Week 2 Confirmation
God's Love
The most famous of all the verses of the Bible are John 3:16-17
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."
How Broad Is God's Love?
This verse teaches us that God's love was so great and strong that it was the root of all of Jesus' life and death and all the work of spreading the good news since then. God's love is the basis for all of our faith. God's highest wish for all of us is that we may not perish but have eternal life. All the stories in the Bible, all the actions of God in the world, make sense only when understood in terms of that love. All the teachings of the church must be understood in terms of that love. Jesus came to earth because of God's love for you. Jesus died for you because of God's love for you. Jesus rose from the dead as the promise of God's love for you.
We believe that all the teachings in the attributes of God, for instance holiness, power, justice, and righteousness, only make sense as they are understood as outgrowths of God's love. It is a tradition that all sermons and writings by people of faith must be judged by how well they proclaim the good news of God's love and Jesus' work for us.
Our understanding of God as "Father" is a way of using the biological family model to demonstrate God's love. Unfortunately, the use of the image of the male parent has led many people of faith to think of God only in terms of one gender. This tends to limit God and limit the kind of love we experience from God. It also ignores the variety of other (male, female, and non-gender) images Scripture uses for God. (Examples of female images of God in the Bible include God as a housewife in Luke 15:8-9, as a mother eagle Deuteronomy 32:11, and as a mother of a young child Isaiah 66:13). God's love is very broad and very powerful; unfortunately, our language limits our understanding and often limits our image of God. We must never allow our lack of imagination to limit our faith. God is always bigger than the words and images we use to explain the divine.
Experiencing God's Love
"Salvation" is a word that Christian's use a lot and seem to never agree about. For some it has become a way of dividing people into groups according to how they define the word. Are you saved because you recited a specific prayer, because you have been baptized, because of how you were baptized or who baptized you, because of the political views you hold, because of your good actions and thoughts? No! Salvation is the result of God's love, and God's work. We do not believe we receive salvation because of anything we do. Our hardest work as Christians is learning to accept, depend, and rest on that love. We accept salvation when we give up trying to earn God's love and begin to enjoy it. We believe that salvation is a gift from God. We trust that gift in all the circumstances of life and know that not even death can separate us from the love of God.
Study Catechism
Question 5. What does a Christian believe?
All that is promised in the gospel. A summary is found in the Apostles' Creed, which affirms the main content of the Christian faith.
Question 6. What is the first article of the Apostles' Creed?
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."
Question 7. What do you believe when you confess your faith in "God the Father Almighty"?
That God is a God of love, and that God's love is powerful beyond measure.
Question 8. How do you understand the love and power of God?
Through Jesus Christ. In his life of compassion, his death on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead, I see how vast is God's love for the world -- a love that is ready to suffer for our sakes, yet so strong that nothing will prevail against it.
Question 9. What comfort do you receive from this truth?
This powerful and loving God is the one whose promises I may trust in all the circumstances of my life, and to whom I belong in life and in death.
Question 10. Do you make this confession by yourself?
No. With all those before me who have loved the Lord Jesus Christ, and with all who serve him on earth here and now, I confess my faith in this loving and powerful God.
Question 11. When the creed speaks of "God the Father," does it mean that God is male?
No. Only creatures having bodies can be either male or female. But God has no body, since by nature God is Spirit. Holy Scripture reveals God as a living God beyond all sexual distinctions. Scripture uses diverse images for God, female as well as male.
Question 12. Why then does the creed speak of God the Father?
Because God is identified in the New Testament as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Question 13. When you confess God as our Father, do you mean that men should dominate women?
No. All human beings, male or female, ought to conform their lives to the love, humility and kindness of God. In fact God calls women and men to all ministries of the church. Any abuse or domination in human relationships is a direct violation of God's Fatherhood.
Question 14. If God's love is so powerful, why is there evil in the world?
No one can say why, for evil is a terrible mystery. Still, we know that God's triumph over evil is certain. Our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is himself God's promise that suffering will come to an end, that death shall be no more, and that all things will be made new.
Confirmation Version approved by the 210th (1998) General Assembly of the PC(USA)
Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
Accepted by most scholars to be the most important figure in the ancient Western church, St. Augustine was born in Tagaste, Numidia in North Africa. His mother was a Christian, but his father remained a pagan until late in life. After a rather unremarkable childhood, marred only by a case of stealing pears, Augustine drifted through several philosophical systems before converting to Christianity at the age of thirty-one. At the age of nineteen, Augustine read Cicero's Hortensius, an experience that led him into the fascination with philosophical questions and methods that would remain with him throughout his life. After a few years as a Manichean, he became attracted to the more skeptical positions of the Academic philosophers. Although tempted in the direction of Christianity upon his arrival at Milan in 383, he turned first to neoplatonism. During this time, Augustine fathered a child by a mistress. This period of exploration, including its youthful excesses (perhaps somewhat exaggerated) are recorded in Augustine's most widely read work, the Confessions.
During his youth, Augustine had studied rhetoric at Carthage, a discipline that he used to gain employment teaching in Carthage and then in Rome and Milan, where he met Ambrose who is credited with effecting Augustine's conversion and who baptized Augustine in 387. Returning to his homeland soon after his conversion, he was ordained a presbyter in 391, taking the position as bishop of Hippo in 396, a position which he held until his death.
Besides the Confessions, Augustine's most celebrated work is his De Civitate Dei (On the City of God), a study of the relationship between Christianity and secular society, which was inspired by the fall of Rome to the Visigoths in 410. Among his other works, many are polemical attacks on various heresies: Against Faustus, the Manichean; On Baptism; Against the Donatists; and many attacks on Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism. Other works include treatises On the Trinity; On Faith, Hope, and Love; On Christian Doctrine; and some early dialogues.
St. Augustine stands as a powerful advocate for orthodoxy and of the episcopacy as the sole means for the dispensing of saving grace. In the light of later scholarship, Augustine can be seen to serve as a bridge between the ancient and medieval worlds. A review of his life and work, however, shows him as an active mind engaging the practical concerns of the churches he served.
Text © 1997, Mark Browning. Used with permission.From the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
The most famous of all the verses of the Bible are John 3:16-17
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."
How Broad Is God's Love?
This verse teaches us that God's love was so great and strong that it was the root of all of Jesus' life and death and all the work of spreading the good news since then. God's love is the basis for all of our faith. God's highest wish for all of us is that we may not perish but have eternal life. All the stories in the Bible, all the actions of God in the world, make sense only when understood in terms of that love. All the teachings of the church must be understood in terms of that love. Jesus came to earth because of God's love for you. Jesus died for you because of God's love for you. Jesus rose from the dead as the promise of God's love for you.
We believe that all the teachings in the attributes of God, for instance holiness, power, justice, and righteousness, only make sense as they are understood as outgrowths of God's love. It is a tradition that all sermons and writings by people of faith must be judged by how well they proclaim the good news of God's love and Jesus' work for us.
Our understanding of God as "Father" is a way of using the biological family model to demonstrate God's love. Unfortunately, the use of the image of the male parent has led many people of faith to think of God only in terms of one gender. This tends to limit God and limit the kind of love we experience from God. It also ignores the variety of other (male, female, and non-gender) images Scripture uses for God. (Examples of female images of God in the Bible include God as a housewife in Luke 15:8-9, as a mother eagle Deuteronomy 32:11, and as a mother of a young child Isaiah 66:13). God's love is very broad and very powerful; unfortunately, our language limits our understanding and often limits our image of God. We must never allow our lack of imagination to limit our faith. God is always bigger than the words and images we use to explain the divine.
Experiencing God's Love
"Salvation" is a word that Christian's use a lot and seem to never agree about. For some it has become a way of dividing people into groups according to how they define the word. Are you saved because you recited a specific prayer, because you have been baptized, because of how you were baptized or who baptized you, because of the political views you hold, because of your good actions and thoughts? No! Salvation is the result of God's love, and God's work. We do not believe we receive salvation because of anything we do. Our hardest work as Christians is learning to accept, depend, and rest on that love. We accept salvation when we give up trying to earn God's love and begin to enjoy it. We believe that salvation is a gift from God. We trust that gift in all the circumstances of life and know that not even death can separate us from the love of God.
Study Catechism
Question 5. What does a Christian believe?
All that is promised in the gospel. A summary is found in the Apostles' Creed, which affirms the main content of the Christian faith.
Question 6. What is the first article of the Apostles' Creed?
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."
Question 7. What do you believe when you confess your faith in "God the Father Almighty"?
That God is a God of love, and that God's love is powerful beyond measure.
Question 8. How do you understand the love and power of God?
Through Jesus Christ. In his life of compassion, his death on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead, I see how vast is God's love for the world -- a love that is ready to suffer for our sakes, yet so strong that nothing will prevail against it.
Question 9. What comfort do you receive from this truth?
This powerful and loving God is the one whose promises I may trust in all the circumstances of my life, and to whom I belong in life and in death.
Question 10. Do you make this confession by yourself?
No. With all those before me who have loved the Lord Jesus Christ, and with all who serve him on earth here and now, I confess my faith in this loving and powerful God.
Question 11. When the creed speaks of "God the Father," does it mean that God is male?
No. Only creatures having bodies can be either male or female. But God has no body, since by nature God is Spirit. Holy Scripture reveals God as a living God beyond all sexual distinctions. Scripture uses diverse images for God, female as well as male.
Question 12. Why then does the creed speak of God the Father?
Because God is identified in the New Testament as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Question 13. When you confess God as our Father, do you mean that men should dominate women?
No. All human beings, male or female, ought to conform their lives to the love, humility and kindness of God. In fact God calls women and men to all ministries of the church. Any abuse or domination in human relationships is a direct violation of God's Fatherhood.
Question 14. If God's love is so powerful, why is there evil in the world?
No one can say why, for evil is a terrible mystery. Still, we know that God's triumph over evil is certain. Our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is himself God's promise that suffering will come to an end, that death shall be no more, and that all things will be made new.
Confirmation Version approved by the 210th (1998) General Assembly of the PC(USA)
Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
Accepted by most scholars to be the most important figure in the ancient Western church, St. Augustine was born in Tagaste, Numidia in North Africa. His mother was a Christian, but his father remained a pagan until late in life. After a rather unremarkable childhood, marred only by a case of stealing pears, Augustine drifted through several philosophical systems before converting to Christianity at the age of thirty-one. At the age of nineteen, Augustine read Cicero's Hortensius, an experience that led him into the fascination with philosophical questions and methods that would remain with him throughout his life. After a few years as a Manichean, he became attracted to the more skeptical positions of the Academic philosophers. Although tempted in the direction of Christianity upon his arrival at Milan in 383, he turned first to neoplatonism. During this time, Augustine fathered a child by a mistress. This period of exploration, including its youthful excesses (perhaps somewhat exaggerated) are recorded in Augustine's most widely read work, the Confessions.
During his youth, Augustine had studied rhetoric at Carthage, a discipline that he used to gain employment teaching in Carthage and then in Rome and Milan, where he met Ambrose who is credited with effecting Augustine's conversion and who baptized Augustine in 387. Returning to his homeland soon after his conversion, he was ordained a presbyter in 391, taking the position as bishop of Hippo in 396, a position which he held until his death.
Besides the Confessions, Augustine's most celebrated work is his De Civitate Dei (On the City of God), a study of the relationship between Christianity and secular society, which was inspired by the fall of Rome to the Visigoths in 410. Among his other works, many are polemical attacks on various heresies: Against Faustus, the Manichean; On Baptism; Against the Donatists; and many attacks on Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism. Other works include treatises On the Trinity; On Faith, Hope, and Love; On Christian Doctrine; and some early dialogues.
St. Augustine stands as a powerful advocate for orthodoxy and of the episcopacy as the sole means for the dispensing of saving grace. In the light of later scholarship, Augustine can be seen to serve as a bridge between the ancient and medieval worlds. A review of his life and work, however, shows him as an active mind engaging the practical concerns of the churches he served.
Text © 1997, Mark Browning. Used with permission.From the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
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