Conviction that is not under girded by love makes the possessor of that conviction obnoxious and the dogma possessed becomes repulsive.
Truth by definition is exclusive. Whenever you make a certain affirmation or assertion you are excluding the opposite. And when you make a statement absolutely if you start qualifying it, it ends up dying to death of a thousand qualifications and sub qualifications.
When Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life he didn’t say except in… and follow it with a few other ideas but he then looked at the same disciple and said this, “because I live you also shall live.”
The character of Jesus has not just been the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive in its practice. And has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of his three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the dispositions of philosophers and all the exaltation s of moralists. (W.H. Lackey, A History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne)
Jesus’ description of the human condition which conforms to reality as we know it tells us again and again that the heart of man is desperately wicked.
For out of the heart are the issues of life; evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. (Mathew 15:19)
God can never make something great out of you until you first realize how sinful your heart is before him.
And it is the Lord Jesus Christ who describes the human condition.
Crucifixion was invented by the barbarians and taken over by the Greeks and Romans and it was probably the most cruel method of execution ever practiced.
Cicero, a historian, writing about it said, ‘to bind a roman citizen is a crime, to flog him is an abomination, to kill him is almost an act of murder, to crucify him defies language’.
Justice, Love, Forgiveness and Evil all converged on the cross of Jesus Christ. Christ offers us forgiveness to stop sin (evil) from overtaking Justice because of his Love for us.
The heart hungers for this unity in diversity. (university-means unity in diversity) We long for it even within because we are diverse within.
How do we find unity in diversity within our existence?
unity and diversity in the first cause is only found in the community of the Trinity. God from the beginning is a being in relationship.
And your heart and my heart hunger for relationships. All other relationships are secondary until you find the primary relationship with Jesus Christ himself.
You can know him by inviting him into your life.
Jesus Christ embodies the ideal.
(Excerpts taken from a sermon by Ravi Zacharias)
…the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. (John 14:30-31)
Read John 14
Community of Faith; trying to understand what it means to have a relationship with God. 