Sun Lk 24:13-27
Mon Lk 24:28-43 (through day 363/365)
Thu Jn 20:19-25
Fri Jn 20:26-21:3 (through day 357/365)
Sat Mk 16:14-21 (through day 365/365)
as 50 weeks before Easter 2023
Sun Lk 1:1-7
Mon Lk 1:8-17 (days 1-6)
Tues Mt 2:7-15
Wed Mt 2:16-23 (days 11-17)
Sat Mk 1:4-20 (days 6-12)
2 comments:
The version of me that you get is not glorified until sooner or later, maybe sooner, friends! But I'll try and say things interesting on the Christian life and the gospel, our mutual interest in light of attempts to allow boasting, cf. Rm 3:27-28.
Take "today's" reading in my blog, Mk 1:4-20, which when combined with Mk 1:1-3, has lots of interest for those reading it fresh and in light of common fallacies about God and man's role in salvation, when God and man are in the scope of discussion. When God and man are in the scope of discussion, watch out for when man tries to control the process! But Mk begins by a refutation of that, if I'm not reading into it!
It is certain that repentance, the word, is wrongly used as a stand-in for the attempt to allow boasting. How often is "when I gave my life to the Lord" nodded at, as a legitimate synonym, not only for an unaware person's time of conversion who just remembers what happened by what they think they did, but for their conversion itself! People think they gave, and God gave back in return.
To this, Mark says, and people don't notice, "ah, but the beginning of the gospel is what? ..."
Not the beginning of salvation, but the beginning of news. News comes before responding to news, even hearing the news. And the news is not "hey, I enable my elect to do what it takes," but John the Baptist, the beginning of the news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God!
What Jesus meant in Mk 1:14 by "repent [ye, plural of you], and believe in the gospel" is often, wrongly I think, represented as Jesus stating two different things for the hearers to deal with. But the Lord, in Mt 21:32, portrays what was actually going on with John, differently: John came, and "ye believed him not!" How many interpreters present John's hearers as needing to believe him?!! How does this relate to Mt 21:32? They were to feel remorse so as to believe him. The remorse so as to believe him was the repent part of Mk 1:14.
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