BibliansNew in Jesus, God gives victory, every day. ✨
#biblians #bibliansapp #Jesus #GodsLove #VictoryInChrist #NewCreation #Faith
Bishop Shammah Womack ElWash It Away
Are you holding onto past sins but claiming to be a new creature in Christ? In this impactful snippet, Bishop Shammah Womack-El of the Temple of Radiant Light shares a blunt and unforgettable truth about what it really takes to deepen your connection with God and truly move forward. #Faith #SpiritualGrowth #MovingForward #Shorts #Inspiration #NewCreation #EssexCounty #EssexCountyNJ #BloomfieldNJ #Bloomfield from Bishop Shammah Womack-El
https://bishopshammahwomackel.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/wash-it-away/
LaurenRELarkin.compersona semper reformanda est
“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]
Introduction
The Christian journey into God should be marked by the many deaths we walk through with Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Wherever we’ve encountered Christ in the event of faith anew demands both a death to what was before the encounter and a rebirth into what will be after that encounter. God, being dynamic and not static, is always on the move and we, being found in Christ by the Spirit and thus located in God, should always be on the move, too; this will demand our periodic and recurring death and rebirth as we make contact with what we’ve not known or experienced before in and with God.
Ecclesia semper reformanda est. The church is always reforming. But this only happens if we intimately embrace persona semper reformanda est (a person is always reforming). We, individual Christians who make up God’s Christian church, are the ones who must change for the church to change. This means, wholeheartedly embracing that love requires risk and a new life means new thoughts and new actions in the world.
The bad news is, we don’t like to change; we like what we know and are familiar with. Thus, we elevate what makes us comfortable to the seat of God, hold ourselves (and others!) captive to what was, and halt any movement forward (sometimes calling it “tradition”). Even worse, when things become turbulent, we often clamor to go backwards to shores recognizable and mundane. However, and this is the good news, God, per above, is always on the move and eager to usher us into God’s self-disclosure thus giving us plenty of opportunity for the persona semper reformanda part. Our part in that encounter with God by faith in Christ is by the power of the Holy Spirit, but we can stall it, ignore it, and even prevent it if we lack humility, trust, and love.
1 Peter 1:17-23
In the epistle passage, Peter sets up a dynamic correlation between our faith and trust in Abba God through Christ and our living in and by love as new creations. Our faith and trust are grounded in a God who ransomed us from captivity through the precious body of God’s self thus we can hand ourselves over (entirely) to this God and allow ourselves the genuine risk of loving deeply those around us. As new creatures, says Peter, we can live in a new way, with awe and not fear,[ii] trusting that the very one who ransomed us from futility will see us through all that comes.
Peter begins, And if you appeal to the one who judges without respect for persons according to their own deeds as parent, behave in reverence during the time of your sojourning as strangers (v17). For Peter, to call God “Father”/”Abba” or by any other intimate relational term (“parent”, “elder,” “caregiver”) simultaneously demands a way of living in the world that is different from the way one would live if they did not call God thusly. Peter is certainly and heavily implying that there should be a “like parent, like child” correlation. There should be genetic similarities between the one who is the Creator and the one who is so created by the Creator. Christians, those who are created by the Creator through the encounter with God in the event of faith, should be the ones who carry traits of their Creator into the world.[iii] In other words, the world and those around us should be able to experience aspects of God’s self-revelation in the world through us and our words and deeds. This includes judging without respect for persons according to their own deeds… As in, those of us who have this Judge as Abba should be slow to judge others since we are now, because of Easter and through faith in Christ, in life and not in death because of our sins, thus finding ourselves on the other side of condemning judgment.[iv] And, none of this because of our own deeds, for God did not judge us according to our deeds since our God, Abba God, is the one who doesn’t so judge a person.
Peter underscores our creaturely status in the world living by faith by anchoring our liberation from death and sin in Christ’s (genuine) sacrificial ransoming of us from captious eternal fates and states.[v] Peter writes,
You have perceived that you are ransomed out of the inherited conduct of your ancestors not by perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like a blameless and unblemished lamb, having been known beforehand before the conception of the Cosmos, but now being revealed at the end of time for your sake [that] through [Christ] [you are/can be] believers in God—the one who raised him from death and gave to him glory—so then your faith and hope is in God (vv18-21).
For Peter (and the culture around him, not to mention First Testament theology), redemption is accomplished by payment of a ransom.[vi] Peter is using this imagery to highlight and emphasize the cost[vii] of this new life the believers have by faith and how they are liberated[viii] from the useless[ix] ways they inherited from their ancestors—from which they could never escape of their own powers.[x] Peter’s ultimate concern here is that the believers do not take their redemption for granted; to prevent this they must remember it’s cost and that their liberty from uselessness is not of their own doing.
Thusly, these believers are expected to live differently in the world in a way that is toward God and reeking of gratitude for God’s action on their behalf;[xi] they are expected to live as the new creatures they are, ransomed as they were, liberated and freed from uselessness[xii] for usefulness (usefulness of the reign of God). So, Peter, closes with, Having purified your soul by the obedience of truth into genuine siblingly love, you love fervently one another having been begotten again not out of perishable seed but imperishable, through the living and abiding Word of God (vv.22-23). For Peter, the believers have “purified souls” through their obedience to the truth of the “living and abiding word of God.” In other words, they are expected to have new desires, new thoughts, and (as a result) new ways of living in the world.[xiii] Faith in Christ by and through hearing the truth of the Gospel will change the one who hears and this change will be more than just internal, it will be external (mind and body).[xiv] This necessarily starts with loving those around them,[xv] specifically other believers. But not only this; they will pour out that sibling like love for one another into the world toward the neighbor who is as stuck as they once were, and acting toward and for them in ways that emphasize their wellbeing in the world and not their own to the glory of God.[xvi]
Conclusion
Peter speaks to us, today. He speaks to us as those who have just come through the resurrection event of Christ and are encountered by the risen Christ on our way to look for the living among the dead. We aren’t addressed as those who were once saved many years ago or those baptized even earlier. Peter addresses us as those who are newly encountered by the movement of God causing earthquakes and rolling back massive stones. We are new! This morning, we believe again, what was is of the dead and meant to stay behind in the tomb like useless funeral linens. But what lies ahead of us is life and living in new ways, thinking new thoughts, having new desires and expectations. Because of Easter, we are called by the angel of God to be new in the world; we are, by faith again in Christ again, embarking on our own persona semper reformanda est because this is what faith causes the believer to do and because this is what is expected when you follow a living Christ and not a dead one, when you are inspired by a loving divine Spirit and not an indifferent one, when you are united to the God of always-liberating and not to a god who desires your always-captivity.
Beloved, once again we must hold fast to our Easter Sunday experience and see that we, too, are no longer dead but living, no longer captive but liberated, no longer caught in indifference but surrounded by love…by a Love that moves us toward each other, toward others outside of these walls, and then toward our selves who are found and grounded in Christ. We do not need to be afraid to live differently in the world, Peter exhorts us. We live in awe of the work of God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit on our behalf and on behalf of the whole world. We should be the ones who dare to participate in God’s mission in the world of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation into a world whose industry is just the opposite. We’ve been redeemed from our uselessness for our usefulness; to go any which way but forward into the new, to deny our divine state of semper reformanda is to deny Christ lives now. And, Beloved, we are no longer creatures of death, but of life!
[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.
[ii] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, TNICTNT, ed. F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 71. “Their reverential awe before God, however, is not based simply on their recognition of judgment, but on deep gratitude and wonder at what God has done for them.”
[iii] I. Howard Marshall, “1 Peter,” The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, eds. Grant R. Osborne, D. Stuart Briscoe, and Haddon Robinson, (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 1991), 54. “Christians are not in a position where it doesn’t matter how they live because they believe in Christ and all will be forgiven at the last judgment. On the contrary, they should live in this world, filled with its temptations, with reverence for God in the face of his judgment.”
[iv] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 53-54. “The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples and that was used in the early church addresses God by this name [Abba]…But those who address God in this way must remember who [God] is. As Father [God] does not cease to be judge.”
[v] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 54. “…Peter now introduces a deeper motive for Christian conduct in the fact of redemption. The picture is of people who were in bondage but have now been set free.”
[vi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 54. “Redemption generally takes place by the payment of a ransom.”
[vii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 55. “Redemption from bondage was possible only by the payment of a ransom price. Peter wants to emphasize the great cost involved, so he points out that the ransom was not paid with precious metals like silver and gold, which despite their durability are not of lasting worth, but rather with the blood of Christ which is generously costly. He contrasts material wealth and a person’s life, and the contrast is enhanced because it was the lifeblood of Christ that was spilled.”
[viii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 54. “The former state of the readers was one of bondage—bondage to a particular way of life inherited from their ancestors.”
[ix] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 55. “The old way of life is characterized as empty, lacking in purpose and leading to no good results.”
[x] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 55-56. “Peter is saying that the readers were caught, with no possibility of escape, in a futile way of life that would end in condemnation from the Judge who judges everybody according to their works. Chrit’s self-offering to God as a sacrifice, however, constituted the ransom price by which they were set free from the old way of life and brought into the new life of the children of God.”
[xi] Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, 75. “It is God who takes the initiative and enables the human response of commitment. But the commitment is directed toward God, specifically because of his raising Jesus from the dead and glorifying him.”
[xii] Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, 71-72. “This ‘way of life,’ which includes not just their religious beliefs but also their ethical values and actions was ‘empty,’….worthless, futile, and empty of hope and value when viewed in the light of the gospel.”
[xiii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 59. “The way in which he says that they have purified their souls…suggests the actual purification of their inner nature, which will issue in new motives, thoughts and actions. This cleansing has taken place through their obedience to the truth…The truth is the gospel, both with its promises and its demands, so that he intends not just an assent to the message but also the commitment to live by it.”
[xiv] Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, 76. “The truth is the gospel…and obeying the gospel indicates that conversion is not simply a matter of intellectual change, but of a transformation of behavior, that is, response to a command….”
[xv] Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, 76. “The result of conversion is ‘sincere love for your fellow-Christians.’”
[xvi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 60. “If the ideal is that Christians should love their brothers, then let them love one another. Get on and do it. This is a clear and direct command. We must take action without ifs and buts. Peter assumes that Christians can and must love one another.”
#1Peter #1Peter1 #ChristianCharacter #ChristianCommunity #ChristianDiscipleship #ChristianExistence #ChristianGrowth #DeathToLife #DivineLiberation #DivineLife #DivineLove #Encounter #IHowardMarshall #Jesus #Liberation #Life #Love #NewCreation #NewCreations #NewLiberation #NewLife #NewLove #NewSpirits #PeterHDavids #SemperReformanda
April 19th Sermon
Exposed and Naked: We are Not in Control
“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]
Introduction
Today is about being reminded of death—death in general and death in specific. Ash Wednesday is our sacred and religious memento mori (remember to die); Ash Wednesday brings to the fore the very thing we push back: the reality that all life streams toward death even for those of us who feel very far above and beyond death’s long, cold, bony reach. with the application of ashes on our vulnerable skin, we not only hear with our ears but see with our eyes and feel with our senses the command to remember that we will die. Dying is part of our life in this world where death is not only around us in fits and spurts, but is very much a part of our life cycle.
But it seems that lately we are held hostage by death. We are powerless to the death caused by human beings who have long forgotten that power must be wielded rightly and mercy is more potent than fear. Through the barrage and onslaught of headlines streaming in from around the globe, the national ones decorating our minds like billboards on a highway, and the local ones hitting too close to home, we are made very aware of how much death seems to accompany global and national leaders who are curved in on themselves consumed with their own ego. And even if we turned off televisions, radios, computers, podcasts, and phones, we would not be able to escape the approach and encroach of death. Over the past few months, death has taken loved ones from us (both family and friend) and if not death, then death’s best friends, fear and rage, have stolen people from us in their own way. And if that wasn’t enough, our own bodies remind us about the cool shadow of death lurking closer; whether through the onset of age or by our own hands, things fall apart, breakdown, and come to naught. We are held captive by death; we have do not have access to the keys to this prison we are in.
Thus, we are brought to the only confession we have, we are not in control. We are hurt, we are guilty, we are lost, we are fragile, and we are unsafe. Is there any hope for such as these?
Psalm 103:8-14
Yes, there is hope for such as we. Our psalmist writes,
Abba God is full of compassion and mercy,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
Our Psalm is a hymn celebrating God’s steadfast posture towards God’s people and is a commentary on portions of Exodus and Isaiah.[ii] Specifically in our short portion, verse 8, just quoted, is asking the reader to remember Ex. 33:13, “Now, If I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways, that I may know You and continue in Your favor.” And if they are to remember Exodus 33, then 32 and 34 must be recalled, too. Exodus 33 marks Moses’s pleading on behalf of the people before and to God in the Tent of Meeting. Why is Moses pleading on behalf of the people? In Exodus 32 he broke the tablets upon his return from communing with God on the mountain when he saw the people worshiping the golden calf that Aaron crafted. Thus, in Ex. 33, is eager to plead to God for God to relent of God’s anger. So, Moses goes to God in the Tent of Meeting carrying the sin of Israel and wondering what God will do with the people whom God has called “stiffnecked.” (33:5). Thus, In Exodus 33:13, Moses wants to know God’s own way in dealing with the sin of his people;[iii] how does God deal with the fault and guilt, the hurt and being lost, the fragility and unsafety of God’s people? Reference to Exodus 34 gives us the answer: God does not abandon Moses nor the people; God is present. This God who is present is a God who is compassionate and forgiving, steadfast and patient, “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed: ‘The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin…” (34:6-7a). God does not abandon God’s people. God is faithful to the covenant even when God’s people are not; God is magnanimous and just even when the people are not.[iv] Our psalmist is intentional here in v. 8 (and v.7) in calling to mind the God of Israel who is faithful and just while the people are unfaithful and unjust.
Thus, why the psalmist can go on, singing the praises of God further elaborating on God’s character and posture towards God’s people:[v]
Abba God will not always accuse us,
nor will Abba God keep anger for ever.
Abba God has not dealt with us according to our sins,
nor rewarded us according to our wickedness.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so is God’s mercy great upon those who fear God.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has Abba God removed our sins from us.
As a parent cares for their children,
so does the Abba God care for those who fear God.
Both Exodus 34:7b ff and Isaiah 55:16 (hinted at by Psalm 103:9) are in view here. In the second part of Ex 34:7 God promises that God will visit the punishments of the iniquities of the people on their children and grandchildren, etc. But Moses intervenes in 34:8-9, “‘If I have gained Your favor, O Lord, pray, let the Lord go in our midst, even though this is a stiffnecked people. Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your own!’” And Isaiah 57:16 reads,
“For I will not always contend,
I will not be angry forever:
Nay, I who make spirits flag,
Also create the breath of life.”
Moses’s plea from Exodus 34 is met in Isaiah’s prophecy and promise that divine anger and displeasure have a time limit; even in spite of the way the people have acted—insatiable for debauchery and injustice—God will be unselfish and just.[vi] And as the prophet speaks from God’s own pathos toward and for God’s people, these words are as good as done. God’s words are like rain watering parched soil, turning it from a place of death into a source of life, just like God’s own being and breath.[vii] Under and with and by God’s Word, the people will come alive again and will be liberated from death and in justice, from their self-imposed notions of being in control, from their hurt, guilt, lostness, fragility, and unsafety; they will participate with God in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation. God will condescend and transcend God’s self to bring God’s ways to the people so that their ways reflect their divine genetic inheritance (like parent, like child).[viii] Where they used to bring injustice they will bring justice, where they were self-consumed they will be consumed by divine passion for their neighbor, God’s beloved.
The psalmist concludes,
For Abba God themself knows whereof we are made;
Abba God remembers that we are but dust.
God knows God’s people. God does not hold them to a standard that is beyond their fleshiness, their fragility, their creatureliness but, rather, holds them to be such creatures who are fragile and fleshy, those who must hold each other gently and kindly as God does.[ix] According to the psalmist, God knows not only where we are and what we are, but of what we are made. This is surely good news and every reason to have hope that God is for God’s people even when things look bleak and is coming for them to liberate them to life by God’s love.
Conclusion
Thus, even as God’s people are trapped and held captive in their sin, iniquity, and transgressions, God knows just how vulnerable and susceptible they are and none of that knowledge dissuades God from God’s covenant. But first the people must come to terms with their own situation and status before God: for they are not in control, they are hurt, they are guilty, they are lost, they are fragile, and they are unsafe. If they continue forward without acknowledging who and what they are before God, they will continue to participate in and perpetuate the rampant injustices of the kingdom of humanity, forsaking the justice of the reign of God and being harbingers of death and not life, of indifferent and not love, of captivity and not liberation.
As it was for the Israelites, so it is for us.
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of our determined and slow descent into the tomb of Good Friday. This movement from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday is the season of Lent, and it demands an honesty and exposure that will peel back our facades and remove our masks, bringing us to a very naked state that will feel like a complete and total death. We are brought to our most dreaded confession: we are not in control; we are hurt, we are guilty, we are lost, we are fragile, and we are unsafe. But it’s out of this death, this confession, out of this naked and vulnerable place, where God’s word will liberate us out of death into life by God’s love. And not back into your old life, but caused to be new creatures who have new eyes and ears to see and hear the pain around them, brining love where there is indifference, life where there is death, and liberation where there is captivity.
[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.
[ii] Adele Berlin and marc Zvi Brettler, “Psalm 103,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1396. “A hymn of praise for God’s nature (divine attributes) and for His acts on behalf of Israel; it contains quotations from and allusions to Exodus and Isaiah.”
[iii] Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 187-188. “Your ways in dealing with humankind, meaning…the principles by which you deal with human sin. God had said that the angel would be unforgiving…What is God’s own way?…What is Your way, considering that Israel is Your own people?”
[iv] Tigay, “Exodus,” 189. “God grants both of Moses’ requests, passing His presence before him …and proclaiming His ways (33.13). The name Lord [YHVH], that is the attributes it represents. These attributes include both magnanimity (vv. 6-7a) and justice (v. 7b…)…extending Himself to those in covenant with Him…”
[v] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalm 103,” 1396. “Interpreting or elaborating on the meaning and current application of Exod. 34.6, quoted in v. 8.”
[vi] Benjamin D. Sommer, “Isaiah,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 794. “The second complaint: parties instead of piety. Appropriately, the people whose appetite is insatiable will feed the insatiable appetite of Sheol, the underworld…”
[vii] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 895. “Deutero-Isaiah pics up the metaphor of water … in a new way to emphasize a favorite theme: God’s promises and the prophesies God issued through the prophets never fail to come true…The metaphor is significant: God sends rain, which inevitably falls to the ground; then it is absorbed by soil and nourishes vegetation. Humans in turn harvest the vegetation and transform it into food. Similarly, God’s word is sure to have series of effects, the most important of which are indirect and involve human input.”
[viii] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalm 103,” 1396. “The relationship between God and his worshippers is here portrayed as that between a father and a son…The compassionate father also figures in Jer. 31.20.”
[ix] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalm 103,” 1396. “The creaturely and ephemeral status of humanity…and the permanence of God’s covenant with those who fear Him.”
#Beloved #BenjaminDSommer #BerlinAndBrettler #DeathToLife #DivineLiberation #DivineLife #DivineLove #Exodus #Hope #JeffreyTigay #JPSStudyBible #Liberation #Life #Love #NewCreation #NewLife #Psalm103 #Psalms #ThePsalms
Intentional FaithWhen New Life Begins to Breathe
A Day in the Life
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
2 Corinthians 5:17
When I walk with Jesus through the Gospels, I am repeatedly struck by how often He speaks not of improvement but of birth. He does not invite Nicodemus into a refined religious system; He tells him, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). That word “see” matters. Jesus is not describing behavior modification but a transformed capacity to perceive reality itself. To be born again is not to add Christ to an already established life; it is to receive a life that did not previously exist. Paul later gives language to this reality when he writes that anyone “in Christ” is a new creation. The Greek phrase kainē ktisis signals something altogether new in kind, not merely new in degree. This is where the Christian life truly begins.
As I reflect on a day in the life of Jesus, I notice that He consistently lives from this place of secure identity. Jesus does not strive to become the Son of God; He lives because He already is. His obedience flows from belonging, not anxiety. This is why the new birth is essential. Christianity is not entered by asking Jesus into one’s heart as a sentimental gesture, but by being acted upon by God Himself. As Jesus told Nicodemus, birth is something that happens to us. Paul echoes this when he says that, at the moment of salvation, old things pass away. This includes guilt, condemnation, and the legal power of sin. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Forgiveness is not partial or progressive; it is decisive.
Yet the pastoral tension emerges when voices—sometimes well-meaning, sometimes harmful—suggest that while forgiveness may be immediate, freedom must always be delayed. The study rightly confronts this. It is common to hear that although one is born again, they should expect to remain dominated by sin or unresolved wounds for years. This mindset subtly relocates authority away from the finished work of Christ and back onto human effort. Dallas Willard once observed, “Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.” The danger is not effort itself but effort detached from faith in what Christ has already accomplished. Scripture testifies that the blood of Jesus is sufficient not only to forgive but to liberate. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
Walking through Jesus’ life, I see this freedom embodied. He engages sinners without absorbing their shame. He confronts evil without being defined by it. He heals not only bodies but identities, restoring people to community and hope. When Paul writes that healing for every hurt is available, he is not denying the need for growth or wisdom, but he is declaring that the resources of heaven are already present in Christ. The enemy’s strategy, as Scripture consistently shows, is not merely temptation but accusation. Satan seeks to convince believers that their past still owns them. Revelation describes him as “the accuser of our brothers” (Revelation 12:10). The question, then, becomes deeply personal: whom will I believe?
A day in the life of Jesus teaches me that faith is not pretending pain never existed; it is trusting that Christ’s work addresses it more fully than my self-effort ever could. Paul writes elsewhere, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). This is not metaphorical language meant to inspire optimism; it is ontological language describing a transfer of life. The old self, defined by Adam and marked by separation, has been put to death. The new self lives by the faithfulness of Christ Himself. Healing, growth, and maturity unfold within this secure reality, not as prerequisites for acceptance but as fruits of it.
As I internalize this truth, my discipleship begins to change. I no longer wake each day trying to fix what God has already redeemed. Instead, I learn to present myself to Him as Paul exhorts: “present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life” (Romans 6:13). That posture reshapes prayer, repentance, and obedience. Repentance becomes a return to truth rather than a negotiation for mercy. Obedience becomes cooperation rather than compensation. The life of Jesus invites me to live from newness, not toward it.
For further reflection on the meaning of being born again and living from new creation identity, this article from The Gospel Coalition offers helpful biblical depth:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/born-again/
FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND REPOST, SO OTHERS MAY KNOW
#2Corinthians517 #bornAgain #ChristianIdentity #discipleship #freedomInChrist #lifeInChrist #newCreation #spiritualRebirth
“Salvation will come”
“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]
Introduction
It’s mid-November, and we’re coming to the close of our liturgical year. It’s been a long year. Our socio-political landscape is marked by tumult and chaos, no matter what voting party you ascribe to. The ups and downs, the wins and losses, the intermingling of hope and despair are exhausting. We’re tossed about on the waves caused by those who tromp about leaving bodies in the wake, those who have more power, more money, more authority, more status than we do; we’re left wondering if we, the ones being represented, actually matter in this battle for who has the most toys (read: money, weapons, prestige, etc.). It’s hard to feel the ground under our feet when truth feels downright elusive; anyone else feel more and more skepticism toward anyone claiming to tell the truth? A diet of chaos and tumult with a big glass of skepticism never nourishes and always depletes. Humans are not meant to run on fumes for so long.
I don’t know about you, but I’m existentially and physically fatigued.
And that’s not even including our own personal lives and the things that have come and gone. Over the course of a year, we gain a lot, that is true. However, over the course of a year, we lose a lot, too. Some of us have lost family members, partners, and friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Whether to the cold hands of death or the firey fingers of derisive and divisive ideologies demanding cult-like adoration and adherence, there are people who were in our lives at the start of the year who are no longer darkening our doorways. Sadness, sorrow, grief, and regret are pretty wretched snacks; none of which actually satisfy our hunger and only leave a really bad, lingering aftertaste.
I don’t know about you, but I think I really need an intervention, a divine intervention, a good-news intervention. I need a light to pierce this darkness threatening to consume me, you, us, God’s beloved. I need to be interrupted and divorced from the dominant narratives of fear and anger. I need to be relocated in something new, something firm, something that is steady when everything else is rocky. I need a divine “normal” when nothing is normal anymore.
Isaiah 65:17-25
For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
Isaiah’s words are a warm comfort to the parched soul. Ancient words to a people eager to know God is still their God; a need to know that they’re still seen by their God, that they’re still heard by the God who led them out of captivity in Egypt into the liberation of the reign of God. Through Isaiah, God proclaims that what was will be eclipsed by a new thing God will do in both heaven and on earth; the world will be changed when God shows up.[i]
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
Isaiah declares to the people that God’s joy and delight will be with God’s people. Not only will God take delight and have joy in God’s people, God’s joy and delight will be with and among the people; they, the children of God, will have access to and participate in that divine joy and delight. Weeping and distress will be no more. Isaiah’s comments about death highlight that life will be lived to the fullest, celebrated with joy and delight, with mercy and grace, by faith and love. For the one who dies when it is time to die will be the one who has lived well and has been alive all their days and those days will be many. They will also be the one who die in God’s delight and joy and will be taken further into God’s delight and joy; those who survive will celebrate such a one, for there will be no need to mourn.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord–
and their descendants as well.
Isaiahs’ imagery turns to the work of the people when God shows up, and the reign of God takes over. It will no longer be toil; it will be work that’s pleasing not only to God’s eye but to the eye of the one who works. What Isaiah is describing here is a lack of exploitation of the laborer; the fruit of their hands will be the product of their own work, and they will enjoy it.[ii] Children will not be born into systems that steal human dignity, reducing them to things that toil to make others rich and some even richer. Isaiah’s words also point to a satisfaction and satiation. There’s an emphasis on a distribution of satisfaction in the work of their hand and a feeling satiated is hinted at. It’s not about grain silos and treasury vaults to store up for one’s self and keeping it from others. Rather, it’s about everyone receiving what they need all the days of their life, each day blessed by God. And even further, it’s about letting the surplus go to those who lack. All are cared for; none go hungry, thirsty, naked, or unhoused.
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent– its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.
God’s people wonder if they’re heard, and they are heard; God’s people wonder if they’re seen, and they are seen. God not only sees them and hears them, God’s presence, Isaiah prophecies, will be so close to them that even before they pray their prayers will be answered.[iii] The people of God will be seen and heard intimately and vulnerably because God will be accessible by all who are seeking God.[iv] Isaiah tells the people, “Salvation will come…”[v] God comes for God’s people, the curse from long ago will be undone, the exile of recent will be terminated forever. Prey and predator will lie down together, they will stop hunting and being hunted, anger and fear will depart; the new heavens and the new earth will even be a place of refuge for animal-kind. But not for the serpent who is, according to Isaiah, reduced to eating dust; while the world, humanity and animal kind will feel relief from the burden of the curse in God, the serpent will bear it out as was long ago promised by God,[vi]
The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.[vii]
Conclusion
Isaiah tells Israel, “salvation comes,” and it will. Isaiah tells Israel, “God comes,” and God will. Isaiah tells Israel, “help comes,” and it will. Because their God is a God of the people, of the humble people who are at their wits end, hanging from the very bottom of the rope, the ones ready to give up. As Isaiah says elsewhere, “a bruised reed [Abba God] will not break, and a dimly burning wick [Abba God] will not quench; [Abba God] will faithfully bring forth justice.”[viii]
We are not abandoned, forsaken, or alone. We are not ungrounded, destabilized, or uprooted. We are not consumed by grief, sorrow, or despair. We are not ignored, dismissed, or forgotten. Isaiah’s words to Israel become words to us today, where we are and as we are. Beloved, God comes; Beloved, salvation comes; Beloved, help comes. For, behold, Christ Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us will be born to us, to identify with us, to dwell with us, to be God close to us, and he will be the light that pierces the darkness forever.
[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.
[i] Benjamin D. Sommer, The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 913. “This passage recalls the initial prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah in its exuberant tone and literary style, but the nature of the prediction goes beyond those found in chs. 40-48: The world itself will be transformed in the new age that God brings.”
[ii] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 538. “The imagery of joy and absence of weeping is set in contrast to the sorrow through which the community of faith has come. The planting of vineyards and the enjoying of its fruits is simply the converse of Israel’s experience of exploration and conquest.”
[iii] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 913. “In 51.9-11 and chs 63-64, the people wondered whether God listens to their prayers. God answers this question here: In the future, God will answer prayers before the people even utter them.”
[iv] Childs, Isaiah, 538. “Verse 24 once again repeats the theme of chapter 65 of God’s utter accessibility in his calling and answering those who seek his presence.”
[v] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 158.
[vi] Childs, Isaiah, 538. “The line ‘dust will be the serpent’s food’ is a play on Gen. 3:14, which describes the curse of the serpent at the Fall.”
[vii] Genesis 3:14
[viii] Isaiah 42:3
#AbrahamHeschel #Beloved #BenjaminDSommer #BrevardChilds #Darkness #DivineLiberation #DivineLight #DivineLove #Genesis3 #GodSLove #Hope #Isaiah #Jesus #Light #MartinLuther #NewCreation #NewHeavensAndNewEarth
November 16th 2025 Sermon
No Place with What Was
“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]
Introduction
We get accustomed to the way things are. At times it feels like we’re in a groove; at others, it feels like we’re in a rut; in both there’s comfort. This comfort is built on knowing what’s coming, being able to predict what each day will look like. Our calendars and task-lists look the same from week to week, even when there’s a surprise event added or something expected subtracted. There’s a real comfort in the familiarity of the day to day.
One of the problems of this familiarity and comfort is that it can blind us to the new. A bigger problem is when this familiarity and comfort causes us to reject the new. When you have a system down, a routine established, it can be hard to see and receive something new, something disruptive, something that slices through that (either beloved or dreaded) monotony. To maintain our comfort, to keep moving in that groove, embedding down another layer of that rut, we will shut down and run from anything new that is trying to intervene because we see it as a threat. The something new will send our nervous systems into a frazzled state, propelling us to lurch and lunge backward to what was. Rather than finding ourselves curious (yet cautious) and intrigued (though skeptical), we raise our defenses against that which is breaking in and, In the meantime, try our best to swim back to comfortable and familiar shores.
However, God isn’t back there. God is ahead in the something new.
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Jeremiah exhorts the Judeans in exile to look forward. What was is going to be overthrown, pulled down, uprooted, destroyed; it has no place with what is to come in God coming to God’s people.[2] And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord (v28). Jeremiah promises God’s people that God will be close to them, so close that their tendencies to toward evil will become tendencies to good. All that was will be destroyed; God beckons Judah and Israel to look to the rising of the sun of a new day and onto new terrain, to build and plant anew.
Jeremiah then promises that retribution will fall on the one who sins. In those days they shall no longer say: “‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge,’” (v29). No longer, says God, will one person’s sins be the downfall of the group; accountability will be placed on each person’s shoulders. But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge. The Judeans and Israelites are to look forward to the day that will come where only the guilty one will be punished rather than the group at the expense of the guilty one.[3] The accountability here becomes personal and individual; future exile is being excluded. Why? Because God will be closer than ever before.
Jeremiah then proclaims the coming of a new covenant and indicates there will be a break with the old one. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they…(v32). Something new is coming that will render each person responsible and dependent in their relationship with God. God does not say that the law of Moses (the one given in Exodus after the liberation from Egypt) will go away, but that God will put that law in each of their hearts.[4] But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (v33). Keeping in mind that the law of Moses is a self-revelation of God, Jeremiah promises a time when God will be revealed in the heart of each of God’s people.[5] Thus God’s people will not be able to run or hide from God; they will—individually and corporately—know God intimately, being yoked to him by faith and love.
Jeremiah then says, No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more (v34). Jeremiah brings it back full circle to the comment above where every individual is held accountable for their own sins. Not only will each person be held responsible, but each person will be dependent on God’s mercy and forgiveness. Here, God is declaring that there is nothing that will divorce God from God’s people. Absolutely nothing. God is also indicating that there will be a time where sacrifices will no longer need to be made save the sacrifice of ourselves by faith working out in love. This is the basis of the new covenant that God promises to make with God’s people. And it is an everlasting covenant; one that no one can take away or break because it is being written on the heart of each person of Israel and Judah.[6] As God has been ever faithful in the promise to and covenant with Israel and Judah,[7] now Judah and Israel, by the indwelling spirit of God,[8] will be the ones who also keep the covenant and cling to the promise of God: I will be your God and you will be my people and we will be one.
Conclusion
God desires to do new things. We desire to go backwards, to cling to what was, to grasp at the sand of shores we are most familiar with. But God’s love propels God toward us even as we are desperate to go back to what was. Even as we are actively swimming away from the current of God’s momentum forward, God yolks God’s self to us, so desperately in love with us as God is. God promises Judah and Israel that they will have God’s spirit with them, forever, in their hearts, that God’s self-revelation will be written on their hearts forever sealing their union; and nothing can pluck one of God’s people from God’s hand of promise.
For us, as Christians, this being sealed as God’s own is done through the life and work, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit. For us, this passage from Jeremiah points to the new covenant that comes in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. This new covenant is defined by faith, faith that clings to the promises of God, accounting to God that which is God’s: truthfulness and trustworthiness. In and by faith, the law of God—to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbors in the same—is written on our hearts. Our hearts become circumcised; formerly calcified, our hearts by faith, beat with a vim and vigor, signs of robust new creation and new life empowered by the Holy Spirit, signs of our representative incarnational presence, those who carry God with them in their heart and spirit.
We, ourselves, are new creations, born anew every morning by faith and God’s mercy. Therefore, we have no place with what was, the way back is barred, the comforting and familiar shores are forbidden to us. Daily, by faith and God’s mercy, we enter a divine journey into the new, faith whisking us into the dark clinging only to the light of the promise fulfilled in Christ. The new is nothing to run from, turn a blind eye toward, or reject; it is in the new and unfamiliar that the familiar and known voice of our God in Christ Jesus calls us. We are called to move forward into new life in union God, dependent on God’s mercy and forgiveness, leaning on our beloved, Christ, and comforted by the Comforter, even in the wake of chaos and unfamiliar. We are God’s people, and God is our God, forever.
[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.
[2] Marvin A. Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 990. “The prophet’s depiction of the future employs the verbs uproot, pull down, overthrow, destroy, build, and plant from his call narrative in 1.10 to portray both the punishments and the restoration of the people.”
[3] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 990. Proverb quoted, “…to illustrate his view that only the guilty should be punished for their own sins…” it is future oriented for Jeremiah.
[4] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 991. Promise of New Covenant, “…here it refers to the restoration of Israel after the Babylonian exile and the reconstruction of the Temple. According to this passage, it is not the content of the new covenant which will be different, but how it is learned.”
[5] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 991. “God places the Teaching, i.e., the Torah, in the inmost being or heart of the people so that the covenant cannot be broken again. This idea is developed in later Lurianic kabbalah, which maintains that all persons have a divine spark within. Since it is so inscribed, there will be no need for the Torah to be taught.”
[6] Rabbi Dr. H. Freedman, Jeremiah: with Hebrew text and English Translation, ed. Rev. Dr. A Cohen. Soncino Books of the Bible. 6th Impression (London: Soncino Press, 1970), 211. “God will make a new covenant with Israel which, unlike the old, will be permanent, because it will be inscribed on their hearts. There is nothing here to suggest that the new covenant would differ in nature form the old. No new revelation is intended, nor was it needed. The prophet only makes the assertion that unlike the past, Israel will henceforth remain faithful to God, while He in turn will never reject him.”
[7] Freedman, Jeremiah, 212. “The implication is that God will be what He has always been in His relationship to Isreal; they, on the other hand, will now likewise permanently acknowledge Him and be His people. Permanence is the essence of the new covenant.”
[8] Freedman, Jeremiah, 211. “I will no longer be something external to them, but so deeply ingrained in their consciousness as to be part of them. This, indeed, is the aim of all religious teaching.”
#DeathToLife #HFreedman #Jeremiah #Jesus #Liberation #Life #Love #MarvinASweeney #NewCovenant #NewCreation
November 2nd 2025 Sermon
Christic AcademyHeavenly Reign Earthly Kingdom: Understanding the True Millennium
Explore the truth about the millennium! We reveal the biblical perspective: a spiritual reign with Christ, not an earthly kingdom. Discover your heavenly inheritance beyond this world's deceptions. #HeavenlyReign #TrueMillennium #BiblicalTruth #SpiritualKingdom #ChristianEschatology #FalseKingdoms #EternalLife #NewCreation #RevelationExplained #ChristianLiving from Christic Academy
Bedfordview Methodist Church"Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule – to the Israel of God."
Galatians 6:15-16 #Bible #NewCreation #salvation
False Hope: Exposing Modern Christianity’s Deception
We delve into how modern Christianity has been misguided. Millions await a false Jesus, temple, and earthly kingdom. The true hope lies in the resurrection and new creation, not earthly politics. Reject the deception; embrace the true Gospel. #ChristianEschatology #FalseGospel #EndTimesDeception #TrueHope #BiblicalTruth #NewCreation #ResurrectionHope #ApostasyExposed #CounterfeitChristianity #EternalKingdom from…
https://christicacademy.wordpress.com/2025/06/14/false-hope-exposing-modern-christianitys-deception/