{"id":915,"date":"2009-03-06T00:12:08","date_gmt":"2009-03-06T00:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2009\/03\/why_does_christ_come.shtml"},"modified":"2021-05-29T02:44:43","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T02:44:43","slug":"why_does_christ_come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2009\/03\/why_does_christ_come.shtml","title":{"rendered":"Why Does Christ Come?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Does Christ come merely to improve our existence in Adam or to end it, sweeping us into his new creation? Is Christianity all about spiritual and moral makeovers or about death and resurrection \u2014 radical judgment and radical grace? Is the Word of God a resource for what we have already decided we want and need, or is it God&#8217;s living and active criticism of our religion, morality, and pious experience? In other words, is the Bible God&#8217;s story, centering on Christ&#8217;s redeeming work, that rewrites our stories, or is it something we use to make our stories a little more exciting and interesting?<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: right;\">Michael Horton from his book <em>Christless Christianity<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com\/2009\/03\/its-not-about-improvement.html\">It&#8217;s Not About Improvement<\/a> at Jared&#8217;s relentlessly gospel centered blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com\/\">The Gospel Driven Church<\/a>. Go. Read. Be challenged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Does Christ come merely to improve our existence in Adam or to end it, sweeping us into his new creation? Is Christianity all about spiritual and moral makeovers or about<a href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2009\/03\/why_does_christ_come.shtml\" class=\"more-link\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why Does Christ Come?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why Does Christ Come? - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2009\/03\/why_does_christ_come.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Does Christ Come? - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Does Christ come merely to improve our existence in Adam or to end it, sweeping us into his new creation? 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The pilgrimage has been made; God incarnated in man. He comes to us in Spirit. Every religion beside the true one bids travel for power.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;BlogWalking&quot;","block_context":{"text":"BlogWalking","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/blogwalking"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1033,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2010\/05\/morality_is_not_the_baseline.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":915,"position":1},"title":"Morality Is Not The Baseline","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"May 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Jared Wilson once again skewers the idea that the aim of Christianity is to produce good people, or better people. The bottom line is lots of folks do good stuff and are 'good' by any worldly standard and do so with no help at all from any church or from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;BlogWalking&quot;","block_context":{"text":"BlogWalking","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/blogwalking"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":198,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/09\/missing_the_poi.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":915,"position":2},"title":"Missing the Point","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"September 15, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"As I've mentioned before, the church I'm a part of is an offshoot of the Churches of Christ. One of the things that attracted me to this church was it's passion for thestandards and misson of God and for the restoration of first century Christianity. They were determined to get\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":247,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/01\/the_truth_about.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":915,"position":3},"title":"The Truth About Western Christianity","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"January 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Please, go read this article at Christianity Today. (Thanks to Daniel at Alien Soil for the link.) It's a powerful expose on modern western Christianity. Ronald J. Sider does an excelent job pointing out the hypocracy of what is called Christianity in the US today. Quoting many polls and other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1006,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2010\/01\/galatians_1_-_the_true_gospel.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":915,"position":4},"title":"Galatians 1 &#8211; The True Gospel","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"January 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Once again, it's been over a month since my last QT entry (and, yes, since my last time sitting down with the Bible. Sigh. I'm diving into Galatians and then back to the OT, perhaps for the minor prophets, I'm not sure yet. I'm open to your OT suggestions. Galatians\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Quiet Time Journal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Quiet Time Journal","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/quiet-time-journal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1008,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2010\/01\/galatians_2_-_boldness_freedom_and_surrender.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":915,"position":5},"title":"Galatians 2 &#8211; Boldness, Freedom and Surrender","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"January 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Galatians 2:1-2 - Paul in chapter 1 insists that the Gospel he preaches came not from men but from Jesus, yet here he says that he went to Jerusalem to present his Gospel to the leaders there, \"in order to make sure I was not running or had not run\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Quiet Time Journal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Quiet Time Journal","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/quiet-time-journal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1368,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/1368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}