Ransom Paid

Holy Week was and is about the world’s rescue from its enslavement to dark, deceptive powers.


Crucifixion (1459) ANDREA MANTEGNA (1431-1506)
@MuseeLouvre -PARIS

John 19:16-30

So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”

Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’ ” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it.” This was to fulfill what the scripture says,

“They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.”

And that is what the soldiers did. Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.


Ransom

The price paid for redemption, that is, for setting something or someone free from some form of obligation or captivity.

Mark 10:45

For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Matthew 20:28

…just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Acts 20:28

Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

Colossians 1:13

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.

Hebrews 2:14-15

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.

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You Are Not Your Own
Glorify God In Your Body

The Deepening Crisis in The West: Rebellion Against Reality

If you could only read one essay about our current crisis and our potential future realignment, this is the one.

First Things – That Haunting Nihilism

Rusty Reno, editor of First Things explains our potential future. And nutshells the overall concern I’ve been expressing on this blog for more than two years now.

Pull quote from Reno’s essay.

I’m becoming an N. S. Lyons fan. “A Prophecy of Evil: Tolkien, Lewis, and Technocratic Nihilism” is the latest installment in The Upheaval, the mysterious author’s Substack. (He writes under a pseudonym.) This extended essay provides an arresting account of the deepening crisis in the West. By Lyons’s reckoning, Lewis and Tolkien were right. We are in the grip of a grim, despairing rebellion against reality that imagines itself to be the engine of moral progress.


Reno agrees with Lyons that the Western culture is influenced by a rationalist worldview that rejects any objective value or meaning in reality, and instead relies on subjective feelings and desires to guide its actions. According to Reno this worldview leads to a loss of human dignity, a disregard for nature, and a dangerous tendency to manipulate and control everything, including human life itself.

He uses the examples of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, two famous Christian writers who warned about the nihilistic consequences of modern rationalism in their novels. And explains how Lewis’s That Hideous Strength depicts a dystopian scenario where a scientific elite tries to overthrow the natural order and create a new humanity according to their own whims. Reno also refers to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, where the evil Sauron seeks to dominate Middle-earth with his dark magic and his One Ring of power.

Reno concludes that the only way to resist nihilism is to appreciate and respect reality as God’s creation, and to cultivate a sense of gratitude and awe for its beauty and mystery.

We must reject the false promises of rationalism and technology, and embrace the truth and goodness of God’s revelation in Christ. That “reveal’ must be understood, at a minimum, as Jesus’s embodied life (incarnation), bodily death, bodily resurrection, bodily ascension, and bodily return when he will finally put the world right. For us personally, that means, among other things, changed, imperishable New Creation bodies!

Blog take away?

We were given bodies by God, because we were meant to have them. Our bodies are not accessory items to be disregarded simply because we wish they were otherwise than male or female.

Read the whole thing! (The essay has ended when you see the heading “Saint Constantine School”)

Companion Posts

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Happy New Creation Day!

Transgender Lutheran Pastor Compares Nashville Shooter To Jesus Crucified

A sermon delivered this Palm Sunday by the Transgender Pastor of St. Marks Lutheran Church in Fargo, North Dakota compares Nashville shooter to Jesus crucified.

FULL STORY HERE

Churches with leaders like this appear destined to become empty houses of worship.


I Refuse To Affirm
The Tortured Analogies of That Sermon!

“Some folks have tried to focus on eradicating trans people as a solution, because they have been waiting, just waiting for an opportunity such as this. They’ve been waiting for a reason, any reason to stoke their hatred,” Pastor Micah Louwagie said.

“Marginalized folks, those of us with the least amount of privilege and power, they need those who have more privilege and power than they do to physically place their bodies between them and the people, powers and institutions that are literally killing them,” Louwagie urges.

“Those leaders were looking for any excuse, valid or not, to crucify Jesus and they found that reason…It’s baffling to me that someone’s existence can be so threatening, that people decide they need to be controlled, that they need laws made against them, or even worse, that the people that they find so threatening should die,” Louwagie remarked.


It is not hatred to disagree with someone’s fiction about who they are.

We don’t want to eradicate the existence of any human. We just want them to be delivered from a harmful fantasy. For their sake and for the sake of our Civilization, AND the cause of Christ our Creator1He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him and for him. (Col 1:15-16 ESV)

It is impossible that anyone born with a healthy body has also been born in the wrong body. Both Orthodox Christians and rational non-Christians the world over refuse to believe that fiction.

And we cannot be bullied into saying otherwise. We affirm Jesus’s view on the matter.

"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female.'" [Matt 19:4]

This is yet another example of Radical Ideology capturing our institutions. In this case, the Lutheran Church of North Dakota and beyond…..

Companion Posts

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Celebrate God’s Good Creation