Image Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington The Sacrifice of Isaac Genesis 22:1-16 The Background Imagine this: After a lifetime of infertility, you receive a promise that your offspring will comprise a great nation. You might hope. Imagine waiting year after year for a child to fulfill the promise and year after year Read More
Month: February 2018
Substitutionary Atonement Part 1: A Sacrifice for Adam and Eve
Introduction: Substitutionary Atonement Substitutionary Atonement, a key theme in the Bible, involves three parties: the transgressor, the transgressed, and the substitute. The substitute (though innocent) takes the punishment that the transgressor (though guilty) deserves, in order to restore him to right standing before the transgressed. Here it is in biblical terms: God is holy (Isaiah Read More
We Love Because He First Loved Us: How to Think Deeply About Love on Valentine’s Day (Part 2)
We Respond in Obedience: Love God and Love Others “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). “And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:21). In the previous post I talked about how we were designed Read More
We Love Because He First Loved Us: How to Think Deeply About Love on Valentine’s Day (Part 1)
I can remember as a single woman feeling sad every Valentine’s Day that I didn’t have a man in my life with whom to celebrate the day of love. Sometimes, in college, I would go out with all my single friends and we would all bemoan our singleness together (or else take up an I-don’t-need-a-man Read More