As it’s Easter, I’m doing a Snippets double this week. Yesterday was the usual roundup of some of the interesting articles I read this week. Today, I offer a roundup of Easter themed articles.
The shadow of the cross crystallises whose agenda I am following
‘Judas had travelled with Jesus and had gone out with the 12 on mission. However, the decision recorded here shows that he was no more than a fellow traveller, only for as long as it suited his agenda. Jesus’ refusal to accept pious hypocrisy about the poor showed that Judas would not prevail in his agenda. It was here, in the shadow of the Cross, with Good Friday on the horizon that Judas decided to go his own way, to great cost.’
The meaning of the cross (video)
RC Sproul doing what he does so well here. ‘Paul tells us that what happened on the cross was an event of cosmic importance. That an atonement took place here by which those who receive Christ, among the human race, are reconciled to their Creator.’
Who crucified Jesus? The Romans, the Jews, You and I, or His Father?
Seems worth asking. Who, actually, killed Jesus?
An obedience more pleasing than punishment
Derek Rishmawy, via John Owen, looks at the vital importance of Jesus obedience. ‘God was more pleased with the obedience of Christ than he was displeased with the sin and disobedience of Adam’.
What the resurrection means
‘If the historical data are at the center, then the best we can say is that we believe the resurrection probably occurred. But that will not do; we do not believe in the probability of the resurrection. Instead, the center of our response to the “why” question of the resurrection is that, without the resurrection of Christ, there is, in fact, no Christianity at all.’
What does Christ’s resurrection mean for your local church?
‘It is imperative that we focus not only on what the resurrection means to me but also on what the resurrection should mean for us. Jesus’ resurrection authority takes a particular institutional shape here on earth. Too often, we evangelicals, who are otherwise clear on what the gospel demands of us as individuals, can neglect God’s purposes for our lives together as God’s people. We tend to forget about the local church.’
From the archive: Giles Fraser’s ‘Evangelical Cheesus’ is not the Jesus of Evangelicals
‘Fraser is entirely wrong to suggest that the cross, ‘celebrated as a moment of triumph’, is ‘theologically illiterate’. He claims the end of the story does nothing to change this fact. However, the cross is a moment of triumph specifically because it is not the end of the story. Indeed, this is why Paul and the other apostles pinned their entire claim of Christian faith on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.’