What is the Christian life all about? Is it just about keeping the rules? Or do we live as if it was? In this passage from Galatians we see how it’s either grace OR law – they are mutually exclusive.
Read the passage online here.
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If God forgives us anyway, can’t we just do what we like? What’s our motivation to do good? In this session we focus on what it means to live a Christian life. We think about how God’s grace changes us, and how the Holy Spirit helps us.
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What can we know about the Holy Spirit, and why does it matter to us as Christians? The Apostle’s Creed doesn’t have much detail about the Spirit but in this session we look at a few Bible verses which help introduce us to the work of the Spirit.
There is just one Q&A in this session, as the Apostles’ Creed only has the line: “I believe in the Holy Spirit”! But we look into it in a bit more detail, as it’s vital to understand the Holy Spirit in the Christian life.
We focus in on these points:
If you enjoy this, you can do the whole series right here on the website, or on the app (see links on the right hand side of the page). Alternatively, I am uploading them regularly to YouTube and Facebook. All sessions on YouTube are available on this playlist.
In this final part of our Get to know God series, we turn to thinking about how God is three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is traditionally known as the doctrine of the Trinity. Sometimes people can have the idea that the Trinity is too difficult to think about, or it doesn’t really make much difference to everyday life. But, as theologian D.B. Knox said: “The doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of the Christian religion”. It’s essential to our Christian lives: we experience God as Trinity. It matters that we don’t just think of ‘God’, but think in terms of the Father, Son and Spirit.
Obviously there are many books which have been written about this topic (and I’ll link to some of them below). We won’t be able to deal with the whole doctrine of the Trinity in one session! But I hope this will at least make a start so you want to continue learning yourself.
Let’s start by thinking about what the Bible says, before we go on to look at why it matters for us day-by-day.
The doctrine of the Trinity is somewhat veiled in the Old Testament. That is, it’s there if you know what you’re looking for – there are some passages which don’t make sense any other way. And yet, we don’t really get the full picture until the New Testament. Because we don’t have much time here, we’ll concentrate on the New Testament for the moment.
Continue reading “God is… three persons (Trinity)”Yesterday I was leading a service on the theme of Pentecost – “What does the Holy Spirit do”. The talk is in two parts, so instead of extracting the two talks you may see the whole service here – I hope you enjoy. (And I do apologise for the technical issues with the sound in the first song – the perils of livestreaming!)
