We are beginning a shepherd selection process here at the GCR Church to choose a few additional elders to join our leadership group. If you belong to GCR, it is especially important that you visit our shepherding page on the church website for information and resources. If you’re not a GCR member, I would still encourage you to check out this page. You’ll find four sermons we preached back in 2023 about elders–qualifications, processes, term limits and sabbaticals, the “lists” in 1 Timothy and Titus, and what to look for in potential shepherds. You’ll also find several excellent resources that include breakdowns of the “qualities” in those two New Testament “lists,” other Scriptures that are just as important in helping discern the right men for the job, and theological answers to the questions of divorce and remarriage, and an elder’s children. I believe you’ll find it very helpful.

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“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us… When we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.” ~Romans 5:8, 10

God insists on doing whatever it takes to have a righteous relationship with us so he tells us exactly who he is. He wants us to know him, so he gives us his full name: compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin (Exodus 34:6-7). And then he comes here to show us. He goes to the cross to show us that there are no limits to his love and no end to his faithfulness.

The cross is where God receives the worst sin and evil we can muster. All of our sin, all of our evil, everything that’s wrong and broken in us–our God absorbs all of that at the cross and he turns the other cheek and he forgives. In Christ, God reconciled us back to himself. God is not reconnecting himself back to us. It wasn’t God who was alienated from us! It was we who were alienated from God!

Jesus doesn’t die on the cross to change God’s mind about us. Jesus died on the cross to change your mind about God.

When we look at the cross, we don’t see what God does, we see who God is.

God did not require the death of Jesus. It’s that God came to us in person and we said, “Crucify him.” And when we said, “Crucify him,” God said, “Forgive them.”

When Jesus prayed, “Forgive them” for his murderers, he was not acting contrary to the nature of God. This wasn’t something new. He was revealing the eternal nature of God as faithful and forgiving love. We see at the cross that our God would rather die for his enemies than do them harm. That’s who God is.

Peace,

Allan