Post by Admin on Feb 16, 2017 6:46:37 GMT
The evening’s discussion opened with a proposition:
- Imagine for a moment that you have decided to do a random act of kindness for a stranger by leaving a $100 bill in a public place (such as a park or a store). After placing the cash where it can be easily spotted, you hide nearby to see who will find it. As you wait, you begin to think about who might receive your gift.
- What kind of person do you most hope will and will not find your gift? Several people gave specific examples – the upshot for most was that we would want a person who needs the money to find it, and not someone who didn’t need help.
- Consider the response you tend to have when you are the recipient of a gift. Several people told stories about finding money – generally, again, the inclination was to give it back to whoever lost it, or anyway to share with someone who needs it.
It was interesting to think of a gift as not having any strings attached – and wanting to share a gift given us to others – before proceeding in our conversation about God’s gift of Jesus and in turn Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.
The Law is front and center in tonight’s scripture from Romans. We talked about the convenience of having the Law so that we can understand when we sin, and we also considered that sometimes obeying clear rules to avoid earthly punishment is easier than transforming ourselves to be like Jesus for eternal reward.
One of the standout phrases in the scripture for tonight was verse 25 (“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith”). The study suggested that the Greek word used by Paul for atonement really means to placate – in other words, that the death of Jesus placated God’s anger. Not everyone was comfortable with “placate,” and not everyone was comfortable with the concept of God as angry. Is God righteously angry at evil, or disappointed in our failings? Either way, in His love, He provided a solution to the problem of sin separating us from Him: Jesus dying on the cross.
The Law is front and center in tonight’s scripture from Romans. We talked about the convenience of having the Law so that we can understand when we sin, and we also considered that sometimes obeying clear rules to avoid earthly punishment is easier than transforming ourselves to be like Jesus for eternal reward.
One of the standout phrases in the scripture for tonight was verse 25 (“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith”). The study suggested that the Greek word used by Paul for atonement really means to placate – in other words, that the death of Jesus placated God’s anger. Not everyone was comfortable with “placate,” and not everyone was comfortable with the concept of God as angry. Is God righteously angry at evil, or disappointed in our failings? Either way, in His love, He provided a solution to the problem of sin separating us from Him: Jesus dying on the cross.