Last night, Pastor John mentioned something that I hadn’t thought of before — the duration and permanence of the incarnation of Christ. He pointed out in 1 John 4 how it says that spirits from God say that Jesus “has come” in the flesh, not “came.”

That is, he came, and is still flesh. In the Incarnation, Christ permanently connected himself with humanity and its fleshiness. He then just went ahead of us into His glorified body. It makes sense, Scripturally — He is called the “firstborn of many brethren,”, and a reasonable way to understand that is to understand him as not only connected with what we are, but the firstborn of what we will be. Joined to flesh, glorified, and waiting to welcome us into His paradise where we will be like him.

I’ve missed making my Sunday Reflection posts for a few weeks now; computer problems, being out of town, and such will do that.

This week, I’d like to reflect on the glorious nature of salvation. Pastor John has begun recently an excellent series preaching on the new birth (its nature, effects, etc.). Last night, in his second message on what happens when one is born again, he reminded us of an important truth: that we ought not be see the new birth in an all-or-nothing fashion. Yes, there is a dramatic change that happens when a person is born again, but that person is still a person, still has a sin nature, and cannot be expected to immediately and perfectly demonstrate all the fruits of a spirit-filled life.

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At times, some people will say that we are not to approach God with logic — that we are supposed to approach Him on some kind of non-reasoning spiritual level and not try to make sense of His nature. This notion is, I believe, incorrect and highly dangerous. It is my intention with this article to explain why.

There are four basic types of knowledge that we as humans obtain, corresponding to four ways of obtaining information: sensory or empirical knowledge, logical knowledge, received knowledge, and mystical or experiential knowledge. There may be (and likely are) more classes of knowledge, but for our present purposes these shall suffice.

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In John 8:48ff, we see an interesting exchange between Jesus and the Jews regarding the nature of the Father, the Son, and Abraham.

In this exchange, Christ tells them the following: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." (Jn 8:58b ESV)

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I think I’m going to attempt to start a pattern of writing a meditational/devotional reflection to publish on Sundays. Here is Issue #1.

I’ve been reading lately in Ezekiel for my devotions. The end of this week, I’ve come to chapters 36 and 37, which contain some crazy-cool stuff.

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