Do we preach Christ crucified...
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Do we preach Christ crucified? Or exclusively glorified -- post-resurrection, after-ascension, at the right hand of God credentialed with the super status of sovereignty and majesty. Or preach him only sanctified -- set apart so far from us we can't get to him, so holy we forget incarnation. Or perhaps we preach him mummified, wrapped up in adjectives that never approach the nouns and stay eons away from the verbs.
Let us move toward crucifixion preaching. The homiletics of the cross. But first the hermeneutics of the will of God. Was the cross an accident? Can we really pin the rap on Judas? Or was the cross' shape designed in heaven? Here are a couple of questions: (1) Why should Jesus to Calvary go? (2) Why does he love me so? Answer: Because the Father willed it. And because the Father willed it -- it worked. It became soteriology; it saved us. That may have been what George Bernard Shaw meant when he said, "We crucified Christ on a stick but He somehow managed to get the better end of it."
So did we. And that's why we come preaching Christ and him crucified.
-- Barnhart
Let us move toward crucifixion preaching. The homiletics of the cross. But first the hermeneutics of the will of God. Was the cross an accident? Can we really pin the rap on Judas? Or was the cross' shape designed in heaven? Here are a couple of questions: (1) Why should Jesus to Calvary go? (2) Why does he love me so? Answer: Because the Father willed it. And because the Father willed it -- it worked. It became soteriology; it saved us. That may have been what George Bernard Shaw meant when he said, "We crucified Christ on a stick but He somehow managed to get the better end of it."
So did we. And that's why we come preaching Christ and him crucified.
-- Barnhart
