April's Blog Theme: Petitionary Prayer

This month’s theme here at Rebecca Writes will be focused on the things we are asking of God. On Tuesdays and Fridays throughout April, I’ll be posting one petition I have made that day, and I’m asking you to join me in posting your petitions if you like.

Just send me the links to your posted petitions and I’ll link to your post. You don’t have to restrict yourself to posting petitions only on Tuesday and Friday. Post whenever (and as often, and with as many petitions) as you want, and I’ll include your links in the next petitional post I make.

If a petition is one that is best kept private, consider explaining it in general terms. “I am praying for a friend who is in a health crisis” or “I am praying for one of my children who has an important decision to make” will often be wiser than going into more detail on the world-wide web.

Oh, and if you don’t have a blog, don’t let that stop you. I want your petitions, too. Either email them to me or put them in the comments of one of the petitional prayer posts and I’ll include them in the next scheduled prayer post.

I’m hoping that posting our petitions will be an encouragement in at least two ways: 

• It will encourage us to keep track of what we ask from God so that we notice and are thankful when we receive from him.
• It will encourage us to bear one another’s burdens.

[I meant to post this yesterday, on the first day of April, but my internet provider has been under the weather over the last two days. One of the disadvantages of the satellite internet service I have is that it has periods of unreliability. Grrrr.]

Meme: Passion Quilt

I’ve been tagged by Kim of Hiraeth for the passion quilt meme. Here are the instructions.

• Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures that about which YOU are most passionate for students to learn.
  
• Give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt.”
• Link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 (or more) educators. (I won’t be doing this. Tagging people is not favorite thing.)
  

If you’ve read here for a while, you  won’t be surprised by where my passion lies.

The Cross 

 

This depiction of Christ being lifted up on the cross is by the French illustrator, Gustave Dore.

I’m passionate about the cross of Christ and here are a few of the reasons.

 

• The cross is the solution to everything that’s not right with the universe, including what’s not right with me. No matter what the human need, it is, ultimately, met at the cross, and all real hope is grounded there.

• So many of God’s attributes are seen most fully in the cross. The cross is, for instance, the pinnacle of the expression of God’s grace. It was also a public display of God’s mercy, love, holiness, righteousness and justice. Do you want to know God? Look through the lens of the cross.

• What happened on the cross is, in one sense, simple: Christ died for our sins. He bore the penalty for our sins so that we can be forgiven by God and reconciled to him. On the other hand, there are so many layers to the work of the cross! Or maybe it’d be better to say that the work of the cross can be seen from many different angles and they all fit together to paint one picture that grows more and more glorious as it is viewed from additional angles. That makes it an infinitely fascinating work and an infinitely satisfying work.

• The work of the cross is the center of everything: the gospel, God’s plan for history, our Christian faith.

• The cross is powerful: it transforms lives; it gives meaning to life. It is because of the cross that we are new creatures; and the cross, in turn, calls us to live out our new-creaturely lives in “the way of the cross.” It is because of the cross that we are to “take up our cross daily.”

• For those who are redeemed by it, the cross of Christ will be an enduring passion, a passion that only increases in eternity. Christ’s work on the cross is the centerpiece of the new song:  
  
  

  “Worthy are you to take the scroll
  and to open its seals,
  for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
  from every tribe and language and people and nation,
  and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God…
  
  “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
  to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
  and honor and glory and blessing!” 

Theological Term of the Week

docetism

The heretical teaching that Christ only appeared to be human, but that he was not really human, since he did not have a real human body.

• From the Apostle John:
  

  By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. (1 John 4:2-3)
  
  For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. (2 John 1:7)
  

• From The Definition of Chalcedon (451)

  Following, then, the holy fathers, we unite in teaching all men to confess the one and only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. This selfsame one is perfect both in deity and in humanness; this selfsame one is also actually God and actually man, with a rational soul and a body. He is of the same reality as God as far as his deity is concerned and of the same reality as we ourselves as far as his humanness is concerned; thus like us in all respects, sin only excepted. Before time began he was begotten of the Father, in respect of his deity, and now in these “last days,” for us and behalf of our salvation, this selfsame one was born of Mary the virgin, who is God-bearer in respect of his humanness.
  
  We also teach that we apprehend this one and only Christ-Son, Lord, only-begotten — in two natures; and we do this without confusing the two natures, without transmuting one nature into the other, without dividing them into two separate categories, without con- trasting them according to area or function. The distinctiveness of each nature is not nullified by the union. Instead, the “properties” of each nature are conserved and both natures concur in one “person” and in one reality . They are not divided or cut into two persons, but are together the one and only and only-begotten Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus have the prophets of old testified; thus the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us; thus the Symbol of Fathers has handed down to us.

• From Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A.D., with an Account of the Principal Sects and Heresies.

  St. Jerome scarcely exaggerates when he says (adv. Lucif. 23): “While the apostles were still surviving, while Christ’s blood was still fresh in Judea, the Lord’s body was asserted to be but a phantasm.” Apart from N.T. passages, e.g. Eph. ii. 9, Heb. ii. 14, which confute this assertion, but do not bear clear marks of having been written with a controversial purpose, it appears from I. John iv. 2, II. John 7, that when these epistles were written there were teachers, stigmatised by the writer as prompted by the spirit of Antichrist, who denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh, a form of expression implying a Docetic theory. Those who held that evil resulted from the inherent fault of matter found it impossible to believe that the Saviour could be Himself under the dominion of that evil from which He came to deliver men, and they therefore rejected the Church’s doctrine of a real union of the divine and human natures in the person of our Lord….
  

Learn more

1. Truth for Today: Docetism
2. Theopedia: Docetism
3. Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry: Docetism
4. Basic Theology.org: Docetism
5. Justin Holcomb: Know Your Heretics: Docetism
6. Greg Johnson: Human, Body and Soul.
7. Here at Rebecca Writes: Quiz on Jesus as a human being.

Related terms:

• humanity of Christ
• hypostatic union

The term docetism was suggested by Leslie of Lux Venit, who writes that she is reminded of

a sermon I heard in which the pastor preached that Jesus’ blood was not human blood, but completely divine….I’ve heard this particular teaching is called Doceticism, but I don’t know why or what all it entails..

Have you come across a theological term that you don’t understand and that you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.