take communion. And in First Corinthians, chapter 11, Paul gives instruction on what communion is and how to respond to it. He says,> For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.So as Christians, we come around the table together to remember that Christ's body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us, and that our only hope is in Him. Some of you have very real sins that you're struggling with right now, very real doubt, very real pain. And one of the things that we do is we take very real bread and very real fruit of the vine, and we remember that he died for us in a very real way, and that he rose in a very real way, and that his substantive work on the cross is effective and efficient for salvation, and that our only hope is in Him. There's something to the tangible nature of this, the slowing ourselves down and the remembering that if I'm not in Christ and he's not in me, I have no hope. And so this is something that we share together because we have one Lord that saves all of us.So if you are not a Christian, this is not something that you would partake in because you do not yet know and remember and proclaim the work of Christ on your behalf. But if you belong to Jesus, I would invite you to take a moment to confess, to take seriously what we are about to participate in. And when you are ready to take communion, if you have a gluten allergy, we do have gluten free, the back corner over there. So when you're ready, take communion.

This is a VERY SHORT BUT IMPORTANT MESSAGE Title: The Doctrine of Imputation Text: 2 Cor 5 vs 21 1. The gospel of grace is carried by the doctrine of imputation. 2. Apart from imputation of sin and righteousness there is NO GOSPEL. 3. Free Imputation of righteousness was always God's design for the salvation of sinners. 4. But how was that done? God "made Christ sin" and that means God imputed the sins of the elect to Christ. 5. Christ Jesus being God and sinless could not be infused with sin for many reasons. First being the immutable God, that was impossible. Secondly, that would have defiled Him and disqualified both His Priesthood and Sacrifice (Lev 21 & 22). 6. So, He was "made sin" not by infusion/impartation, but by imputation of sin debt/guilt. 6. Imputation does not transfer material or infuse things into a person. Rather, it legally reckons them as liable for the sins of another-as with Christ Jesus, and it makes the elect sinner also righteous in reverse. 7. The elect are legally righteous in the books of God, but not experientially, since they are not yet glorified. They all still have INDWELLING SIN. Indwelling sin is a constant REMINDER that our ONLY RIGHTEOUSNESS and HOPE lies in IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS (God's righteousness). 8. Thus, the matter of salvation is best understood and believed through the doctrine of imputation and accompanying doctrines. By the death of Christ God made us the righteousness of God in Him. THAT IS HOW GOD SEES THINGS. 9. And how GOD SEES THINGS IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS and IT IS FREE

Ifthere's one thing everyone needs, is looking for, and desires, it is to havepeace. To have peace within themselves, peace with God, and peace with thosearound them. But it often appears that many people today are bent on havingwar, at enmity with others, with hatred, malice, anger and violence in their heartsand lives. There is no peace in their lives, and they live to destroy any peacein the world around them. The Bible describes it this way in Isaiah 57:20-21, “Butthe wicked are like the troubled sea, When it cannot rest, Whose waters cast upmire and dirt. "There is no peace," Says my God, "for thewicked."  Theirhearts are against God, so their hearts are against everyone around them, andin a sense even themselves. But I believe that deep inside every individualthere is a desire, there is a yearning for peace. The only way to make thatpeace is with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 5:1 tells us: “Havingtherefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our LordJesus Christ.” That's what we're talking about in these verses before ustoday in Ephesians 2:16-18.  Rememberin verses 11-15, Paul was dealing with the Gentiles basically and thereconciliation they needed and could now experience between themselves and theJews now that they were in the same church, in the same body of Christ. Now we'rein Christ (v. 13). Before we were aliens and strangers but now, we're a holynation. Colossians 1:19-22 speaks of this very thing: “For it pleased theFather that in Him all the fullness should dwell, speaking of Jesus. By Him,Jesus, to reconcile all things to Himself. By Him, whether things on earth orthings in heaven. having made peace through the blood of His cross, and you whowere once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now has Hereconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy andblameless, and above reproach in His sight.” How wonderful, how powerful isthat? We'reno longer strangers because we are now in the family of God along with theJewish people. We had no hope. Now we've been called into one hope. We werewithout God, but now through Christ God is our Father. Nowin verses 16-18, Paul is talking about how both Jews and Gentiles needreconciliation as sinners with God.  Paul'sletter to the Colossians in chapter 2:13-14 says it this way: “You beingdead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alivetogether with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out thehandwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us, andHe has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to His cross." Inother words, the law tells us we're sinners. The law tells us that we arecondemned. God is a holy God and He must punish sin. God also at the same timeis a God of love. He's a God who wants us to know peace and have peace.  That'swhy in Ephesians 2:17, Paul writes: “He came and He preached peace.” Didyou notice that in verse 14 it says Jesus Christ is our peace. In verse15, He made peace because of the blood of His cross between us and God.Then in verse 17, He preached peace. Remember the angels saying to theshepherds that day on the hillside, "Peace on earth and good willtoward men”, is the message of Jesus Christ to all world of sinners."(Luke 2:13-14).   Ifyou want peace, the only peace you'll ever find and the only peace the worldwill ever find is in the person and ministry and work of Jesus Christ throughHis Holy Spirit that can be in all of our hearts at the same time. “Forthrough Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father” (v. 18).  Whata wonderful message for us today. We have a God that can take care of theenmity, bring reconciliation, and bring us back into a place where we can havefellowship one with another. Today,I trust you're experiencing that peace and joy in yourself, and with God, andwith those around you.  

The Christian life is not a life of ease. Sometimes it's easy to wonder if it's worth all the trouble. The question is not whether or not following Jesus is worth it, but what will it cost you to not follow Him? In this episode, Pastor Taylor starts a new series in Hebrews on the first place of Christ above and before all things.Get Connected! https://linktr.ee/reachtulsa

Baptism is not a ritual; it's a declaration

Send us your feedback — we're listeningEphesians 4 : 32 — Be Kind and Compassionate | A Prayer for Healing and Restoration in RelationshipsScripture (NIV): “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” — Ephesians 4 : 32 (NIV)Recorded live here in London, England — where faith meets the world in daily prayer and global hope.Show NotesWelcome to the Daily Christian Prayer Podcast with myself, Reverend Ben Cooper, recorded live here in London, England — where faith meets the world in daily prayer and global hope.Prayer for Relationships, Prayer for Family Healing, Prayer for Marriage Restoration, Prayer for Broken Friendships, Prayer for Love and Unity, Prayer for Forgiveness and Reconciliation — these are the searches flooding the earth right now. And the Word of God declares: “Be kind and compassionate… forgive as Christ forgave you.”The greatest healing often begins not in the body but in the heart between people. God is restoring families, rebuilding friendships, and breathing life into relationships that once felt beyond repair. Compassion heals where anger divided. Forgiveness rebuilds where pride destroyed.As we pray today, let kindness rise above conflict and love rise above offense. Let the Spirit of the Living God mend every relationship fractured by words, distance, or misunderstanding. The Cross is proof that reconciliation is possible — Jesus bridged the greatest divide so we could bridge ours.No relationship is too broken for grace. No heart is too cold for mercy. Healing begins when humility meets love, and God steps into the middle.10 Global Prayer PointsPrayer for healing and restoration in broken relationshipsPrayer for marriage reconciliation and renewed covenant lovePrayer for family unity and forgiveness within the homePrayer for grace to mend friendships damaged by conflictPrayer for healing of hearts wounded by betrayal or rejectionPrayer for peaceful communication and understandingPrayer for reconciliation between parents and childrenPrayer for strength to forgive and rebuild trustPrayer for God's love to bind communities togetherPrayer of thanksgiving for Christ's compassion that restores all thingsLife ApplicatiSupport the showFor more inspiring content, visit RBChristianRadio.net — your home for daily devotionals, global prayer, and biblical encouragement for every season of life. We invite you to connect with our dedicated prayer hub at DailyPrayer.uk — a place where believers from every nation unite in prayer around the clock. If you need prayer, or would like to leave a request, this is the place to come. Our mission is simple: to pray with you, to stand with you, and to keep the power of prayer at the centre of everyday life. Your support through DailyPrayer.uk helps us continue sharing the gospel and covering the nations in prayer. You can also discover our ministry services and life celebrations at LifeCelebrant.net — serving families with faith, dignity, and hope. If this devotional blesses you, please consider supporting our listener-funded mission by buying us a coffee through RBChristianRadio.net. Every prayer, every gift, and every share helps us keep broadcasting God's Word to the world.

Creation to Christ: God creates man and woman|Ashley Hood|2025-09-21 by The Apex Church

Creation to Christ: God creates the world|Ashley Hood|2025-09-14 by The Apex Church

Creation to Christ: God judges a sinful world|Ashley Hood|2025-10-12 by The Apex Church

Creation to Christ: God saves from judgement|Rodney Haggar|2025-10-19 by The Apex Church

Reflecting on Paul's deep sorrow and grief over the spiritual condition of his fellow Jews, and emphasizing his heartfelt longing for their salvation despite their unbelief. Romans 9:1–6, the preacher highlights the unparalleled privileges of Israel—adoption, glory, covenants, the law, worship, promises, the patriarchs, and most significantly, the incarnation of Christ—God's promises remain faithful even as many Jews rejected the gospel. The central theological affirmation is that God is not to blame for Israel's unbelief; the word of God has not failed, and divine sovereignty does not negate human responsibility. The sermon calls believers to emulate Paul's compassion by praying for the lost, including family, nation, and ethnic groups, while rejecting all racial and ethnic prejudice, grounded in the gospel's universal truth that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone, not by ethnicity or heritage.

The difference between being a church attender and a church member is commitment. Church is not about buildings but about people: people who are followers of Christ who join together to represent Christ in each locality. When the church began and grew rapidly in the first century, the newborn Christians immediately became part of a church family (Acts 2:41,46-47).  Something that we see in theses verse is that church was part of their daily lives and that the church community grew daily. Church was about constantly living together as a family rather than just pitching up for an event on one day a week. Church is God's great idea, not just for individuals to be saved in isolation, but to bring every believer into a united body that reflects His character and carries out His mission on earth. Church is what Jesus loved so much that He died that the church may live. Church is what Jesus promised to build through all generations and despite all forms of opposition and persecution (Matthew 16:18). We see some important points on why everybody needs to be an active member of a local church: 1. Being committed to the church is obeying the commands of scripture (Hebrews 10:25; John 13:35; Galatians 5:13; 1 Peter 1:22; Ephesians 5:21; 1 Peter 5:5; Romans 12:10; Romans 14:13; James 4:11; Ephesians 4:2; Ephesians 4:32; Hebrews 3:13) 2. Being committed to being part the church shows that there is power in unity (Acts 2:1; Acts 4:32; 1 Corinthians 1:10; Psalm 133:1) 3. Being committed to the church will help you grow in your faith (Ephesians 4:12-13; 1 Corinthians 12:27; Romans 12:4-8) 4. Being committed to the church will bring great conquest (Ephesians 3:10-11; Ephesians 5:27; Revelation 7:9; Ephesians 3:20-21) Apply  1. Being committed to the church is obeying the commands of scripture (Hebrews 10:25). This isn't just about attending services, it's about belonging and participating in a community where we encourage, serve, and grow together. The New Testament has many commands about how to treat one , another as fellow members of the church, i.e. “Love one another” (John 13:35); “Serve one another in love” (Galatians 5:13); “Love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22); “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21); Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5); “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honour one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10); “Stop passing judgment on one another” (Romans 14:13); “Do not slander one another” (James 4:11); “Be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2); “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32); “Encourage one another daily” (Hebrews 3:13). If you asked ChatGPT “If you were the devil what would you do to keep people away from Church?” it says:  - Encourage a constant “too busy” culture — work, kids' activities, side-projects — so skipping worship is normalised and feels responsible.  - Emphasise “I can pray/read at home — I don't need church” until community atrophy is normal.  - Amplify stories of hypocrisy, hurt, or abuse so people assume church always harms.  - Allow services to become routine, bland, or like an obligation—no discipleship, no engagement, just “attendance.”  - Promote entertainment, friendship networks, or causes that substitute for church belonging.  - Spread half-truths or relativism that dilute core gospel truths so church seems unnecessary or irrelevant.  - Make faith seem like a rules game — either you're perfect or you don't belong — causing people to avoid church rather than confess.  - Encourage small compromises that add up — one missed Sunday, then two, then a season — until leaving is easy So, then we all need to obey the many commands of Scripture about being part of the church.  2. Being committed to being part the church shows that there is power in unity. The Holy Spirit was poured out with great power on the Day of Pentecost when the disciples were all in one place (Acts 2:1; Acts 4:32). All this was an answer to the prayer of Jesus (John 17:20-23). We all have our part to play in keeping unity in the church at all levels and between all individuals and groups (1 Corinthians 1:10). When we each take responsibility to be part of the answer and not a creator of divisions, we will discover the power of unity (Psalm 133:1). 3. Being committed to the church will help you grow in your faith. We need to be built up in our faith and developed to be a fruitful disciple. The apostle Paul makes clear the work of God-called leaders (Ephesians 4:12-13). There are so many benefits of belonging to a church family as it helps you to: focus on God; face life problems with support; strength your faith; find your place to make a difference; fulfil your life mission; build the church. Every Christian has something to give to the church to help others (1 Corinthians 12:27; Romans 12:4-8). Each believer has unique gifts that build up the rest. When you separate from the body, you lose both the strength of others and the opportunity to strengthen them.  4. Being committed to the church will bring great conquest. What we can achieve together is far more powerful than what we can achieve on our own (Ephesians 3:10-11). The Kingdom of darkness will be brought down when the church of Christ stands up in unity and Christ given authority. Being a committed part of the church is one of the greatest opportunities for us to live purpose driven lives together in local church families and to be part of a vast company of fellow followers of Christ around the world in each nation and locality. Together we can model and advance the Kingdom of God on earth. We can be confident that God is at work (Ephesians 5:27). One day Jesus is coming back for such a beautiful church. One day we will see in heaven what God has accomplished (Revelation 7:9). What a privilege it will be, to be with the church from all nations and generations in heaven. But equally it is a privilege, and a responsibility, to be part of the greatest society on earth (Ephesians 3:20-21).  

The difference between being a church attender and a church member is commitment. Church is not about buildings but about people: people who are followers of Christ who join together to represent Christ in each locality. When the church began and grew rapidly in the first century, the newborn Christians immediately became part of a church family (Acts 2:41,46-47).  Something that we see in theses verse is that church was part of their daily lives and that the church community grew daily. Church was about constantly living together as a family rather than just pitching up for an event on one day a week. Church is God's great idea, not just for individuals to be saved in isolation, but to bring every believer into a united body that reflects His character and carries out His mission on earth. Church is what Jesus loved so much that He died that the church may live. Church is what Jesus promised to build through all generations and despite all forms of opposition and persecution (Matthew 16:18). We see some important points on why everybody needs to be an active member of a local church: 1. Being committed to the church is obeying the commands of scripture (Hebrews 10:25; John 13:35; Galatians 5:13; 1 Peter 1:22; Ephesians 5:21; 1 Peter 5:5; Romans 12:10; Romans 14:13; James 4:11; Ephesians 4:2; Ephesians 4:32; Hebrews 3:13) 2. Being committed to being part the church shows that there is power in unity (Acts 2:1; Acts 4:32; 1 Corinthians 1:10; Psalm 133:1) 3. Being committed to the church will help you grow in your faith (Ephesians 4:12-13; 1 Corinthians 12:27; Romans 12:4-8) 4. Being committed to the church will bring great conquest (Ephesians 3:10-11; Ephesians 5:27; Revelation 7:9; Ephesians 3:20-21) Apply  1. Being committed to the church is obeying the commands of scripture (Hebrews 10:25). This isn't just about attending services, it's about belonging and participating in a community where we encourage, serve, and grow together. The New Testament has many commands about how to treat one , another as fellow members of the church, i.e. “Love one another” (John 13:35); “Serve one another in love” (Galatians 5:13); “Love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22); “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21); Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5); “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honour one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10); “Stop passing judgment on one another” (Romans 14:13); “Do not slander one another” (James 4:11); “Be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2); “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32); “Encourage one another daily” (Hebrews 3:13). If you asked ChatGPT “If you were the devil what would you do to keep people away from Church?” it says:  - Encourage a constant “too busy” culture — work, kids' activities, side-projects — so skipping worship is normalised and feels responsible.  - Emphasise “I can pray/read at home — I don't need church” until community atrophy is normal.  - Amplify stories of hypocrisy, hurt, or abuse so people assume church always harms.  - Allow services to become routine, bland, or like an obligation—no discipleship, no engagement, just “attendance.”  - Promote entertainment, friendship networks, or causes that substitute for church belonging.  - Spread half-truths or relativism that dilute core gospel truths so church seems unnecessary or irrelevant.  - Make faith seem like a rules game — either you're perfect or you don't belong — causing people to avoid church rather than confess.  - Encourage small compromises that add up — one missed Sunday, then two, then a season — until leaving is easy So, then we all need to obey the many commands of Scripture about being part of the church.  2. Being committed to being part the church shows that there is power in unity. The Holy Spirit was poured out with great power on the Day of Pentecost when the disciples were all in one place (Acts 2:1; Acts 4:32). All this was an answer to the prayer of Jesus (John 17:20-23). We all have our part to play in keeping unity in the church at all levels and between all individuals and groups (1 Corinthians 1:10). When we each take responsibility to be part of the answer and not a creator of divisions, we will discover the power of unity (Psalm 133:1). 3. Being committed to the church will help you grow in your faith. We need to be built up in our faith and developed to be a fruitful disciple. The apostle Paul makes clear the work of God-called leaders (Ephesians 4:12-13). There are so many benefits of belonging to a church family as it helps you to: focus on God; face life problems with support; strength your faith; find your place to make a difference; fulfil your life mission; build the church. Every Christian has something to give to the church to help others (1 Corinthians 12:27; Romans 12:4-8). Each believer has unique gifts that build up the rest. When you separate from the body, you lose both the strength of others and the opportunity to strengthen them.  4. Being committed to the church will bring great conquest. What we can achieve together is far more powerful than what we can achieve on our own (Ephesians 3:10-11). The Kingdom of darkness will be brought down when the church of Christ stands up in unity and Christ given authority. Being a committed part of the church is one of the greatest opportunities for us to live purpose driven lives together in local church families and to be part of a vast company of fellow followers of Christ around the world in each nation and locality. Together we can model and advance the Kingdom of God on earth. We can be confident that God is at work (Ephesians 5:27). One day Jesus is coming back for such a beautiful church. One day we will see in heaven what God has accomplished (Revelation 7:9). What a privilege it will be, to be with the church from all nations and generations in heaven. But equally it is a privilege, and a responsibility, to be part of the greatest society on earth (Ephesians 3:20-21).  

Last week we examined the questions a Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview suggested for discerning “Who is a Christian?” and “Who is on our team?” Today, we take that examination a step further. Is it possible that getting the “right answers” to worldview questions has obscured the good news of Christ, the actual gospel? Is it possible that the good news of Christ is better than we can imagine? David says the answer to both questions is "Yes!"

Last week we examined the questions a Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview suggested for discerning “Who is a Christian?” and “Who is on our team?” Today, we take that examination a step further. Is it possible that getting the “right answers” to worldview questions has obscured the good news of Christ, the actual gospel? Is it possible that the good news of Christ is better than we can imagine? David says the answer to both questions is "Yes!"

 Trust Restored: Biblical Forgiveness in Marriage Scripture:“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” – Ephesians 4:32 Marriage is often described as one of life's greatest blessings, but it is also one of life's greatest challenges. Every husband and wife will eventually face disappointment, hurt, or broken trust. The question isn't if conflict will come but how we respond when it does. The answer is found in biblical forgiveness in marriage—a practice rooted not in our strength but in God's grace. Why Forgiveness Is Central to Marriage The Bible makes it clear: forgiveness is not optional for followers of Christ. Just as God forgave us through Jesus, we are called to forgive one another. In marriage, this calling is especially important. Two imperfect people cannot live as one flesh without extending daily grace. Without forgiveness, small offenses pile up into bitterness. But when we live out biblical forgiveness in marriage, we create an environment of healing and growth. Forgiveness restores trust, softens hearts, and strengthens unity. The World's View vs. God's View Culture often tells us that trust, once broken, can never be fully repaired. Social media jokes about “deal […] The post Biblical Forgiveness in Marriage appeared first on UNCOMMEN.

In Christ God graciously grants justification to all believers. We'll see: 1. The inadequacy of our human condition. 2. The sufficiency of God's grace. 3. The necessity of true faith.Time:AfternoonMinister:Rev Joe PoppeTexts:Heidelberg Catechism: Lord's Day 23Romans 3:21–31Hebrews 10:11–25

Today's episode examines two questions suggested by a Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview at a national political and policy organization to determine, according to him, "Who is actually a Christian" and "Who is on our team." Abraham Kuyper provided a critique to the two suggested questions, but the Apostle Paul provided the one question we really need to ask. Today's episode may explain why policy discussions rarely include Christ.

Today's episode examines two questions suggested by a Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview at a national political and policy organization to determine, according to him, "Who is actually a Christian" and "Who is on our team." Abraham Kuyper provided a critique to the two suggested questions, but the Apostle Paul provided the one question we really need to ask. Today's episode may explain why policy discussions rarely include Christ.

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.Ephesians 4:32

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. - 2 Corinthians 5:18-19

Ephesians 4:31-32 NIVGet rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Today, David looks at a recent statement by a Christian pro-family policy organization fitness standards for combat service to see what arguments complementarian thinking about men and women leaves Christians about women in combat. Complementarian thinking is the "in" word for political conservatives when addressing the male-female "divide," but is that an unnecessary Christ-denying capitulation? David explains how he would now approach these issues.

Today, David looks at a recent statement by a Christian pro-family policy organization fitness standards for combat service to see what arguments complementarian thinking about men and women leaves Christians about women in combat. Complementarian thinking is the "in" word for political conservatives when addressing the male-female "divide," but is that an unnecessary Christ-denying capitulation? David explains how he would now approach these issues.

SummaryIn this episode of Coffee & Christ, Robert Bolden shares his transformative journey of faith, emphasizing the importance of surrendering to Jesus. He discusses the significance of understanding Jesus as the only way to God, drawing insights from the book of Romans. The conversation highlights the difference between faith and works, encouraging listeners to trust in God rather than relying solely on their actions.TakeawaysLife transformation begins with surrendering to Jesus.The podcast aims to provide new awareness for personal growth.True freedom and joy come from a relationship with Jesus.Jesus is the only way to the Father, as emphasized in scripture.Engaging with the Bible can lead to personal revelations.Faith is credited as righteousness, not works.Understanding scripture can vary from person to person.It's important to share the good news of Jesus with others.The Word of God is alive and speaks to us in different ways.Trusting God is essential, even when the world says otherwise.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Life Transformation02:19 The Power of Surrendering to Jesus03:50 Understanding Jesus as the Only Way05:57 Exploring Romans: Personal Insights09:48 Faith vs. Works: A Deep Dive into RighteousnessRegister for the Challenge:https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/A08o-y74QIOyHDd6vsq8NgReady to become part of the community? ⁠http://www.lifetransformed.podia.com⁠, message us and we will give you free access.Merchhttps://www.bonfire.com/store/lifetransformed/Schedule a serve call ⁠https://www.picktime.com/LifeTransformed⁠Instagram ⁠https://www.instagram.com/bbolden18?igsh=cnlvdjQ5eGJwZTM%3D&utm_source=qr⁠YouTube⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx6sszulCUrjodEyThd-rBw⁠Podcasts Join me live from Odd's Cafe here in Asheville…  message me for the exact time.  ⁠https://www.oddscafe.com/⁠Email: robertbolden@thisworldfreedom.com

Ephesians 4:25-32 NIVTherefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold. Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Join us for a radical and real episode of Calvary Conversations as we welcome our special guest, Pastor Matthew Maher of Landmark Church in Ocean City, NJ. Pastor Maher sits down with our Senior Pastor, Craig Roters, and Assistant Pastor, Morgan Roters, for a deep discussion on one of the most important topics in the Christian life: forgiveness.In this conversation, they dive into some of the most pressing and personal questions believers often wrestle with:• Should we forgive someone even if they never ask for forgiveness?• How many times should I forgive someone?• Does God truly forgive me, even for my deepest sins?Through heartfelt testimonies, biblical teaching, and practical insights, each pastor shares from personal experience what it means to walk in forgiveness and freedom. Together, they point to what Scripture says about the transformative power of God's forgiveness and how it equips us to extend grace to others.Whether you've struggled with forgiving someone who has hurt you, wondered how to deal with guilt and shame, or questioned the depth of God's mercy, this episode will encourage and challenge you to embrace the fullness of God's grace. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to Calvary Conversations for more Christ-centered discussions, testimonies, and biblical truth. “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” – Ephesians 4:32⸻ Resources & Links Matt Maher's Website → www.truthovertrend.com/ Calvary Conversations Website → https://www.calvaryconversations.com Follow us on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/calvaryorovalley/?hl=en Follow us on Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/calvaryorovalley7/Hashtags:#CalvaryConversations #Forgiveness #MatthewMaher #CraigRoters #MorganRoters #LandmarkChurch #OceanCityNJ #ChristianPodcast #Testimony #BiblicalForgiveness #GodsGrace #Faith #JesusChrist #ChristianLife #GospelTruth

The Gate of Heaven is Open! In our darkest moments, when we feel lost and alone, God shows up in unexpected ways. Just like Jacob's dream of a heavenly ladder, Jesus is our bridge to heaven - not through our efforts, but through His grace.Remember: • Heaven isn't closed; it's wide open through Christ • God is drawn to our weakness, not our strength • His love is unconditional, even when we're at our lowest"Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it." - Genesis 28:16

The Gate of Heaven is Open! In our darkest moments, when we feel lost and alone, God shows up in unexpected ways. Just like Jacob's dream of a heavenly ladder, Jesus is our bridge to heaven - not through our efforts, but through His grace.Remember: • Heaven isn't closed; it's wide open through Christ • God is drawn to our weakness, not our strength • His love is unconditional, even when we're at our lowest"Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it." - Genesis 28:16

Join us this morning as we sit down to continue our study through the book of Genesis. This week, Jameson brings the discussion to Genesis 26, and the promise that God made with Isaac. Visit our linktree: https://linktr.ee/scatteredabroadnetwork Visit our website, www.scatteredabroad.org, and subscribe to our email list. "Like" and "share" our Facebook page: https:// www.facebook.com/sapodcastnetwork Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ the_scattered_abroad_network/ Subscribe to our Substack: https://scatteredabroad.substack.com/Subscribe to our YouTube channel: The Scattered Abroad Network Contact us through email at san@msop.org. If you would like to consider supporting us in any way, don't hesitate to contact us through this email.

Send us a textGet FreeGet rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling, and slander, along with every form of malice.  Ephesians 4:31…forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:31-32Forgiveness is the key that unlocks you from the trap of an offense. Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me?  Seven times?”  No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!”  Matthew 18:21-22Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me.  Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?' Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt. “That's what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.” Matthew 18:32-351.   Forgiveness is not saying it's OK.Forgiveness is not saying it's ok, it's saying you don't owe me.2.  Forgiveness is not a feeling .For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21Forgiveness isn't a feeling, it's a Decision.  3.  Forgiveness is not Forgetting.Forgiveness is remembering what Jesus did for you and offering the same to others. 4.  Forgiveness is not the same as Trust. 5.  Forgiveness is not dependent on someone saying I'm sorry.Forgiveness only requires one person, while reconciliation requires two or more. 6.   Forgiveness is not fair.He [God] does not treat us as our sins deserve… Psalm 103:10Forgiveness is: The Word Release or Let Go. Challenge:1. Accept God's forgiveness and follow Jesus.2. Offer forgiveness and be free.Discussion Questions:What's a small thing that easily irritates you - social media comments, traffic, jokes that hit wrong? Why do those little offenses stick to us?The outline says “bitterness comes from an offense.” Why do you think it's so hard to notice bitterness taking root until it's already producing fruit?How does the parable of the unforgiving servant challenge the way we think about justice and fairness?How does receiving God's forgiveness first make it possible to extend forgiveness to others?What would it look like for you this week to take one step toward releasing an offense—small or big? Thank you for listening to the Relate Community Church podcast! Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If today's message spoke to you, share it with a friend or leave us a review to help spread the word. To learn more about Relate Community Church, visit us at www.relatecommunity.com. You are always welcome here, and remember—you are loved

Jesus didn't just preach good news—He embodied it in ordinary encounters, like with Zacchaeus. In this opening week, we see how Jesus “blessed” people through simple acts of presence and attention. The B.L.E.S.S. model helps us recover this everyday approach to mission. God makes us new in Christ—and then sends us out as His ambassadors, not with pressure to convert, but with an invitation to love, serve, and bless.Luke 19:1–10 (ESV)He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”2 Corinthians 5:17–21 (ESV)Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

God Sees a Jesus Follower as Being “In Christ”; Therefore, God Sees a Jesus Follower as His Son or Daughter MESSAGE SUMMARY: As Followers of Jesus, you are "In Christ" -- God looks at you, as a Jesus Follower, and He sees Jesus in you. Throughout the Epistles we find: "In Christ" or "In Him". In Galatians 3:14, Paul tells you that your faith in Jesus makes you “In Christ” and a recipient of God's Covenant with Abraham: “so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.". Also, Paul goes even further, in Galatians 3:25-28, to tell you that, through your faith in Jesus, you no longer need any kind of intermediary because you are “In Christ” and you have a personal relationship with God, the Creator of the Universe: “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.”. When God sees you, “In Christ" as a Jesus Follower, He sees Jesus, the Son. Therefore, God sees you as His son or daughter.   TODAY'S PRAYER: Lord, everything in me resists following you into the garden of Gethsemane to fall on my face to the ground before you. Grant me the courage to follow you all the way to the cross, whatever that might mean for my life. And then, by your grace, lead me to resurrection life and power. In Jesus' name, amen.   Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 100). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, because of I am filled with the Holy Spirit, I will not be controlled by my Self-Centeredness. Rather, I will walk in the Spirit's fruit of Love. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22f). SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Romans 3:21-26; Romans 6:5-11; Romans 6:22-23; Psalms 63:1-11. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Crumbs From The Table”, at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

Derek Walker describes the Millennial Temple drawing from many scriptures in Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah & Zechariah. Discover how the concept of God's dwelling with man is central to biblical revelation, from the original earthly Temple in Eden to its ultimate fulfilment in the Millennial reign of Christ - the times of restoration of all things, when the Land of Israel will be restored to be like the original Eden. The Millennial Temple, at the peak of the Mountain of the Lord, in Israel, will be at the heart of the restoration of God's Kingdom on earth at Christ's Return. Christ will reign over the whole earth from its Holy of Holies, and a River of Life will flow from it into Jerusalem, and then divide into 2 rivers to the west and to the east. This episode provides God's vision for the climax of human history in the Messianic Kingdom and the greatest of the earthly Temples, the closest image of the heavenly Temple, which therefore also provides deep insights into the nature and operation of redeemed Man in Christ - God's ultimate, eternal Temple.

Forgiveness is a Dish Best Served Quickly Is there ever a time when someone shouldn't be forgiven? According to a national survey, 58% of Americans think so. But Jesus didn't teach forgiveness as an option—He made it a requirement. In this week's message, we explore why forgiveness is so difficult, how families subtly hold on to hurt, and why releasing offense is one of the most powerful things we can do. With insights from Genesis and Ephesians, we look at Joseph's story and Jesus' own words to discover that forgiveness isn't about ignoring the pain—it's about choosing freedom.  Ephesians 4:32 Discussion topics Icebreaker - What's your go-to comfort food when you're upset—and why do you think it helps?  (or is there something else that's your go-to-comfort-item)  Read Ephesians 4:32 - “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” What stands out most in this verse to you?  How does linking our forgiveness to Christ's forgiveness raise the bar?  Looking at Joseph's story (Genesis 45 & 50) - What emotions do you think Joseph wrestled with when he saw his brothers again?  Which step in his forgiveness journey (facing the hurt, choosing to forgive, acting with love) do you find most challenging—and why?  Personal Reflection: The message highlighted how families sometimes hold on to unforgiveness in subtle ways (silent treatment, sarcasm, avoidance, etc.).  Which of those patterns do you recognize in yourself or your upbringing? Why do you think it's easier to hold on to hurt than to release it?  Application The statement was made: “Forgiveness is not an elective in God's curriculum; it's a required subject.”  Do you agree or disagree—and what makes forgiveness feel so difficult in real life?  Can you share a time when offering or receiving forgiveness brought healing?  Check out our other audio series and video playlists that can help you find Jesus in every moment and then discover what's next

Today, we continue our teaching series as Pastor Nelson spoke on the topic: “Hypostasis: Truly God, Truly Man.”To confess the hypostatic union is to believe Jesus is truly God and truly man. The eternal Word did not merely appear as human—He became flesh while never ceasing to be divine. In Him are both natures perfectly united in one person.The incarnation was necessary: divine enough to save, human enough to die, revealing the Father and granting us life with Him. This is the mystery and glory of Christ—God with us.Be blessed as you listen to this sermon.

Join Jameson this week as we continue into our study through the book of Genesis. This week we look at God testing Abraham to see if he truly was faithful. Visit our linktree: https://linktr.ee/scatteredabroadnetwork Visit our website, www.scatteredabroad.org, and subscribe to our email list. "Like" and "share" our Facebook page: https:// www.facebook.com/sapodcastnetwork Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ the_scattered_abroad_network/ Subscribe to our Substack: https://scatteredabroad.substack.com/Subscribe to our YouTube channel: The Scattered Abroad Network Contact us through email at san@msop.org. If you would like to consider supporting us in any way, don't hesitate to contact us through this email.

In this episode of Elevate The Day, we're diving into one of the most important truths for our daily walk with Christ: God's way is always the best way.So often, we're tempted to make decisions based on how we feel in the moment or the circumstances around us. But God's Word reminds us that His ways are higher than ours, and His plans are always good.Here's what you'll learn in today's conversation:• The power of aligning your words with God's Word instead of negative thoughts or emotions.• Why we must avoid making decisions based on fleeting feelings and instead anchor our choices in Scripture.• How to build faith that God will help you and answer your prayers for wisdom and direction.Whether you're facing a big decision or simply trying to stay faithful in the everyday moments, this episode will encourage you to pause, pray, and trust that God's way is not only good—it's the best.Tune in and be reminded that God cares about every decision you make and that He is faithful to lead you in the right direction.For more information, visit elevatetheday.comhttps://www.facebook.com/elevatethedayhttps://www.instagram.com/elevatetheday/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8JbNP_nVceQhISB53PpRJA/featured#ElevateTheDay #HealYourHeart #HealYourLife #Faith #GodsWord #Bible #Christian #Believer #Podcast

John 7:25-26 So some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, “Is this not the man whom they are seeking to kill? Look, He is speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to Him. The rulers do not really know that this is the Christ, do they? Apparently, Jesus' reproof of the crowd for not judging righteously hit its mark. The Jewish leaders fell silent, and it didn't go unnoticed. We note that Jesus wasn't the only one who knew they wanted to kill Him. The word had spread through the community. In fact, it might even have been one of the reasons for the crowd. They were there to see the fireworks. When the rulers didn't confront Jesus after He spoke, there were some who wondered if they too had become convinced by the lame man's healing and Jesus' words that He was indeed the long-expected Christ. To the religious rulers, Jesus was a threat, a cancer that needed to be removed. To the crowd who followed Him, He was an enigma, a mystery, and a source of entertainment. To the people of Jerusalem, Jesus was a news item, a front page story. To Jesus' disciples, He was their rabbi, but also the expectant deliverer from Roman oppression. To us, He is the savior of the world. I am hoping that there may be some listening to this podcast that could relate to each of those groups when it comes to Jesus. I'm so glad you've found this podcast. I want to encourage you to rethink your life and your judgment of Jesus. Consider: how would you expect a world who wants to be god and lord of their own lives to react if they met the one true God who created them and deserves to be worshiped and obeyed? How are you reacting to Him? I pray that even as I speak, the Holy Spirit of God would convince you that Jesus is the Christ—God in the flesh, God with us—so that you might experience His forgiveness and love. From the time that the Gospels were written and circulated, Jesus has been speaking publicly. He still speaks now through His Word and His disciples, people like me, so that you might hear and believe. He died to take away sins, and He lives to love in those who will receive Him and submit to Him. I invite you to surrender yourself to Him, and to do it now, as I pray. Will you humble your heart now with me? Father in heaven, thank You for another day of life. I ask you to give Your Son and eternal life to all who hear my voice and at this moment surrender their lives to You. By the power of Your Spirit, give them hearts to repent—to turn from trusting in themselves. May they abandon their own desires to be god of their lives. Then give them faith that Jesus is Your Son and the only way that they might have peace with You. You have said that everyone who believes in Him will not be disappointed and will have eternal life. I trust You to keep Your word to them as they pray now and humble themselves in Your sight. May you be glorified. Amen. If you prayed with me, I hope you'll contact me at norm@livetolovewithjesus.com. Put “trusting in Jesus” in the subject line. I hope you'll visit livetolovewithjesus.com and join the Live to Love with Jesus prayer challenge. Become a part of a world-wide movement of the love of God through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jameson sits down this week to give us a wonderful reminder of God's faithfulness from a study in Genesis 21. Visit our linktree: https://linktr.ee/scatteredabroadnetwork Visit our website, www.scatteredabroad.org, and subscribe to our email list. "Like" and "share" our Facebook page: https:// www.facebook.com/sapodcastnetwork Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ the_scattered_abroad_network/ Subscribe to our Substack: https://scatteredabroad.substack.com/Subscribe to our YouTube channel: The Scattered Abroad Network Contact us through email at san@msop.org. If you would like to consider supporting us in any way, don't hesitate to contact us through this email.

August 17, 2025Pastor Mickey FarlowScripture used: 2 Timothy 3:13; Matthew 24:6-8; Genesis 3:23a; Romans 3:23; Romans 5:12a; John 8:44a; John 3:3b; John 12:31b; John 16:11b; Ephesians 2:2b; Revelation 1:1-2; Revelation 1:3; Revelation 19:11-13; Revelation 19:14; Revelation 19:15; Revelation 19:20-21; Revelation 20:4d; 2 Peter 3:10, 13; Revelation 20:1-3; Revelation 20:7; Revelation 20:8-9; Revelation 20:10; Revelation 20:4-6; Revelation 19:21; Revelation 20:11-12; Revelation 20:13; Revelation 20:14; Revelation 20:15; Revelation 21:1b; 2 Peter 3:12; Revelation 21:1a; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:2-3; Revelation 22:3-5; Revelation 22:12a, 14; Revelation 22:16; Revelation 22:17; Isaiah 55:1; Revelation 22:7; Revelation 22:12; Revelation 22:20 Main Points: THE WORLD OF THE LAMB God's Plan for Christ God's Plan for Satan God's Plan for Man God's Plan for the World God's Plan for Eternity God's Plan for the Church

2 Corinthians 5:17-19 ESV Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Romans 8 stands as the Mount Everest of Scripture, offering powerful assurance of salvation through direct evidence that cannot be explained away by the accuser.• Christ's salvation declares "no condemnation" for those in Christ• God didn't lower His standards but sent His Son to fulfill them perfectly• Justification is a completed past event, not something we're gradually earning• Christ's Spirit dwelling in believers is evident through fruit, conviction of sin, and love for Christ• We have received the Spirit of adoption, making us children and heirs of God• Our inheritance includes both future glory and present relationship with God• Following Christ means following His path through suffering to glory• For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ

How should we understand the words, “in him all things were created” in Col 1.16? Although commonly taken to mean Christ created the universe, this view has contextual, structural, and exegetical problems. In what follows I’ll name six problems with old-creation readings before laying out why a new creation approach makes sense. I presented this talk at the 2025 Unitarian Christian Alliance (UCA) conference in Uxbridge, England. Scroll down to see the full-length paper. For those listening to the audio, here’s a quick reference to Colossians 1.15-20 Strophe 1 (Col 1.15-18a) 15a      who is (the) image of the invisible God, 15b      firstborn of all creation 16a      for in him were created all things 16b                  in the heavens and upon the earth, 16c                  the visible and the invisible, 16d                  whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities 16e      all things have been created through him and for him 17a      and he is before all things 17b      and all things hold together in him 18a      and he is the head of the body of the Church,[12] Strophe 2 (Col 1.18b-20) 18b      who is (the) beginning, 18c      firstborn from the dead, 18d                  in order that he may be first in all things, 19        for in him was pleased all the fulness to dwell 20a      and through him to reconcile all things in him, 20b      making peace through the blood of his cross 20c                  whether the things upon the earth 20d                  or the things in the heavens Here’s Randy Leedy’s New Testament Diagram Here are the slides in the original PowerPoint format Download [13.82 MB] Here are the slides converted to PDF Loading... Taking too long? Reload document | Open in new tab Download [3.16 MB] To read the paper, simply scroll down or read it on Academia.edu.   Listen on Spotify   Listen on Apple Podcasts —— Links —— Check out these other papers by Sean Finnegan Support Restitutio by donating here Join our Restitutio Facebook Group and follow Finnegan on X @RestitutioSF Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments and we may play it out on the air Who is Sean Finnegan?  Read his bio here Get Finnegan’s book, Kingdom Journey to learn about God’s kingdom coming on earth as well as the story of how Christianity lost this pearl of great price. Get the transcript of this episode Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library. Below is the paper presented on July 25, 2025 in Uxbridge, England at the 2nd annual UCA UK Conference. Access this paper on Academia.edu to get the pdf. Full text is below, including bibliography and end notes. Colossians 1.16: Old Creation or New Creation? by Sean P. Finnegan Abstract  How should we understand the words, “in him all things were created” in Col 1.16? Although commonly taken to mean Christ created the universe, this view has contextual, structural, and exegetical problems. In what follows, I will explain the difficulties with the various old creation readings of Col 1.16 along with five reasons for a new creation approach. Then I'll provide a new creation reading of Col 1.16 before summarizing my findings in the conclusion. Introduction  Colossians 1.15-20 is a fascinating text of great importance for Christology. Commonly understood to be a hymn, it is fascinating in its cosmic scope and elevated Christology. Although many commentators interpret Paul[1] to say that Christ created the universe in his pre-existent state in Col 1.16, not all scholars see it that way. For example, Edward Schillebeeckx writes, “There is no mention in this text of pre-existence in the Trinitarian sense.”[2] Rather he sees “an eschatological pre-existence, characteristic of wisdom and apocalyptic.”[3] G. B. Caird agreed that Paul's focus in Col. 1.15-20 was not pre-existence (contra Lightfoot), rather, “The main thread of Paul's thought, then, is the manhood of Christ.”[4] In other words, “All that has been said in vv. 15-18 can be said of the historical Jesus.”[5] James Dunn also denied that Paul saw Christ as God's agent in creation in Col 1.15-20, claiming that such an interpretation was “to read imaginative metaphor in a pedantically literal way.”[6] James McGrath argued that “Jesus is the one through whom God's new creation takes place.” [7] Andrew Perriman likewise noted, “There is no reference to the creation of heaven and earth, light and darkness, sea and dry land, lights in the heavens, vegetation, or living creatures,”[8] also preferring a new creation approach.[9] To understand why such a broad range of scholars diverge from the old creation interpretation of Col 1.16, we will examine several contextual, structural, and exegetical problems. While explaining these, I'll also put forward four reasons to interpret Col 1.16 as new creation. Then I'll provide a fifth before giving a new creation reading of Col 1.15-20. But before going any further, let's familiarize ourselves with the text and structure. The Form of Col 1.15-20  To get our bearings, let me begin by providing a translation,[10] carefully structured to show the two strophes.[11] Strophe 1 (Col 1.15-18a) 15a      who is (the) image of the invisible God, 15b      firstborn of all creation 16a      for in him were created all things 16b                  in the heavens and upon the earth, 16c                  the visible and the invisible, 16d                  whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities 16e      all things have been created through him and for him 17a      and he is before all things 17b      and all things hold together in him 18a      and he is the head of the body of the Church,[12] Strophe 2 (Col 1.18b-20) 18b      who is (the) beginning, 18c      firstborn from the dead, 18d                  in order that he may be first in all things, 19        for in him was pleased all the fulness to dwell 20a      and through him to reconcile all things in him, 20b      making peace through the blood of his cross 20c                  whether the things upon the earth 20d                  or the things in the heavens Here I've followed the two-strophe structure (1.15-18a and 18b-20) noted more than a century ago by the classical philologist Eduard Norden[13] and repeated by James Robinson,[14] Edward Lohse,[15] Edward Schweizer,[16] James Dunn,[17] Ben Witherington III,[18] and William Lane[19] among others. By lining up the parallel lines of the two strophes, we can clearly see the poetic form. Strophe 1 15a who is (the) image… 15b firstborn of all creation 16a for in him were created all things… 16e  all things have been created through him… Strophe 2 18b who is (the) beginning, 18c firstborn from the dead … 19 for in him was pleased all… 20a and through him to reconcile all things in him… Such striking repeated language between the two strophes means that we should be careful to maintain the parallels between them and not take a grammatical or exegetical position on a word or phrase that would disconnect it from the parallel line in the other strophe. Some scholars, including F. F. Bruce,[20] Michael Bird,[21] David Pao,[22] among others proposed vv. 17-18a as an independent transitional link between the two strophes. Lohse explained the motivation for this unlikely innovation as follows. Above all, it is curious that at the end of the first, cosmologically oriented strophe, Christ is suddenly referred to as the “head of the body, the church” (1:18a κεφαλή τοῦ σώματος τῆς ἐκκλησίας). Considering its content, this statement would have to be connected with the second strophe which is characterized by soteriological statements. The structure of the hymn, however, places it in the first strophe.[23] For interpreters who prefer to think of the first strophe as cosmogony and the second as soteriology, a line about Christ's headship over the church doesn't fit very well. They restructure the form based on their interpretation of the content. Such a policy reverses the order of operations. One should determine the form and then interpret the content in light of structure. Lohse was right to reject the addition of a new transitional bridge between the two strophes. He called it “out of the question” since vv. 17-18a underscore “all things” and “serve as a summary that brings the first strophe to a conclusion.”[24] Now that we've oriented ourselves to some degree, let's consider old creation readings of Col 1.16 and the problems that arise when reading it that way. Old Creation Readings  Within the old creation paradigm for Col 1.16 we can discern three groups: those who see (A) Christ as the agent by whom God created, (B) Wisdom as the agent, and (C) Christ as the purpose of creation. Although space won't allow me to interact with each of these in detail, I will offer a brief critique of these three approaches. As a reminder, here is our text in both Greek and English. Colossians 1.16 16a      ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα 16b                  ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, 16c                  τὰ ὁρατὰ καὶ τὰ ἀόρατα, 16d                  εἴτε θρόνοι εἴτε κυριότητες εἴτε ἀρχαὶ εἴτε ἐξουσίαι· 16e      τὰ πάντα δι' αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται· 16a      for in him were created all things 16b                  in the heavens and upon the earth, 16c                  the visible and the invisible, 16d                  whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities 16e      all things have been created through him and for him 1. Christ as the Agent of Creation Scot McKnight is representative in his claim that “The emphasis of the first stanza is Christ as the agent of creation … and the second is Christ as the agent of redemption.”[25] This view sees the phrase “in him were created all things” as Christ creating the universe in the beginning. However, this position has six problems with it. Firstly, the context of the poem—both before (vv. 13-14) and after (vv. 21-22)—is clearly soteriological not cosmogonical.[26] By inserting vv. 15-20 into the text after vv. 13-14, Paul connected the two together.[27] V. 15 begins with ὅς ἐστιν (who is), which makes it grammatically dependent on vv. 13-14. “It is widely accepted,” wrote Dunn, “that this passage is a pre-Pauline hymn interpolated and interpreted to greater or less extent by Paul.”[28] By placing the poem into a redemptive frame, Paul indicated how he interpreted it. The fact that God “rescued us from the authority of darkness and transferred (us) into the kingdom of his beloved son” is the controlling context (v. 13).[29] As I will show below, I believe vv. 15-20 are ecclesiology not protology, since ecclesiology naturally flows from soteriology. Rather than remaining in the old domain of darkness, vulnerable to malevolent spiritual powers of this age, Colossian Christians are transferred into the new domain of Christ. The context makes it more natural to interpret the creation language of vv. 15-16 in light of Christ's redemptive work—as references to new creation rather than old creation. Doing so retains the contextual frame rather than jumping back to the beginning of time. A second problem arises when we consider the phrase “image of the invisible God” in v. 15. Although some see a Stoic or Wisdom reference here, I agree with F. F. Bruce who said, “No reader conversant with the OT scriptures, on reading these words of Paul, could fail to be reminded of the statement in Gen. 1:26f., that man was created by God ‘in his own image.'”[30] Immediately after making humanity in his own image, God blessed us with dominion over the earth. Philo also connected humanity's image of God with “the rulership over the earthly realms.”[31] But if the Christ of v. 15 is the pre-existent son prior to his incarnation, as the old creation model posits, “How can he be the ‘image of God,'” asked Eduard Schweizer, since “the one who is thus described here is not the earthly Jesus?”[32] It is precisely by virtue of his humanity that Jesus is the image of God not his pre-existence.[33] Thus, image-of-God language points us to the creation of a new humanity. A third problem is that “firstborn of all creation” prima facia implies that Christ is a member of creation (a partitive genitive). This is how Paul thought about Christ as firstborn in Rom 8.29 when he called Christ “firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” Clearly he saw Christ as a member of the “ἀδελφοῖς” (brothers and sisters). Furthermore, “πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως” (firstborn of all creation) in v. 15 parallels “πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν” (firstborn from the dead) v. 18. Although the former (v. 15) can be taken as a genitive of subordination (firstborn over creation) or as a partitive genitive (firstborn of creation), the latter (v. 18) is unambiguously partitive. Because v. 18 includes the word ἐκ (from/out of), instead of a multivalent genitive, it must mean that Jesus was himself a member of the dead prior to his resurrection. Likewise, he was the firstborn member of creation. To take v. 15 as a genitive of subordination and v. 18 in a partitive sense allows theology to drive exegesis over against the clear structural link between v. 15b and v. 18c. In fact, as the BDAG noted, Christ is “the firstborn of a new humanity.”[34] He is chronologically born first and, by virtue of that, also preeminent.[35] Fourthly, the phrase, “ἐν αὐτῷ” (in him), implies soteriology not protology as it does throughout the Pauline corpus. The prepositional phrases “in Christ,” “in the Lord,” “in him,” and others that are similar occur more than a hundred times in Paul's epistles. McKnight elucidated the sense nicely: “This expression, then, is the inaugurated eschatological reality into which the Christian has been placed, and it also evokes the new-creation realities that a person discovers.”[36] Creation in Christ is not likely to refer to Genesis creation. In fact, apart from Col 1.16, there is no text within Paul or the rest of the Bible that speaks of the origin of the universe as something created “in Christ.”[37] Sadly translators routinely obscure this fact by translating “ἐν αὐτῷ” as “by him.”[38] Amazingly, the NASB and ESV render “ἐν αὐτῷ” as “in him” in every other usage apart from Col 1.16![39] For the sake of consistency, it makes better sense to render “ἐν αὐτῷ” as “in him” and let the reader decide how to interpret it. Fifthly, the line, “and he is the head of the body, the Church” (v. 18a) clearly roots the first strophe in redemptive history not creation. Our English translations follow Robert Estienne's verse divisions, which confusingly combine the last line of the first strophe (v. 18a) and the first line of the second (v. 18b), obscuring the native poetic structure. As I made the case above, the structure of the text breaks into two strophes with v. 18a included in the first one. As I mentioned earlier, vv. 15-20 are a pre-existing poem that Paul has modified and incorporated into the text of Colossians. Ralph Martin pointed out that the poem contains “no less than five hapax legomena” and “about ten non-Pauline expressions.”[40] Additionally, there appear to be awkward additions that disrupt the symmetry. These additions are the most explicitly Christian material. It is likely that the original said, “and he is the head of the body” to which Paul appended “the church.” Edward Schillebeeckx commented on this. In Hellenistic terms this must primarily mean that he gives life and existence to the cosmos. Here, however, Colossians drastically corrects the ideas … The correction made by Colossians is to understand ‘body' as a reference to the church, and not the cosmos. This alters the whole perspective of the cultural and religious setting … The cosmic background is reinterpreted in terms of salvation history and ecclesiology. In fact Christ is already exercising his lordship over the world now … however, he is doing this only as the head of the church, his body, to which he gives life and strength. Thus Colossians claims that the church alone, rather than the cosmos, is the body of Christ.[41] If this is true, it shows Paul's careful concern to disallow a strictly old creation or protological reading of the first strophe. For by inserting “of the church,” he has limited the context of the first strophe to the Christ event. “The addition of ‘the church,'” wrote Dunn, “indicates that for Paul at any rate the two strophes were not dealing with two clearly distinct subjects (cosmology and soteriology).”[42] Karl-Joseph Kuschel wrote, “The answer would seem to be he wanted to ‘disturb' a possible cosmological-protological fancy in the confession of Christ … to prevent Christ from becoming a purely mythical heavenly being.”[43] Thus Paul's addition shows us he interpreted the creation of v16 as new creation. Lastly, theological concerns arise when taking Col 1.16 as old creation. The most obvious is that given the partitive genitive of v. 15, we are left affirming the so-called Arian position that God created Christ as the firstborn who, in turn, created everything else. Another thorn in the side of this view is God's insistence elsewhere to be the solo creator (Isa 44.24; cf. 45.18). On the strength of this fact, modalism comes forward to save the day while leaving new problems in its wake. However, recognizing Col 1.15-20 as new creation avoids such theological conundrums. 2. Wisdom as the Agent of Creation Dustin Smith noted, “The christological hymn contains no less than nine characteristics of the wisdom of God (e.g., “image,” “firstborn,” agent of creation, preceding all things, holding all things together) that are reapplied to the figure of Jesus.”[44] Some suggest that Col 1.15-20 is actually a hymn to Wisdom that Paul Christianized.[45] The idea is that God created the universe through his divine Wisdom, which is now embodied or incarnate in Christ. Dunn explained it as follows. If then Christ is what God's power/wisdom came to be recognized as, of Christ it can be said what was said first of wisdom—that ‘in him (the divine wisdom now embodied in Christ) were created all things.' In other words the language may be used here to indicate the continuity between God's creative power and Christ without the implication being intended that Christ himself was active in creation.[46] Before pointing out some problems, I must admit much of this perspective is quite noncontroversial. That Jewish literature identified Wisdom as God's creative agent, that there are linguistic parallels between Col 1.15-20 and Wisdom, and that the historical Jesus uniquely embodied Wisdom to an unprecedented degree are not up for debate. Did Paul expect his readers to pick up on the linguistic parallels? Afterall, he could have just said “in her were created all things” in v. 16, clearly making the connection with the grammatically feminine σοφία (Wisdom). Better yet, he could have said, “in Wisdom were created all things.” Even if the poem was originally to Wisdom, Paul has thoroughly Christianized it, applying to Christ what had been said of Wisdom. However, the most significant defeater for this view is that applying Wisdom vocabulary to Christ only works one way. Wisdom has found her home in Christ. This doesn't mean we can attribute to Christ what Wisdom did before she indwelt him any more than we can attribute to the living descendants of Nazis the horrific deeds of their ancestors. Perriman's critique is correct: “The point is not that the act of creation was Christlike, rather the reverse: recent events have been creation-like. The death and resurrection of Jesus are represented as the profoundly creative event in which the wisdom of God is again dynamically engaged, by which a new world order has come about.”[47] Once again a new creation approach makes better sense of the text. 3. Christ as the Purpose of Creation Another approach is to take ἐν αὐτῷ (in him) in a telic sense. Martha King, a linguist with SIL, said the phrase can mean “in association with Christ everything was created” or “in connection with Christ all things were created.”[48] Lexicographer, Joseph Thayer, sharpened the sense with the translation, “[I]n him resides the cause why all things were originally created.”[49] William MacDonald's translation brought this out even more with the phrase, “because for him everything … was created.”[50] The idea is that God's act of creation in the beginning was with Christ in view. As Eric Chang noted, “Christ is the reason God created all things.”[51] G. B. Caird said, “He is the embodiment of that purpose of God which underlies the whole creation.”[52] The idea is one of predestination not agency.[53] Christ was the goal for which God created all things. A weakness of this view is that purpose is better expressed using εἰς or δία with an accusative than ἐν. Secondly, the parallel line in the second strophe (v. 19) employs “ἐν αὐτῷ” in a clearly locative sense: “in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell.” So even though “ἐν αὐτῷ” could imply purpose, in this context it much more likely refers to location. Lastly, Paul mentioned the sense of purpose at the end of v. 16 with “εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται” (for him has been created), so it would be repetitive to take “ἐν αὐτῷ” that way as well. To sum up, the three positions that see Col 1.16 as a reference to old creation all have significant problems. With these in mind, let us turn our attention to consider a fourth possibility: that Paul has in mind new creation. Reasons for a New Creation Reading I've already provided four reasons why Col 1.15-20 refers to new creation: (1) calling Christ the image of God points to the new humanity begun in Christ as the last Adam;[54] (2) since the firstborn of the old creation was Adam (or, perhaps, Seth), Jesus must be the firstborn of the new creation; (3) saying Jesus is the head of the church, limits the focus for the first strophe to the time following the Christ event; (4) the context of the poem, both before (vv. 13-14) and after (vv. 21-22) is soteriological, making an old creation paradigm awkward, while a new creation view fits perfectly. The Catholic priest and professor, Franz Zeilinger, summarized the situation nicely: “Christ is (through his resurrection from the realm of death) Lord over the possession granted to him, of which he is the ἀρχή (beginning) and archetype, … and head and beginning of the eschatological new creation!”[55] Additionally, a new creation paradigm fits best with Paul's elaboration of what visible and invisible things in heaven and on earth he has in mind. Once again, here's our text. 16a      for in him were created all things 16b                  in the heavens and upon the earth, 16c                  the visible and the invisible, 16d                  whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities 16e      all things have been created through him and for him By specifying thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities, we discern Paul's train of thought. Form critics are quick to point out that v. 16d is Paul's addition to the poem. Without it, the reader may have thought of sky, land, and animals—old creation. However, with v. 16d present, we direct our attention to political realities not God's creative power or engineering genius. Martha King noted the two possible meanings for εἴτε: (1) specifying the “invisible things” or (2) giving examples of “all things.” Taking the second view, we read “in him were created all things, including thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities.”[56] Randy Leedy also presented this position in his sentence diagrams, identifying v. 16d as equivalent to v. 16c and v. 16b, all of which modify τὰ πάντα (all things) at the end of v. 16a. (See Appendix for Leedy's diagram.) Perriman pressed home the point when he wrote: The fact is that any interpretation that takes verse 16 to be a reference to the original creation has to account for the narrow range of created things explicitly listed. … The Colossians verse mentions only the creation of political entities—thrones, lordships, rulers and authorities, visible and invisible—either in the already existing heaven or on the already existing and, presumably, populated earth. What this speaks of is a new governmental order consisting of both invisible-heavenly and visibly-earthly entities.”[57] Understanding v. 16d as equivalent to “all things” in v. 16a nicely coheres with a new-creation paradigm. However, taken the other way—as an elaboration of only the invisible created realities—v. 16d introduces an asymmetrical and clumsy appendix. A New Creation Reading of Col 1.16 Now that we've considered some problems with old creation views and some reasons to read Col 1.16 from a new creation perspective, let's consider how a new creation reading works. New creation is all about the new breaking into the old, the future into the present. G. F. Wessels said, “Paul made clear that there is a present realized aspect of salvation, as well as a future, still outstanding aspect, which will only be realized at the eschaton.”[58] New creation, likewise, has future and present realities. Exiting Old Creation Before becoming part of the new creation, one must exit the old creation. “Our old humanity was co-crucified“ (Rom 6.6). “With Christ you died to the elemental principles of the world” (Col 2.20). “As many as were baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into his death” (Rom 6.3). We were “co-buried with him through baptism into the death … having been united with the likeness of his death” (Rom 6.4-5). Our death with him through baptism kills our allegiance and submission to the old powers and the old way of life “in which you formerly walked according to the zeitgeist of this world, according to the rule of the authority of the air, the spirit which now works in the children of disobedience” (Eph 2.2). Entering New Creation As death is the only way out of the old creation, so resurrection is the only way into the new creation. “You have been co-raised with Christ” (Col 3.1). God “co-made-alive us together with him” (Col 2.13).[59] By virtue of our union with Christ, we ourselves are already “co-raised and co-seated us in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2.6). The result of this is that “we also may walk in newness of life” (Rom 6.4). For those who are “in Christ, (there is) a new creation; the old has passed away, behold (the) new has come into existence” (2 Cor 5.17). “They have been ‘transported,'” wrote Schillebeeckx, “they already dwell above in Christ's heavenly sphere of influence (Col 1.13)—the soma Christou … that is the church!”[60] Community For the people of God, “neither circumcision is anything nor uncircumcision but a new creation” is what matters (Gal 6.15). Those who “are clothed with the new” are “being renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created, where there is no Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, (or) free, but Christ (is) all and in all” (Col 3.10-11). Through Christ God has nullified the law “in order that he might create the two into one new humanity in him” (Eph 2.14-15). Thus, within new creation, ethnic identity still exists, but it is relativized, our identity in Christ taking priority ahead of other affiliations and duties. Lifestyle When the lost become saved through faith, they become his creation (ποίημα), “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph 2.10). This means we are to “lay aside the former way of life, the old humanity corrupted according to deceitful desires” and instead be clothed with “the new humanity created according to God in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Eph 4.22-24). Rather than lying to one another, we must “strip off the old humanity with its way of acting” and “be clothed with the new (humanity), renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it” (Col 3.9-10). “The ones who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts” and instead “walk by the spirit” (Gal 5.24-25). Ultimately, All Creation Although new creation is currently limited to those who voluntarily recognize Jesus as Lord, all “creation is waiting with eager expectation for the unveiling of the children of God” (Rom 8.19). Because of the Christ event, the created order eagerly awaits the day when it will escape “the enslavement of corruption” and gain “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (v. 21). Like a bone out of joint, creation does not function properly. Once Christ sets it right, it will return to its proper order and operation under humanity's wise and capable rulership in the eschaton. Eschatology God predetermined that those who believe will be “conformed to the image of his son, that he be firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Rom 8.29). Thus, the resurrected Christ is the prototype, “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15.20). Whereas “in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (v. 22). We await Christ's return to “transform the body of our humble station (that it be) shaped to his glorious body according to the energy which makes him able to also to subject all things to himself.” (Phil 3.21). This is the end goal of new creation: resurrected subjects of God's kingdom joyfully living in a renewed world without mourning, crying, and pain forevermore (Isa 65.17-25; Rev 21-22). The Powers Taking Col 1.16 as a new creation text adds key information about the present governing powers to this richly textured picture. In Christ God created thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. He made these through Christ and for Christ with the result that Christ himself is before all things, and in Christ all things hold together (Col 1.17). He is the head of the body, the Church (Col 1.18). We find very similar language repeated in Ephesians in the context of Christ's exaltation.[61] Ephesians 1.20-23 20 Which [power] he energized in Christ having raised him from the dead and seated (him) on his right (hand) in the heavenlies 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name named, not only in this age but also in the one to come; 22 and he subjected all things under his feet and gave him (as) head over all things in the Church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in all. The parallels are striking. Both speak of Christ's resurrection, Christ's exalted position of authority over all the powers, Christ's role as head of the church, and both mention the fullness. It's easy to miss the connection between these two passages since most think of Eph 1.20-22 as ascension theology and Col 1.15-20 as creation theology. But, if we adjust our thinking to regard Col 1.16 as new creation, we see how the two fit together. In Ephesians we see Christ's ascension to God's right hand as the reason for a cosmic reordering of authorities with the result that all rule, authority, power, and dominion are subjected to him. (Though we may be accustomed to reading these powers in Eph 1.21 as only malevolent owing to Eph 2.2 and 6.12, the list here must be mixed, since only benevolent powers will survive the final judgement and continue into the age to come.) Instead of exaltation, in Colossians Paul employed the language of creation to describe Christ's relation to the powers. Perhaps lesser terms like reassign, reorder, or establish were just too small to adequately express the magnitude of how the Christ event has changed the world—both in heaven and on earth. The only term big enough to convey the new situation was “creation”—the very same word he routinely used elsewhere with the meaning of new creation.[62] We can gain more insight by considering what the powers of Eph 1.21 and Col 1.16 mean. McKnight saw them “as earthly, systemic manifestations of (perhaps fallen) angelic powers—hence, the systemic worldly, sociopolitical manifestations of cosmic/angelic rebellion against God.”[63] I partially agree with McKnight here. He's right to see the powers as both heavenly and earthly, or better, as the heavenly component of the earthly sociopolitical realities, but he has not made room for the new authority structures created in Christ. John Schoenheit helpfully explained it this way: Not only did Jesus create his Church out of Jew and Gentile, he had to create the structure and positions that would allow it to function, both in the spiritual world (positions for the angels that would minister to the Church—see Rev. 1:1, “his angel”) and in the physical world (positions and ministries here on earth—see Rom. 12:4-8; Eph. 4:7-11).[64] We must never forget that Paul has an apocalyptic worldview—a perspective that seeks to unveil the heavenly reality behind the earthly. He believed in powers of darkness and powers of light. In Christ were created thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities (Col 1.16). He is “the head of all rule and authority” (Col 2.10). These new creation realities make progress against the old powers that still hold sway in the world outside the Church. Although the old powers are still at work, those who are in Christ enjoy his protection. With respect to the Church, he has already “disarmed the rulers and authorities” (Col 2.15). We can don “the armor of God that we be able to stand against the methods of the devil” (Eph 6.11) and “subduing everything, to stand” (v. 13). We find glimpses of this heavenly reality scattered in other places in the Bible. Peter mentioned how Christ “is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and power having been subjected to him” (1 Pet 3.22). In John's Revelation, he addressed each of the seven letters to the angels of their respective churches.[65] Although it's hard for us to get details on precisely what happened at Christ's ascension, something major occurred, not just on earth, but also in the spiritual realm. Jesus's last recorded words in Matthew are: “all authority in heaven and upon earth was given to me” (Mat 28.18-20). Presumably such a statement implies that prior to his resurrection Jesus did not have all authority in heaven and earth. It didn't exist until it was created. Similarly, because of his death, resurrection, and ascension, Christ has “become so much better than the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to them” (Heb 1.4). Once again, the text implies that Christ was not already superior to the angels, but “after making purification of the sins, he sat on the right hand of the majesty on high” at which time he became preeminent (Heb 1.3). Perhaps this also explains something about why Christ “proclaimed to the spirits in prison” (1 Pet 3.19). Another possibility is that Christ's ascension (Rev 12.5) triggered a war in heaven (v. 7) with the result that the dragon and his angels suffered defeat (v. 8) and were thrown out of heaven down to the earth (v. 9). Sadly, for most of the history of the church we have missed this Jewish apocalyptic approach that was obvious to Paul, limiting salvation to individual sins and improved morality.[66] Only in the twentieth century did interpreters begin to see the cosmic aspect of new creation. Margaret Thrall wrote the following. The Christ-event is the turning-point of the whole world … This Christ ‘in whom' the believer lives is the last Adam, the inaugurator of the new eschatological humanity. … Paul is saying that if anyone exists ‘in Christ', that person is a newly-created being. … In principle, through the Christ-event and in the person of Christ, the new world and the new age are already objective realities.[67] New creation is, in the words of J. Louis Martyn “categorically cosmic and emphatically apocalyptic.”[68] In fact, “The advent of the Son and of his Spirit is thus the cosmic apocalyptic event.”[69] In Christ is the beginning of a whole new creation, an intersecting community of angelic and human beings spanning heaven and earth. The interlocking of earthly (visible) and heavenly (invisible) authority structures points to Paul's apocalyptic holism. The Church was not on her own to face the ravages of Rome's mad love affair with violence and power. In Christ, people were no longer susceptible to the whims of the gods that have wreaked so much havoc from time immemorial.[70] No, the Church is Christ's body under his direct supervision and protection. As a result, the Church is the eschatological cosmic community. It is not merely a social club; it has prophetic and cosmic dimensions. Prophetically, the Church points to the eschaton when all of humanity will behave then how the Church already strives to live now—by the spirit instead of the flesh (Gal 5.16-25). Cosmically, the Church is not confined to the earth. There is a heavenly dimension with authority structures instantiated under Christ to partner with the earthly assemblies. God's “plan for the fulness of the times” is “to head up all thing in the Christ, the things upon the heavens and the things upon the earth in him” (Eph 1.10). Although this is his eschatological vision, Zeilinger pointed out that it is already happening. [T]he eschatological world given in Christ is realized within the still-existing earthly creation through the inclusion of the human being in Christ, the exalted one, by means of the proclamation of salvation and baptism. The eschaton spreads throughout the world in the kerygma and becomes reality, in that the human being, through baptism, becomes part of Christ—that is, in unity with him, dies to the claim of the στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου (2.20) and is raised with him to receive his eschatological life. The people thus incorporated into the exalted Christ thereby form, in him and with him, the new creation of the eschaton within the old! The body of Christ is thus recognizable as the expanding Church. In it, heavenly and earthly space form, in a certain sense, a unity.[71] The Church is a counter society, and embassy of the future kingdom shining the light of the age to come into the present in the power of the spirit with the protection of Christ and his heavenly powers over against the powers of darkness, who/which are still quite active—especially in the political realities of our present evil age (Gal 1.4). We bend the knee to the cosmic Christ now in anticipation of the day when “every knee may bend: heavenly and earthly and subterranean” (Phil 2.10) and “every tongue may confess that Jesus Christ (is) Lord” (v. 11). Christ's destiny is to fulfil the original Adamic mandate to multiply, fill, and have dominion over the earth (Gen 1.28). He has already received all authority in heaven and earth (Mat 28.18). God has given him “dominion over the works of your hands and put all things under his feet” as the quintessential man (Ps 8.6). Even so, “Now we do not yet see all things subjected to him” (Heb 2.8), but when he comes “he will reign into the ages of the ages” (Rev 11.15). Until then, he calls the Church to recognize his preeminence and give him total allegiance both in word and deed. Conclusion We began by establishing that the structure of the poetic unit in Col 1.15-20 breaks into two strophes (15-18a and 18b-20). We noted that Paul likely incorporated pre-existing material into Colossians, editing it as he saw fit. Then we considered the problems with the three old creation readings: (A) Christ as the agent of creation, (B) Wisdom as the agent of creation, and (C) Christ as the purpose of creation. In the course of critiquing (A), which is by far most popular, we observed several reasons to think Col 1.16 pertained to new creation, including (1) the image of God language in v. 15a, (2) the firstborn of all creation language in v. 15b, (3) the head of the Church language in v. 18a, and (4) the soteriological context (frame) of the poem (vv. 13-14, 21-22). To this I added a fifth syntactical reason that 16d as an elaboration of “τἀ πάντα” (all things) of 16a. Next, we explored the idea of new creation, especially within Paul's epistles, to find a deep and richly textured paradigm for interpreting God's redemptive and expanding sphere of influence (in Christ) breaking into the hostile world. We saw that new Christians die and rise with Christ, ending their association with the old and beginning again as a part of the new—a community where old racial, legal, and status divisions no longer matter, where members put off the old way of living and instead become clothed with the new humanity, where people look forward to and live in light of the ultimate transformation to be brought about at the coming of Christ. Rather than limiting new creation to the salvation of individuals, or even the sanctifying experience of the community, we saw that it also includes spiritual powers both “in the heavens and upon the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities” (Col 1.16). Reading Col 1.15-20 along with Eph 1.20-23 we connected God's creation of the powers in Christ with his exaltation of Christ to his right hand “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph 1.21). The point from both texts is clear: as “the head of the body, the Church” (Col 1.18; Eph 1.22), Christ is “before all things” (Col 1.17), “first in all things” (Col 1.18), and “far above all” (Eph 1.21), since God has “subjected all things under his feet” (Eph 1.22). Christ is preeminent as the firstborn of all new creation, “the new Adam … the starting point where new creation took place.”[72] Although the old powers still hold sway in the world, those in the interlocked heaven-and-earth new creation domain where Christ is the head, enjoy his protection if they remain “in the faith established and steadfast and not shifting away from the hope of the gospel” (Col 1.23). This interpretation has several significant advantages. It fits into Paul's apocalyptic way of thinking about Christ's advent and exaltation. It also holds together the first strophe of the poem as a unit. Additionally, it makes better sense of the context. (The ecclesiology of Col 1.15-18a follows logically from the soteriological context of vv. 13-14.) Lastly, it is compatible with a wide range of Christological options. Appendix Here is Col 1.16 from Leedy's sentence diagrams.[73] Of note is how he equates the τὰ πάντα of 16a with 16c and 16d rather than seeing 16d as an elaboration of τά ὁρατά. Bibliography Bauer, Walter, Frederick William  Danker, William F. Arndt, F. Gingrich, Kurt Aland, Barbara Aland, and Viktor Reichmann. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. Bird, Michael F. Colossians and Philemon. A New Covenant Commentary. Cambridge, England: The Lutterworth Press, 2009. Brown, Anna Shoffner. “Nothing ‘Mere’ About a Man in the Image of God.” Paper presented at the Unitarian Christian Alliance, Springfield, OH, Oct 14, 2022. Bruce, E. K. Simpson and F. F. The Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. The New International Commentary on the New Testament, edited by Ned B. Stonehouse. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1957. Buzzard, Anthony F. Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian. Morrow, GA: Restoration Fellowship, 2007. Caird, G. B. New Testament Theology. Edited by L. D. Hurst. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 2002. Caird, G. B. Paul’s Letters from Prison. New Clarendon Bible, edited by H. F. D. Sparks. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1976. Carden, Robert. One God: The Unfinished Reformation. Revised ed. Naperville, IL: Grace Christian Press, 2016. Chang, Eric H. H. The Only Perfect Man. Edited by Bentley C. F. Chang. 2nd ed. Montreal, QC: Christian Disciples Church Publishers, 2017. Deuble, Jeff. Christ before Creeds. Latham, NY: Living Hope International Ministries, 2021. Dunn, James D. G. Christology in the Making. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996. Dunn, James D. G. The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon. New International Greek Testament Commentary, edited by Gasque Marshall, Hagner. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996. Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019. King, Martha. An Exegetical Summary of Colossians. Dallas, TX: SIL International, 1992. Kuschel, Karl-Joseph. Born before All Time? Translated by John Bowden. New York, NY: Crossroad, 1992. Originally published as Beforen vor aller Zeit? Lane, William L. The New Testament Page by Page. Open Your Bible Commentary, edited by Martin Manser. Bath, UK: Creative 4 International, 2013. Leedy, Randy A. The Greek New Testament Sentence Diagrams. Norfolk, VA: Bible Works, 2006. Lohse, Edward. Colossians and Philemon. Hermeneia. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1971. MacDonald, William Graham. The Idiomatic Translation of the New Testament. Norfolk, VA: Bibleworks, 2012. Mark H. Graeser, John A. Lynn, John W. Schoenheit. One God & One Lord. 4th ed. Martinsville, IN: Spirit & Truth Fellowship International, 2010. Martin, Ralph. “An Early Christian Hymn (Col. 1:15-20).” The Evangelical Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1964): 195–205. Martyn, J. Louis. Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997. McGrath, James F. The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009. McKnight, Scot. The Letter to the Colossians. New International Commentary on the New Testament, edited by Joel B. Green. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018. Norden, Eduard. Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen Zur Formengeschichte Religiöser Rede. 4th ed. Stuttgart, Germany: B. G. Teubner, 1956. Originally published as 1913. Pao, David. Colossians and Philemon. Zondervan Exegetical Commentary of the New Testament, edited by Clinton E. Arnold. Grand Rapid, MI: Zondervan, 2012. Perriman, Andrew. In the Form of a God. Studies in Early Christology, edited by David Capes Michael Bird, and Scott Harrower. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022. Philo. The Works of Philo. The Norwegian Philo Concordance Project. Edited by Kåre Fuglseth Peder Borgen, Roald Skarsten. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2005. Robinson, James M. “A Formal Analysis of Colossians 1:15-20.” Journal of Biblical Literature 76, no. 4 (1957): 270–87. Schillebeeckx, Eduard. Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord. Translated by John Bowden. New York, NY: The Seabury Press, 1977. Schoberg, Gerry. Perspectives of Jesus in the Writings of Paul. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013. Schweizer, Eduard. The Letter to the Colossians. Translated by Andrew Chester. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1982. Smith, Dustin R. Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2024. Snedeker, Donald R. Our Heavenly Father Has No Equals. Bethesda, MD: International Scholars Publications, 1998. Thayer, Joseph Henry. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996. Thrall, Margaret. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Vol. 1. The International Critical Commentary, edited by C. E. B. Cranfield J. A. Emerton, G. N. Stanton. Edinburgh, Scotland: T&T Clark, 1994. Wachtel, William M. “Colossians 1:15-20–Preexistence or Preeminence?” Paper presented at the 14th Theological Conference, McDonough, GA, 2005. Wessels, G. F. “The Eschatology of Colossians and Ephesians.” Neotestamentica 21, no. 2 (1987): 183–202. Witherington III, Ben The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary of the Captivity Epistles. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007. Yates, Roy. The Epistle to the Colossians. London: Epworth Press, 1993. Zeilinger, Franz. Der Erstgeborene Der Schöpfung. Wien, Österreich: Herder, 1974. Footnotes [1] Since the nineteenth century biblical scholars have been divided over whether Paul wrote Colossians. One of the major reasons for thinking Paul didn't write Colossians is his exalted Christology—the very conclusion this paper seeks to undermine. A second major factor to argue against Pauline authorship is the difference in vocabulary, but this is explainable if Paul used a different amanuensis. The theologically more cosmic emphasis (also evident in Ephesians) is likely due to Paul's time in prison to reflect and expand his understanding of the Christ event. Lastly, the proto-Gnostic hints in Colossians do not require dating the epistle outside of Paul's time. Although Gnosticism flourished at the beginning of the second century, it was likely already beginning to incubate in Paul's time. [2] Eduard Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, trans. John Bowden (New York, NY: The Seabury Press, 1977), 185. [3] Schillebeeckx, 185. [4] G. B. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, New Clarendon Bible, ed. H. F. D. Sparks (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1976), 177. [5] Caird, 181. [6] James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, New International Greek Testament Commentary, ed. Gasque Marshall, Hagner (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 91. “[W]hat at first reads as a straightforward assertion of Christ's pre-existenct activity in creation becomes on closer analysis an assertion which is rather more profound—not of Christ as such present with God in the beginning, nor of Christ as identified with a pre-existent hypostasis or divine being (Wisdom) beside God, but of Christ as embodying and expressing (and defining) that power of God which is the manifestation of God in and to his creation.” (Italics in original.) James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 194. [7] James F. McGrath, The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 46. [8] Andrew Perriman, In the Form of a God, Studies in Early Christology, ed. David Capes Michael Bird, and Scott Harrower (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022), 200. [9] In addition, biblical unitarians routinely interpret Col 1.16 as new creation. See Anthony F. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian (Morrow, GA: Restoration Fellowship, 2007), 189–90, Robert Carden, One God: The Unfinished Reformation, Revised ed. (Naperville, IL: Grace Christian Press, 2016), 197–200, Eric H. H. Chang, The Only Perfect Man, ed. Bentley C. F. Chang, 2nd ed. (Montreal, QC: Christian Disciples Church Publishers, 2017), 151–52, Jeff Deuble, Christ before Creeds (Latham, NY: Living Hope International Ministries, 2021), 163–66, John A. Lynn Mark H. Graeser, John W. Schoenheit, One God & One Lord, 4th ed. (Martinsville, IN: Spirit & Truth Fellowship International, 2010), 493–94, Donald R. Snedeker, Our Heavenly Father Has No Equals (Bethesda, MD: International Scholars Publications, 1998), 291–92, William M. Wachtel, “Colossians 1:15-20–Preexistence or Preeminence?” (paper presented at the 14th Theological Conference, McDonough, GA, 2005), 4. [10] All translations are my own. [11] Stophes are structural divisions drawn from Greek odes akin to stanzas in poetry or verses in music. [12] Throughout I will capitalize Church since that reflects the idea of all Christians collectively not just those in a particular local assembly. [13] Eduard Norden, Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen Zur Formengeschichte Religiöser Rede, 4th ed. (Stuttgart, Germany: B. G. Teubner, 1956), 250–54. [14] James M. Robinson, “A Formal Analysis of Colossians 1:15-20,” Journal of Biblical Literature 76, no. 4 (1957): 272–73. [15] Edward Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1971), 44. [16] Eduard Schweizer, The Letter to the Colossians, trans. Andrew Chester (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1982), 57. [17] Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 84. [18] Ben  Witherington III, The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary of the Captivity Epistles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 129. [19] William L. Lane, The New Testament Page by Page, Open Your Bible Commentary, ed. Martin Manser (Bath, UK: Creative 4 International, 2013), 765. [20] E. K. Simpson and F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, ed. Ned B. Stonehouse (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1957), 65. [21] Michael F. Bird, Colossians and Philemon, A New Covenant Commentary (Cambridge, England: The Lutterworth Press, 2009), 50. [22] David Pao, Colossians and Philemon, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary of the New Testament, ed. Clinton E. Arnold (Grand Rapid, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 87. [23] Lohse, 42. [24] Lohse, 43–44. [25] Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians, New International Commentary on the New Testament, ed. Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018), 144. [26] Col 1.13-14: “who rescued us from the authority of darkness and transferred (us) into the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have the redemption, the forgiveness of the sins.” Col 1.21-22: “And you being formerly alienated and hostile in thought in the evil deeds, but now he reconciled (you) in his body of the flesh through the death to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.” [27] In fact, we can easily skip from vv. 13-14 to vv. 21-22. [28] Dunn, Christology in the Making, 187–88. [29] Sadly, most translations erroneously insert a paragraph between vv. 14 and 15. This produces the visual effect that v. 15 is a new thought unit. [30] Bruce, 193. [31] Moses 2.65: “τὴν ἡγεμονίαν τῶν περιγείων” in Philo, The Works of Philo, The Norwegian Philo Concordance Project (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2005). See also Sirach 17.3. [32] Schweizer, 64. [33] For a helpful treatment of how the image of God relates to Christology, see Anna Shoffner Brown, “Nothing ‘Mere’ About a Man in the Image of God” (paper presented at the Unitarian Christian Alliance, Springfield, OH, Oct 14, 2022). [34] Walter Bauer et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. “πρωτότοκος,” 2.a. [35] Franz Zeilnger wrote, “Christ is temporally the first of a series that essentially proceeds from him, and at the same time its lord and head.” Franz Zeilinger, Der Erstgeborene Der Schöpfung (Wien, Österreich: Herder, 1974), 182. Original: “als “Wurzel” ist Christus zeitlich der erste einer Reihe, die wesentlich aus ihm hervorgeht, und zugleich ihr Herr und Haupt.” [36] McKnight, 85–86. [37] The closest parallels are 1 Cor 8.6; Heb 1.2; and John 1.3, which employ the preposition δια (through). Upon close examination these three don't teach Christ created the universe either. [38] ESV, CSB, NASB, etc. Notably the NET diverges from the other evangelical translations. Roman Catholic, mainline, and unitarian translations all tend to straightforwardly render “ἐν αὐτῷ” as “in him” in Col 1.16; cf. NABRE, NRSVUE, OGFOMMT, etc. [39] Chang, 150. [40] Ralph Martin, “An Early Christian Hymn (Col. 1:15-20),” The Evangelical Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1964): 198. [41] Schillebeeckx, 186. [42] Dunn, Christology in the Making, 191. [43] Karl-Joseph Kuschel, Born before All Time?, trans. John Bowden (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1992), 336. [44] Dustin R. Smith, Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2024), 5–6. For more on wisdom Christology in Col 1.16 see Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 89, Roy Yates, The Epistle to the Colossians (London: Epworth Press, 1993), 18–19, 23, G. B. Caird, New Testament Theology, ed. L. D. Hurst (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 2002), 46, McGrath, 44, 46. [45] See Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 89. See also Yates, 18–19, 23. [46] Dunn, Christology in the Making, 190. [47] Perriman, 199. [48] Martha King, An Exegetical Summary of Colossians (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 1992), 53. [49] Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), s.v. “ἐν,” 1722. He recognized the cause was both instrumental and final. [50] William Graham MacDonald, The Idiomatic Translation of the New Testament (Norfolk, VA: Bibleworks, 2012). [51] Chang, 147. Similarly James McGrath wrote, “[I]f all things were intended by God to find their fulfillment in Christ, then they must have been created “in him” in the very beginning in some undefined sense, since it was axiomatic that the eschatological climax of history would be a restoration of its perfect, original state.” McGrath, 46. [52] Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 172. [53] “God so designed the universe that it was to achieve its proper meaning and unity only under the authority of man (Gen. 128; Ps. 86). But this purpose was not to be implemented at once; it was ‘to be put into effect when the time was ripe' (Eph. 110), when Christ had lived a human life as God intended it, and had become God's image in a measure which was never true of Adam. Only in unity with ‘the proper man' could the universe be brought to its destined coherence. For one who believes in predestination it is but a small step from this to saying that the universe was created in him.” Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 178. [54] See also Paul's Adam Christology in Rom 5.12-21; 1 Cor 15.21-22, 45-49. [55] “Christus ist (durch seine Auferstehung aus dem Todesbereich) Herr über den ihm verliehenen Besitz, dessen ἀρχή und Urbild er ist, … und Haupt und Anfang der eschatologischen Neuschöpfung!” Zeilinger, 188. [56] King, 54. [57] Perriman, 200. [58] G. F. Wessels, “The Eschatology of Colossians and Ephesians,” Neotestamentica 21, no. 2 (1987): 187. [59] I realize my translation is awkward, but I prioritized closely mirroring the Greek over presenting smooth English. The original reads, “συνεζωοποίησεν ὑμᾶς σὺν αὐτῷ.” [60] Schillebeeckx, 187. [61] Scholars who make this connection include Caird, New Testament Theology, 216, Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 177, McGrath, 44, Perriman, 201. [62] In fact, only two of the texts I cited above explicitly say “new creation” (2 Cor 5.17 and Gal 6.15). In all the others, Paul blithely employed creation language, expecting his readers to understand that he was not talking about the creation of the universe, but the creation of the new humanity in Christ—the Church. [63] McKnight, 152. [64] Mark H. Graeser, 493. [65] Rev 2.1, 8, 12, 18; 3.1, 7, 14. [66] See Gerry Schoberg, Perspectives of Jesus in the Writings of Paul (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 280–81, 83. [67] Margaret Thrall, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, vol. 1, The International Critical Commentary, ed. C. E. B. Cranfield J. A. Emerton, G. N. Stanton (Edinburgh, Scotland: T&T Clark, 1994), 423, 26–28. [68] J. Louis Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997), 122. [69] Martyn, 121. [70] Whether the old gods actually existed or not is a topic beyond the scope of this paper. Interested readers should consult Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019). [71] “[D]ie in Christus gegebene echatologische Welt verwirkliche sich innerhalb der weiterhin existenten irdischen Schöpfung durch die Einbeziehung des Menschen in Christus, den Erhöhten, mittles Heilsverkündigung und Taufe. Das Eschaton setzt sic him Kerygma wetweit durch und wird Wirklichkeit, indem der Mensch durch die Taufe Christi Teil wird, d. h. in Einheit mit ihm dem Anspruch der στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου stirbt (2, 20) und mit ihm auferweckt sein eschatologisches Leben erhält. Die so dem erhöhten Christus eingegliederten Menschen bilden somit in ihm und mit ihm die neue Schöpfung der Eschata innerhalb der alten! Der Christusleib ist somit als sich weitende Kirche erkennbar. In ihr bildet himmlischer und irdischer Raum gewissermaßen eine Einheit.” Zeilinger, 179. [72] “Der neue Adam … Ausgangsort, in dem sich Neuschöpfung ereignete,” Zeilinger, 199. [73] Randy A. Leedy, The Greek New Testament Sentence Diagrams (Norfolk, VA: Bible Works, 2006). This is now available in Logos Bible Software.

God Sees Jesus Followers as “In Christ”: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” MESSAGE SUMMARY: As Followers of Jesus, we are "In Christ" -- God looks at us and sees Jesus in us. Throughout the Epistles we find: "In Christ" or "In Him". In Galatians 3:14, Paul tells us that our faith in Jesus makes us “In Christ” and recipients of God's Covenant with Abraham: “so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.". Also, Paul goes even further, in Galatians 3:25-28, to tell us that, through our faith in Jesus, we no longer need any kind of intermediary because we are “In Christ” and we have a personal relationship with God, the Creator of the Universe: “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.”. The benefit our position "In Christ", as Christians, is that when God looks at us, He sees Jesus, the Son; therefore, He then sees us as His sons and daughters.   TODAY'S PRAYER: Keeping the Sabbath, Lord, will require a lot of changes in the way I am living life. Teach me, Lord, how to take the next step with this in a way that fits my unique personality and situation. Help me to trust you with all that will remain unfinished and to enjoy my humble place in your very large world. In Jesus' name, amen.    Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 129). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, I affirm that because of what God has done for me in His Son, Jesus, I AM RIGHTEOUS IN GOD'S EYES. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Romans 3:21-26; Romans 6:5-11; Romans 6:22-23; Psalms 77a:1-10. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “The Sermons on the Amount - Part 2  "Owner - A Question: Who is Lord Over All?"” at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/    DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

How do we respond when someone disappoints or offends us?In “Kindness and Compassion When Dealing with Others,” we’re reminded that while our instincts may push us toward harshness or confrontation, Scripture calls us to something higher—compassion, forgiveness, and restoration. One mom shares how she chose grace over anger after a trusted friend made a poor choice. The result? A restored relationship and a glimpse of God’s heart in action. Key Takeaways: God calls us to handle correction with grace (Eph. 4:32) Following Matthew 18 means addressing issues directly—and kindly Extending forgiveness models the grace we’ve received Gentleness can repair what harshness might destroy

Top Ten from 2024: # 9: Protecting Your Marriage Against Unfaithfulness with Dave Carder   Disclaimer: This message contains adult themes and is not intended for little ears.   Ephesians 4:31+32 “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”   **Transcription of original episode** Special Patreon Release: Protecting Your Marriage Against Unfaithfulness with Dave Carder   Dave Carder serves as Pastor of Counseling Ministries at First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton, CA.   His specialty is Adultery Recovery and Prevention for which he has appeared on numerous media outlets including The Oprah Winfrey Network, Discovery Health, and The Learning Channel, The Tony Robbins Passion Project, Ladies Home Journal, USA Today, The Counseling Connection, and various other magazines and journals.  He has taught at various universities and seminaries world wide, and has done training for both the US Navy and Army.   He is the author or co-author of Torn Asunder: Recovering from an Extramarital Affair, Close Calls: What Adulterers Want You to Know About Protecting Your Marriage, and Unlocking Your Family Patterns: Finding Freedom from a Hurtful Past. He holds the Michigan Limited License for Psychology and the California Marital and Family Therapy license, and has graduate degrees in Biblical Literature and Counseling Psychology.   Dave and his wife, Ronnie, have been married over 50 years, and have four adult children and eight grandchildren. More info is available at www.DaveCarder.com   At The Savvy Sauce, we will only recommend resources we believe in! We also want you to be aware: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.   Anatomy of an Affair by Dave Carder   Torn Asunder by Dave Carder   Torn Asunder Workbook by Dave Carder   Close Calls by Dave Carder   Schedule an appointment with Dave Carder HERE   Dave Carder's Website, Including FREE video series on recovering from extramarital affair   How We Love Website   5 Love Languages Website   Couple Talk Website   Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass   Thank You to Our Sponsor: BELAY (Text SAVVY to 55123 before June 30th, 2025 to receive your amazing, limited-time, special offer!!!)   Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website   Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast!   Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)   Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,   Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”   Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”   Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”   Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”   Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”   John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”   Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”   Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”   Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession- to the praise of his glory.”   Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“   Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“   Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”