Bored With the Christmas Story
The Christmas story we’ll tell and celebrate this week is the same story that’s been told for the past two-thousand years. Nothing has changed about it. And because nothing has changed, there’s an inherent danger presented to us—boredom.
You might be bored with that story right now. Even thinking ahead to going to a church service, listening to the same songs, hearing the same passage or passages of Scripture being read might be enough to make you wish you could just fast-forward through all that same old, same old.
With Just a Sentence
John Piper is fond of saying, “Books don’t change people, paragraphs do — sometimes sentences.” To his credit, he does quickly iron out this statement by explaining that he doesn’t think books are a waste of time—he’s written over 50 of them!—it’s just that it’s difficult told hold an entire thesis of a book in your head at once.
A Moment on the Scriptures: The Theology of Christmas (9)
Systematic theology is all over the ancient creeds and confessions of the early Christian church and here, with the Athanasian creed, as it discusses the unity of the person of Jesus, it’s as dense as it gets.
A Moment on the Scriptures: The Theology of Christmas (8)
How does something like the incarnation happen?
A Moment on the Scriptures: The Theology of Christmas (7)
At this point in working through the Athanasian Creed, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to start thinking of Jesus as two different people or beings.
A Moment on the Scriptures: The Theology of Christmas (6)
What are we to make of those places in the New Testament when it’s clear that Jesus is on the same level as the Father and then, in other places, is not as great as the Father? Is it fair to just toss up our hands and pronounce the charge of inconsistency within the text?
A Moment on the Scriptures: The Theology of Christmas (5)
Is it really possible that Jesus was made to be—through his incarnation—just as we are?
A Moment on the Scriptures: The Theology of Christmas (4)
Depending on your Christian perspective and background, it’s sometimes easier to think of Jesus being God than it is to think of him being an actual person.
A Moment on the Scriptures: The Theology of Christmas (2)
When it comes down to it, is Christianity simply an incoherent set of belief systems?