As I was brainstorming ideas for how I wanted to approach Advent this year, I stumbled across a question that stopped me in my tracks, on the late (and sorely missed) Christian writer Rachel Held-Evans' blog: When I wake up on Christmas morning, how will I be different? As Christians we believe that what we … Continue reading Signs of the Times: The Christmas Difference
I started this series on sin and salvation with a perhaps controversial suggestion: that we normalize sin — and specifically our own personal and corporate sins — not to minimize them, but in order to be able to talk about them and their impact more honestly. As a culture, so much of how we think … Continue reading Sin and the Fullness of Salvation
There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will … Continue reading Signs of the Times: An Advent Reflection on Luke 21.25-36
Over the past few weeks, I've been trying to broaden and deepen our understanding of sin and salvation by looking at the variety of metaphors the Scriptures use to describe them. While it wasn't really my intention for it to be an all-out attack on models of substitutionary atonement, since that is the dominant understanding … Continue reading Substitution – and more! – in Paul
This series, which has attempted to normalize sin (without minimizing it) by exploring all the wide ranging metaphors the Scriptures use for both sin and salvation, stalled out a couple weeks ago when trying to figure out what the solution envisioned for sin as law-breaking might be. For the past thousand years, Western Christianity has … Continue reading Law-Breaking and Mercy
Matthew Root 