Quotes about Meaning

The point is this. If you want to know what it means to talk about God being 'in charge of' the world, or being 'in control', or being 'sovereign', then Jesus himself instructs you to rethink the notion of 'kingdom', 'control' and 'sovereignty' themselves, around his death on the cross.

Famously the KJV translates agap? as 'charity'. Many grumbled when modern translations replaced it with 'love'. Not many realized that the modern translations were simply reverting to what Tyndale had had in the first place.

No, insists Paul, once you learn the meaning of the gospel, you have to see everything inside out.

He did not want to rescue humans from creation any more than he wanted to rescue Israel from the Gentiles. He wanted to rescue Israel in order that Israel might be a light to the Gentiles, and he wanted thereby to rescue humans in order that humans might be his rescuing stewards over creation.

How we are saved is closely linked to the question of what we are saved for.

If Jesus had defeated the powers of the world in his death, his resurrection meant the launching of a new creation, a whole new world.

When Matthew has the angel tell Joseph that the child to be born will be "Emmanuel," "God with us," and then finishes his gospel with Jesus himself telling his followers that he will be "with them always," alert readers know that the entire story ought to be read with this in mind.

So what if it were true after all? What if the Creator, all along, had made the world out of overflowing, generous love, so that the overflowing, self-sacrificial love of the Son going to the cross was indeed the accurate and precise self-expression of the love of God for a world radically out of joint?

He had been absolutely right in his devotion to Israel and the Torah, but absolutely wrong in his view of Israel's vocation and identity and even in the meaning of the Torah itself.

Knowing the truth has meaning only as a first step to living the truth day by day.

if there is no God, and life is a chance product of blind material forces, what purpose does human life have? Is it just a chemical accident on a rock flying through the cold, empty reaches of space?

When people commit themselves to a certain vision of reality, it becomes their ultimate explainer. It serves to interpret the universe for them, to guide their moral decisions, to give meaning and purpose to life, and all the other functions normally associated with a religion.