Series on What God Sacrificed And I Gained
I intend to do a series of which this is the start.
Introduction
The basic question is one of cost and benefit. What did it cost God and what did I benefit. The cost shows level of commitment on God as the giver and the benefit shows how much good will the gift give me. The reason to pose the question in terms of me, is to keep from relegating the issue to the mere theoretical. One could ask how Jesus' life and work benefited mankind, or believers or even God's elect. To do so is to relegate the issues of the person and work of Christ into the arena of the theoretical and the logical. While we can not ignore the disciplines of good Biblical scholarship, logic and systematic theology, to rightly understand these, I must also add the element of aesthetics. Regardless of one's ability to be copiously systematic, defining each foundational word, determining the primal axioms and the resulting corollaries, one can only show costs and benefits only in terms of logic with these tools. A cost and benefit without emotion is ultimately without appreciation. In the world of finance, when one show a benefits package of a health plan or a retirement plan, there are two aspects of the knowledge of the benefits. One is the dollar amounts for the policy and the raw facts surrounding the use of the policy. But on the other hand, there is an understanding of the benefits which the marketing departments usually focus on and that is it's impact on our lives. They want to express that family will be taken care of. Or that when you or I are in our hours of pain and suffering, the healing professionals will do us some good if any is to be done. Dollars will not be our focus, but simply getting better. Likewise you and I must go beyond the facts in order to appreciate the gift of God. In order to fully appreciate the gift of God to you and I, we will explore the pain and suffering of the Godhead by the incarnation and death of Christ and it's resulting solution to our most primary problem, the sin problem.
Introduction
The basic question is one of cost and benefit. What did it cost God and what did I benefit. The cost shows level of commitment on God as the giver and the benefit shows how much good will the gift give me. The reason to pose the question in terms of me, is to keep from relegating the issue to the mere theoretical. One could ask how Jesus' life and work benefited mankind, or believers or even God's elect. To do so is to relegate the issues of the person and work of Christ into the arena of the theoretical and the logical. While we can not ignore the disciplines of good Biblical scholarship, logic and systematic theology, to rightly understand these, I must also add the element of aesthetics. Regardless of one's ability to be copiously systematic, defining each foundational word, determining the primal axioms and the resulting corollaries, one can only show costs and benefits only in terms of logic with these tools. A cost and benefit without emotion is ultimately without appreciation. In the world of finance, when one show a benefits package of a health plan or a retirement plan, there are two aspects of the knowledge of the benefits. One is the dollar amounts for the policy and the raw facts surrounding the use of the policy. But on the other hand, there is an understanding of the benefits which the marketing departments usually focus on and that is it's impact on our lives. They want to express that family will be taken care of. Or that when you or I are in our hours of pain and suffering, the healing professionals will do us some good if any is to be done. Dollars will not be our focus, but simply getting better. Likewise you and I must go beyond the facts in order to appreciate the gift of God. In order to fully appreciate the gift of God to you and I, we will explore the pain and suffering of the Godhead by the incarnation and death of Christ and it's resulting solution to our most primary problem, the sin problem.
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