Deep-End Discipleship

“But you aren’t self-centered. Instead you are in the Spirit, if in fact God’s Spirit lives in you. If anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, they don’t belong to him. If Christ is in you, the Spirit is your life because of God’s righteousness, but the body is dead because of sin. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your human bodies also, through his Spirit that lives in you.” Romans 8:9-11 If we live in the Spirit and the Spirit lives in us, our bodies will receive life. Christ, who lived in flesh restored it. Christ came to bring salvation and salvation is life giving! Therefore our flesh, originally made good, has been restored by the one who embodied flesh perfectly. Jesus truly was 100% divine and 100% human, and Paul does indeed affirm this. Jesus was absolutely of total humanity, but without sin. We know that we were not created sinful, and so sin is not necessary to gen...

 “ Jesus matured in wisdom and years, and in favor with God and with people." - Luke 2:52 CEB - Christmas is done and we focus so much time on little baby Jesus! We quickly skip from the baby to the adult Savior that walks on water, feeds multitudes and asks tough questions. For this reason, I love this reminder in the gospel of Luke. Jesus matured! Jesus did not just come out of the manager ready to go. The early church had a hard time canonizing stories of Jesus as an elementary aged kid or even a middle-schooler.  Any of the surviving stories pair the growing mistakes of children with the power and mystic of a God in human form. Some have Jesus using cosmic powers to prank his friends, other has Jesus creating doves out of dust. Overall they just come out feeling weird. No wonder the early church did not find them useful to put in the Bible! I like to think that this verse from Luke really connects how Jesus lived into the divine/human balance. As Jesus ...