Tag Archives: doctrine

Aug 28 2022

The Lord’s Prayer – #4 – The Life and Love of Father: 'Monday Morning Musing - August 29, 2022'

Familiarity dilutes meaning. When something is so familiar, so common, so presumed upon its significance and depth of meaning is often over-looked. Jesus’s instruction to directly address God as Father/Abba and to include/invite the disciples to also do so, would have been a cosmically altering, paradigm-shattering instruction for any first-century Jew.

 

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

 

Aug 22 2022

The Lord’s Prayer – Part 3 – Thankfulness: 'Monday Morning Musing - August 22, 22022'

In a Jewish worldview, thankfulness was considered an activity that would last for eternity. Sacrifices and offerings would cease, but thankfulness would be a perpetual kingdom phenomenon. When Jesus exhorts his followers to pray for the “kingdom to come” they would have associated thankfulness as an actualization of the future. The practice of thankfulness is a kingdom establishing phenomenon. “Thy kingdom come” is not a passive plea for God’s future activity. We have a part to play in the present in the realization of that prayer. 

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

 

 

Aug 15 2022

The Lord’s Prayer – Part 2 – Jesus Our Rabbi: 'Monday Morning Musing - August 15, 2022'

 

The disciples asked Jesus: “Teach us to pray.” Every Rabbi had his own prayer convention. The point of the prayer was to differentiate that Rabbi’s “disciples” (followers) from other Rabbis and their followers. The prayer was a summation, in prayer form, of the essence of the Rabbi’s distinctive teaching. This is exactly what was occurring when Jesus gave the “Lord’s prayer” to his disciples. It was a summation of the essence of His message to differentiate His followers, from others. That is why the disciples asked Him for one. A rabbi’s prayer “labelled” the one praying it. In that sense, it is indeed the Lord’s (their Rabbi’s prayer). On the other hand, it was the disciple’s prayer as it was expected that they would pray it.

 

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

 

 

Jul 25 2022

I Am the Light of the World – Part 1: 'Monday Morning Musing July 25, 2022'

In this two-part episode I try to present the high tension and drama that would have been involved in Jesus’s “I Am the light of the world” statement. This statement along with his declaration about living water were made in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles and the Dedication. I briefly unpack some some of the significant ritual features which occurred during the feast, to which Jesus’s bold statements were directly and immediately referring. It was a scene of high drama and conflict.

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

Jul 18 2022

I am the Door: 'Monday Morning Musing July 18, 2022'

When Jesus likened himself to a door, he was taking unto himself a function that the Rabbis and religious leaders believed belonged to them, divinely assigned by God. A door functions as something that limits or grants access. The KJV language about “binding and loosing” was a well known Semitism for the ability of the religious professionals to either grant or deny access to eternal life and the things of God.

Photo by jon-tyson-7uPzmidQ4jI-unsplash.jpg

 

 

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

Jul 11 2022

Before Abraham Was, I Am: 'Monday Morning Musing - July 11, 2022'

Of all Jesus’s I Am statements, this is perhaps the most easy to understand, and it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. In this statement Jesus engages in something called “challenge and riposte” which in an honor-shamed based society was a formal and public dispute before a crowd, with winners and losers. Jesus and his opponents are locked in a fight about identity and lineage “from God.” After this episode in John 8, the skids toward Calvary were “greased’ so to speak. In the previous chapter, Jesus was a hero with crowds still following him. But after this statement, his death sentence was sealed. He went from hero to zero all over claim to spiritual originations: who had claim to Yahweh as Father?

 

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

May 23 2022

The New Marcionism?: 'A Critique by Michael Hardin May 23, 2022'

Those who claim that Jesus–specifically Jesus at the cross–is the final, complete and definitive image of God, clarifying other misrepresentations and misinterpretations of God in Scripture are likely (sooner or later) to be accused by their critics of of being a “Marcionite”. This is a straw-man argument, often coming from folks who should know better.
 
In this episode, I briefly introduce the topic and share a link to an article by my friend, Michael Hardin. In it, he responds to an article by N.T. Wright who calls a non-violent, non-sacrificial, Christocentric hermeneutic the “New Marcionism.”
 
I urge you to read the article. For some, it might be too technical if you are not familiar with the issues. However, there is much at stake beyond the slander in the accusation.

Continue reading →

May 17 2022

Spirit, Soul and Body: ONE INTEGRATED Being: 'May 16, 2022'

In some Evangelical churches and in many Charismatic churches, Paul’s use of spirit, soul and body in 1 Thess. 5:23 is understood as a hierarchy of being and a hierarchy of value. This is essentially a Gnostic interpretation that seriously misunderstands Paul’s fluid and interchangeable use of those terms.

Photo by Nick Page on Unsplash

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

May 17 2022

Baptism: Born for Battle: 'May 9, 2022'

 

Among other things, the early church understood the significance of baptism in “military” language. Not in a sense of obnoxious aggressiveness, nor charismatic spiritual warfare. but rather, that the life of a follower of Jesus will be characterized by struggle and adversity for which, at baptism, a candidate was “signing up” like a loyal soldier. This facet of understanding is virtually unknown today in many parts of Western Christianity.

 

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.

 

 

Apr 18 2022

The Manifest Presence of God: 'April 18, 2022'

Jesus links his manifest presence to obedience and ministering to and among the “less-than” other. How and why do we shift the association to praise and worship? Because of bad typology from OT proof-texts and because it is just easier and more enjoyable. We like to pretend adrenaline-driven spiritual narcissism is an enlightened form of corporate worship.

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Copyright 2022. Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. www.stevecrosby.org. For video and audio resources, sign up as a student here. You will find a mix of both free resources and those with cost. This ministry is sustained by the freewill offerings of those believe in the message of a radical grace in a new covenant understanding. If this blog article has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider making a contribution through our Paypal button to help? Stephanos Ministries is NOT a 501-c-3 corporation Click here to understand why. Thank you and God bless you.