Last week we began examining the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22. We basically asked the question: What does a grace-transformed person look like? People usually think a person transformed by grace looks sinless or perfectly obedient to the Ten Commandments. But we talked about how, in our sinful bodies, we won’t be like…

In our recent classes, we’ve been looking at the Seventh-day Adventist fundamental beliefs through the lens of grace. We saw that while most of the official beliefs of the Adventist church agree with grace on paper, sometimes in tone and practice, they don’t fully reflect it. We also noticed that a few beliefs, or certain…

This class was unusual in that it began with a reading by Kiran of remarks made by Dr. Weaver in class on May 4, 2013. I asked ChatGPT to compare the discussion we had today with the discussion in class in 2013. The result is appended below. (Kiran, quoting Don): The third pillar of community…

A note on citations: In preparing this talk I cited the sources for some of my assertions in endnotes. WordPress has stripped them out here. For anyone who wants to see them, I will send a PDF file that includes the citations and endnotes. I’d post it here as a downloadable link, but I don’t…

Last week, we explored Jesus’ resurrection. The awesome light of Easter and Christ’s victory—“never to die again” (Romans 6:9)—mark a radical shift: God’s righteousness is now revealed in grace, not reserved for a final judgment at the end of time. This is the new covenant—the life of resurrection not simply for God alone, but for…

Excerpts from Jürgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God are interspersed throughout this essay. In previous classes, we talked about the crucifixion. In the Christian narrative, the crucifixion of Christ demonstrates the judgment of God. The death of Jesus on the cross is the wages he paid for our sins. The Lamb of God carried the sins…