1 Kings 10:8-9, ‘Happy are your servants who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom…Because YHWH loved Israel forever, He has made you king.’ These words, spoken by the Queen of Sheba in praise of Solomon’s reign, establish an illuminating principle for us, namely, that a wise and righteous ruler is an expression of […]
Matthew 28:20, “Behold, I am with you every day, even to the end of the age.’ /// Having announced the universal authority placed into His nail-pierced hands through His death and resurrection (28:18), and—on the basis of this authority—having called His people to make disciples of all nations (28:19), our Lord sends His disciples (His
Paschal Trilogy – 2024: Resurrection Sunday John 20:19-20, ‘He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.’ What does the Risen Jesus show His disciples in this passage? His nail-torn hands and spear-pierced side…These wounds are the wells of our sin, the gashes of our grief, the
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Colossians 1:20b, ‘…making peace through the blood of His cross.’ Here’s the picture for the final two pages of my planned Colossians board book. With the art all finished up, it’s time to start setting type and then looking over publishing options. But first, a brief write up for today’s image. The ‘peace’ that Paul
Psalm 57:8, ‘[I will sing and make melody!] Awake my glory! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn!’ The Glory of God is that Body that hangs in terrible beauty upon the cross. That Crucified Lord, that Pierced One, that shattered Heart, that One who gives His flesh as food and His
Revelation 21:4, ‘And He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and Death will be no more, neither will there be morning, or crying, or pain any more; the former things passed away.’ In the presence of God dwelling with us in Christ every tear is wiped away…mended beyond imagination….comforted beyond all conceiving….healed so deeply
Isaiah 51:3, ‘…YHWH comforts Zion; He comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her deserts like the garden of YHWH; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.’ On the cross, our Lord and God enters into, bears, and—indeed—becomes the ‘waste places’ of His Bride’s
Isaiah 41:17-20, ‘When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none…I YHWH will not forsake them….I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will put in the wilderness the cedar…I will set in the desert the cypress…that they may see and know…that the hand
Job 19:25-26, ‘For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the dust. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.’ With these words, it is as though the the skeletal hand of Job’s faith, livened by the breath of the
Hebrews 11:19, ‘…[Abraham] considered that God was able to raise [Isaac] from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.’ See the place that resurrection plays in Abraham’s faith. In this passage, resurrection is the unexpected—yet necessary—conclusion that arises from the equation of God’s Promises + Death. The Genesis 22 command
Luke 24:50, ‘And, lifting up His hands, He blessed them.’ These are the same hands that Jesus displayed to His disciples in v.39, the hands bearing the wounds of His crucifixion, which is to say, wounds that bear witness to the disciples’ sin and the condemnation due that sin. More than this, in those
2 Corinthians 1:5, ‘For just as the sufferings of Christ abound for [or ‘unto’, ‘εἰς’] us, so through Christ also abounds our comfort.’ Because the one and indivisible Jesus Christ is irreducibly the Crucified and Risen One, in Him, suffering and comfort are “hypostatically” (i.e., rooted in personhood) united. Just as there is no Crucified
The Paschal Trilogy – Part III/III – Resurrection Sunday Luke 24:30-31, ‘When He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him.’ The disciples did not recognize the Risen Lord until He *broke* the bread and
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Luke 14:33, ‘…any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.’ V.33 is the summarizing statement for vs 25-33…and these are hard words. ‘So every one of you who does not renounce / send away / take leave of all the things he possesses cannot be my disciple.’
Isaiah 1:9, ‘If YHWH of Hosts had not left to us a survivor (or, in the Greek OT, ‘seed’), we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.’ Ultimately, the judgment humanity has to face is not an attack of Assyrians or an exile to Babylon (the judgments Israel faced when Isaiah wrote the
The seed that fell on the ‘good soil.’ The ‘seed’—which Jesus tells us is the ‘word of the kingdom, 13:19 —is once again depicted as the crucified and risen Jesus Himself. The only saving word that ever has or ever can be spoken, is the word of Who God Is, declared in the flesh of
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Philippians 1:3ff, ‘I thank my God in all my remembrance of you…because of our partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.’ In this image I’ve tried to picture Paul’s prayer of thankfulness for the Philippians that essentially spans verses 3-11. First, see that ‘partnership in the gospel’ is depicted by the
1 Cor. 15:58, ‘Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.’ These words about steadfast laboring form the capstone of chapter 15 which focuses on the resurrection of Christ and of His people in Him. What
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2 Cor 4:17-18, ‘this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.’ Paul does not say that our afflictions in this life will *give way* to glory, but that our
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Heb.13:8, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. How crucial is the grace of faith that looks into the past and sees who God has declared Himself to be in the Passion of His Son, and that turns toward the impenetrable veil of the future and believes He will always be as He
