Think Wink.

Here are the video teaser/bios for Sabertooth, played by Liev Schreiber, and Gambit, played by Taylor Kitsch. I am really pleased to finally see Gambit in an X-Men movie, I just wish it had been sooner. Oh well. He’s finally here and I like it. And by the way, I love Liev Schreiber as Sabertooth. He was an awesome John Clark (think Tom Clancy’s version of Jack Bauer) in The Sum of All Fears. I think he will be awesome in this movie as well.

The Merc with a Mouth on the Big Screen

Oh Crap, I’m Cyclops.

My New X-Man

“…And I love what I do.” One of the main reasons why I want to see Wolverine this weekend, if no the primary reason, is the character Deadpool. The actor they cast to play this “Merc with a mouth” is Ryan Reynolds. He perfectly blends athleticism and humor to be properly suited for this role. This clip really speaks to why I want to see Deadpool in this film.

More Thoughts On N. T. Wright’s Justification

Reviews of N. T. Wright’s New Book

Piper on this Election

Before moving on in the narrative of the Bible, I want to look at new creation, union with Christ, and how they play into Obtaining the shalom that was forfeited by Adam. Adam rebelled against the creator I AM in the garden of Eden. A curse was placed upon Adam and his posterity. I AM then set up a community, a kingdom, called Israel. But this community failed to bring back shalom. A king was promised by I AM who would come and restore peace to I AM’s creation. I AM fulfilled this promise, many centuries later, in the person of Jesus Christ. He was that king who purchased shalom by his death and resurrection here on earth. For humanity to gain back that peace we saw that humanity must submit themselves to Jesus and trust wholly in what he did to achieve peace. I AM unites that believer to Jesus so that they can take part in the new community centered around a new covenant and exist in shalom. Before we move on from this pause in the action, I want to look at new creation and the role it plays here in humanity and the created order returning to shalom. Read more

Peace Part 1

The “euaggelion” of Peace

Peace Part 2

Ben Witherington has posted some pictures from a model replica of Herod’s Temple from Jesus’ days. I really enjoyed these pix and thought to share them. They are just so cool.

Testifying without Testifying Part 3 of 3

The Olivet Discourse Summarized

The Temple, the Trinity, and the Apocalypse

I just finished reading an interview of Michael F. Bird by Trevor Wax. I really enjoyed the exchange and find myself liking Bird more and more. I really loved what he had to say about the relationship between union with Christ and imputation and justification.

Trevin Wax: How does the doctrine of imputation of Christ’s righteousness fit into Paul’s theology?

Michael Bird: This is a good question and I’ve thought much on this.
John Piper has presented a fairly thorough case for imputed righteousness. The problem I sometimes get with Piper is that in several of his exegetical displays (e.g. 1 Cor. 1.30, Rom. 4.4-5, 2 Cor. 5.21), I think he’s simply going a few steps further than what the text actually says, and you end up having to read a lot of stuff into the text for his argument to work.
In contrast, Wright can say that union with Christ gives you everything that imputation is ordinarily supposed to. That is fine, until you ask, “how does union with Christ result in me having a righteous status before God”?
My own approach has been to speak of “incorporated righteousness” whereby we are united to Christ by faith, and in that union God’s verdict against us is executed in the cross of Christ, and yet that verdict against us is transposed into God’s verdict for us in Christ’s resurrection. Jesus is justified by God in his resurrection and because we are in him, we too are justified.
So for me, union with Christ is absolutely central, and we need to relate justification to incorporation and participation in Christ. (I’m hoping to read Mike Horton’s book Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ soon because I hear that it represents another approach to combining the forensic and participatory aspects of justification).
Now if you take union with Christ, the representative nature of Adam and Christ, the language of reckoning, recognize that righteousness is a gift, etc., then the only way to hold it together in my mind is with some kind of theology of imputation.
So, I don’t think that any single text in the New Testament speaks of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to believers, but spread throughout the New Testament we find the ingredients for it when taken collectively. (I really do recommend Brian Vickers’ book, Jesus’ Blood and Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Imputation, for a judicious and sober account on imputation that approaches the subject much like the way I’m suggesting here!)
In the end, I would say that “imputation is a corollary of union with Christ”. Now to any in the Reformed spectrum who think that that is not a good enough a statement, I will simply plead that what I have just written is a direct quote from Leon Morris’ book, Apostolic Preaching of the Cross!

More Thoughts On N. T. Wright’s Justification

Waters on Wright

Isaiah 53:11 and 2 Corinthians 5:21

I just finished reading Dr. Mark A. Seifrid’s article in the Concordia Theological Quarterly from January 2008 entitled “The Narrative of Scripture and Justification by Faith: A Fresh Response to N.T. Wright.” I really enjoyed reading Dr. Seifrid’s article and am awaiting the book he is editing entitled The Faith of Christ Debate (he writes an essay in this book called “The Faith of Christ). I really liked what Dr. Seifrid said about faith in this article (pp 42-44; 26-28 of pdf),

The righteousness of God revealed in Christ for salvation is made ours by faith. More precisely, it is “through the faith of Jesus Christ.” Neither the traditional reading of this expression as “faith in Christ,” nor the currently popular reading “faith/faithfulness of Christ,” is fully satisfying, the former because Paul generally presupposes the object of faith in the term πίστις itself and the latter because we never find in Paul a verbal expression of Christ’s faith/faithfulness. Furthermore, there are a number of signals in this passage, and elsewhere, that in this usage Paul views the crucified and risen Christ himself as the source from which faith flows. Already his description of justification taking place “in Christ Jesus,” and that implicitly as the restoration of the glory of God (Rom 3:24), points in this direction, as does his concluding description of the believer as one who is “of the faith of Jesus” (Rom 3:26). It is also important to see that Paul describes Abraham’s faith in the following chapter as the work of the promissory word of God the Creator “who makes alive the dead and calls (for his purposes) that which is not as if it exists” (Rom 417). Abraham believes and acts, yet, in Paul’s reading of Genesis, Abraham is more fundamentally- acted upon: despite his aging body and Sarah’s barrenness, with respect to the promise “he was made strong in faith” and “is made fully assured” that the Creator could do what he promised. Abraham’s “giving glory to God” -Paul here overlooks his rather remarkable failure (Genesis 20)-is nothing other than the work of the Creator in Abraham (Rom 420). Our believing in “the One who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” is no different. Faith for Paul is nothing other than the word of promise performing its work in those who believe…

Faith is the creation of God by the word of promise, the gospel of Jesus Christ, which stands over against the unfaithfulness of the human being.

My Standing Before God

Faith: Created or Wooed

More thoughts on “euaggelion.”

Paul once wrote to a church in a city in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) called Colosse. In that letter he said, about I AM and Jesus,

[God] delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins…For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross – through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven (Colossians 1:13-20 NET).

In Jesus I AM has brought peace, shalom, back to his creation. Jesus has constituted a kingdom through which I AM returns peace by his death, burial and resurrection. The question that we must ask is how does a human experience this peace that Jesus has secured in his kingdom by his death and resurrection? Read more

Peace Part 1

The “euaggelion” of Peace

Peace Part 2

No way this Youtube page could exist. There’s just no way it can exist!! I guess all I can say is “I have the power!!!!”

No related posts

Here’s something to think about this Lord’s Day. Was “Satan” in 1 Chronicles 21:1 the same “Satan” in today’s theologies, the archenemy of I AM? Or was “Satan” a servant of I AM sent to perform a certain task? Here’s what John Hobbins says in a short short blurb.

The Missing Piece to the Corinthian Correspondence?

The New New Avengers Lineup

Intelligent Design

The King came…and died…and was raised from the grave.

Having died the most gruesome death and lying lifeless in the grave for days, Jesus rose to life and walked out of the tomb. He was indeed king, king over all life. But what had Jesus done, what was accomplished in dying and rising from the dead? What does it have to do with the need to get shalom back? The question needs to be addressed to make sense of it all. Jesus demonstrated he was the coming king who was to speak peace to the nations, whose kingdom was to extend from sea to sea. But how does he bring back shalom? Read more

Peace Part 1

The “euaggelion” of Peace

Peace Part 2