Above and Below

From Tim Challies

The Beauty of the Crucifom

More quotes from Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity, by Brian Zahnd, on what is means to live according to the pattern of the Cruciform:

"..the cruciform (the shape of a cross) is the eternal form that endows Christianity with its mysterious beauty. Simply put, the cross is the form that makes Christianity beautiful! The cross is the beauty of Christianity because it is at the cross that we encounter co-suffering love and costly forgiveness in its most beautiful form." - Page 6

The cruciform is the aesthetic of our gospel. It is the form that gives Christianity its unique beauty. ....,,,to those who have eyes to see, the cruciform shows for a transcendent beauty - the beauty of love and forgiveness. It is the beauty of Christ's love and forgiveness most clearly seen in the cruciform that is able to save us from our vicious pride and avaricious greed." -Page 7

"The beauty of the cruciform by which Jesus saves the world through an act of co-suffering love and costly forgiveness is the same beauty that must characterize the church if we are to show forth the glory of the Lord in our world." - Page 10

"The cruciform as a pattern gives us a means of evaluating our own form and how we present ourselves to the wider culture. With an eye on the cruciform, we can ask ourselves 'Does this attitude, this approach, this action, look like Jesus on the cross?' If our attitude, approach, or action cannot be reasonably compared to the image of the cruciform, we need to abandon it." -Pages 18-10

Come and Die

From a challenging article by Dane Ortland at The Resurgence:

Jesus’ secret to joy and life was simple: Die.

“If anyone would come after me,” he said, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34–35).

Against what all our instincts of self-preservation whisper to us every day, total surrender to Jesus is the safest investment we can make.

For disciples of Jesus, the gospel of grace not only plucks them from the easy path to hell but also places them on the hard path to heaven. “When Christ calls a man,” wrote the German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “he bids him come and die.”

That’s more than a cute tweet.

  Read the whole thing at the link.