I want you to imagine Christianity without faith. I hope that you are right now thinking to yourself ..That..s impossible... And you would be right. We see the entirety of Christianity explained by Paul (Romans, Galatians) as the culmination of God..s plan to save His people by faith. Christ centered on people who had faith, commending or condemning them. Faith is the center of Christianity.
I want you to imagine Christianity without love. I hope that you are right now thinking to yourself ..That..s impossible... And you would be right. We see Christ summarize the Christian life as loving one another. John says God is love and if we know him we will live in love.
I want you to imagine Christianity without . . . hope. What are you saying now? Are you asking ..Hope of heaven?.. Or ..hope of resurrection?.. Any idea what we are to hope for? And even more than that, is hope even essential? Faith? Yes. Love? Yes. But hope? Consider that Paul places these three things on the same level- faith, hope and love (1 Cor 13:13). No doubt Paul says that love is the greatest. But consider that we know all about faith, strive for love and . . . what . . . for hope. I think for the next couple of weeks I am going to take a look at hope and see what we are missing today because we are missing 1/3 of what Paul said were the three things that would remain.

So after this week's Croad, you may be asking yourself "if Paul planted a church and it got so far off proper theology that he later wrote to them that they had been severed from Christ, what's to keep that from happening to us?" Good question. Remember that little thing called the Reformation. That nobody called Martin Luther. The church had wandered far from Biblical Christianity and the Lord called them back. So what does this have to do with you? The church of today? This- what if the way that we are presenting the Gospel makes it no Gospel at all? What I mean is this- pretend that you are baking a cake. You have all the ingredients. But you bake the icing and spread the batter on the baked icing. Not very good. In other words, you can have all the right ingredients, BUT IF YOU PUT THEM IN THE WRONG ORDER YOU HAVE NOTHING!!!!! What are the 'ingredients' of the Gospel? Well, in no particular order- love, sin, God, humanity, Jesus, Cross, blood, faith, grace, forgiveness, repentance, confession. Are there more? Would you exclude some? What order do they go in? Some of us have believed a Gospel that is no Gospel at all. Don't worry, you can be ABSOLUTELY sure that what you have believed is the Gospel, but have you done that? Do you know how? Stay tuned here and Croad for more.

I thought long and hard before jumping into the world of blogs. I thought to myself there were lots of people doing great jobs pushing the Kingdom forward. And there are. But the thing about bad Jesus teaching is that it is a lot like the Hydra from mythology. Cut one off and two appear in its place. So I hope that this becomes a way to engage you with 'Jesus thoughts.' Let me know if there is something you want me to cover and I'll do my best. That is if anybody reads this thing.