Results for "Jesus"

Show all Di_Wolfe's bookmarks
clear search
Hebrews 4:14-16
Jesus the Great High Priest
14Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens,Or gone into heaven Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.
It is a great comfort to me in my humanness to know that my Lord was tempted in every single way that I, and all people, are tempted. We can with utmost confidence, talk with Jesus, totally human - yet totally God. His humanity allowed him to experience the temptations; and his humanity allowed him to resist; not his divinity. This is because, as it says in the second chapter of Philippians, that even though he was totally God, he did not regard that as something to be grasped, but rather emptied himself to become a slave, i.e. a human being. He was above all God, but humbled himself and became one in human likeness and appearance. He showed us how to resist temptation through the Garden to the Cross to the grave. Then he broke the pattern to give us the gift of new resurrection life, both here on earth and in the afterlife in glory with God and all the saints. So the first part of the Hebrews passage says he is our High Priest, and survived temptation, so we must hold fast to our own confession and relationship with God in Three Persons. Jesus did not leave behind his humanness when he passed back into the heavens. Even though while on earth he did not sin, he knew as well as we do, just what it was to face the temptation to sin. Meditating on the Garden experience can radically impress on us the incredible struggle he went through to come to the point of saying, not my will, but yours be done. Each of us must face our own Garden experience and then our death on the cross as we die to our sinful selves, and daily become more and more Christlike. Bonhoeffer, in "The Cost of Discipleship," states, that "when Christ calls 'one', he bids 'that one to' come and die." In doing that we are following in the steps of Jesus' example (I Pet. 2:21, and following), which is to empty ourselve and have become humble. That's the only path to the resurrection life. Our High Priest testifies for us and we are able to confidently approach the throne of God and receive mercy and find grace for timely help, so we are not left alone to struggle against temptation on our own, for that is impossible; but with God, all things are possible, including resisting temptation.
Bookmarked 4 months ago.

John 1:1-18
John
Chapter 1
The Word Became Flesh
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Trinity can be described in many ways. One that I have found helpful is to see God the Father as the Creator, who envisioned all of creation. Whether that is our planet, or our solar system, or everything we can see in one of our greatest telescopes thus far invented and beyond, or everything in all the vastness of all of space no matter how far God's creation spreads. Once this image was created, the second person of the Trinity, as the Word, spoke Creation into being. Then the Holy Spirit breathed life into the whole of creation. This shows me that not one person of God can operate separate without the other. Here John is showing that the Word, which is the visible, second person of the Trinity, was the one who spoke creation into being and now, as Paul says in Phil., has humbled himself to become human. With the coming of Jesus into a world that would reject him, he will fulfill the Creator Father's overall image of what his purpose was in creating everything, including humanity.
Bookmarked 4 months ago.
Topics
God Jesus the word of