What saith the Scripture Tradition must give way to the clear statements of the Scripture

    Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. Augustine of Hippo Elliot Ritzema, 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Early Church, Pastorum Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).(cf.Gen.4:17; 11:4; Ps. 127:1; Habakkuk 2:12; Rev. 21:2)  The future has a name: Jesus of Nazareth. Like all doctrines of the faith, eschatology is an outworking of Christology. God’s final purpose with his creation is to “bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him” (Eph. 1:10 HCSB). This means that all of reality is about a clash of kingdoms. Both these aspects of the kingdom thus represented in our Lord’s teaching must be carefully guarded from current misconceptions. The doctrine of an eschatological kingdom must not be confounded with the ordinary Jewish expectations of the coming age.  The latter were national...

    The Consequences of Judging Others   Jesus is clear that his followers should not engage in condemning judgment toward others. And throughout his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about how he clearly sees our inner motivations—the hidden realities that shape our lives—in a way that no else can. He takes into account our grief, our disappointment, our desire to be noticed, our worry about the future, and our sincere desire to please God.  So when we look down on another person, we act as though we can see their inner realities just as clearly. We end up playing God. And we know from the beginning of the whole story, back in Gen. 1-3, that playing God never works well. Remember how humans bring corruption and death upon themselves precisely because they try to determine right and wrong apart from God, according to what is good or bad in their own eyes. In Genesis, and in Jesus’ teaching, we can hear God saying, “As finite beings, you do not have what it takes to ma...