Blog - Page 80 of 318 - John H Armstrong

An Ancient-Modern Way to Equip Transformissional Leadership

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:17-05:00August 13th, 2012|Categories: ACT 3, Discipleship, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism|

Do you long to be a Christ-like peacemaker, a bridge-builder, and a servant-leader?

Do you believe that Christ’s kingdom is not about a program but rather about being one with God’s people in a relational unity that leads to deeply shared mission?

I have recently shared with many of you how God has been pleased to give me a fourth quarter life-vision for ACT 3’s purpose of “equipping leaders for unity in Christ’s mission.” This new vision is to mentor leaders, both lay and ministerial, through a series of missional-ecumenical cohort groups gathered around the country. These groups are intentional small groups focused on mission, joined across traditional denominational boundaries, for the kingdom of Christ.

These training sessions are four day-long meetings, spread over the course of eight months, shared with other Christians committed to understanding and pursuing these same goals together. If you are interested, then please read on, and register online. It is imperative that you sign up and begin this process soon. Please feel free to contact me directly. These cohort groups include 1,200 pages of carefully selected reading, personal interaction with […]

Can We Live Without Sinning?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:17-05:00August 10th, 2012|Categories: Biblical Theology, Love, Patristics, Spirituality|

Love and cognition merge into a single act when we feel ourselves loved by God. This is what it means, in Paul’s language, to be “in Christ.” We are mystically brought into the reality of the divine Logos. Here we are “consumed with love” says Archimandrite Sophrony.

This personal revelation to the heart draws us into the “so great salvation” that is entirely of God’s grace. This revelation may be granted suddenly, as was true with Paul in his dramatic conversion. But even if this is true, as it was in my case as well, we can only assimilate this love by degrees. And this is true only after we have endured long ascetic struggle. We must grow into this complete salvation and this means “death and resurrection” are recurring experiences in our journey. “From the first instant the vital content of the revelation is clear and the soul feels no impulse to explain in rational concepts the grace experienced” (His Life Is Mine, 44).

Words fail me when I seek to describe this transforming vision. The knowledge […]

Through Love We Are Joined With God

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:17-05:00August 9th, 2012|Categories: Biblical Theology, God's Character, Orthodoxy, Patristics, Spirituality|

Yesterday I wrote of how hypostasis and persona are integrally connected with our being saved. They are also a vital part of how we learn to live by the Spirit and produce the fruit of the Spirit, not the sins of our flesh. What is at stake here is the true understanding how God’s love works in us to produce transformation through askesis, or self-denial.

Man, made in the image of the triune God, is hypostatic. (See my earlier posts for an explanation of this important Greek term that was first used by early church fathers to develop the theological truths I am appealing for in these posts.) God is a Hypostatic Being. God is Spirit, and man is spirit. Yet the spirit in us is not unconnected, or abstract being, but concrete expression in a corporeal body.

The Divine Logos, the second person of the Divine Hypostasis, took on himself human flesh and showed, once and for all, that God is not a fantasy of our human imagination. He is an actual reality. This is why Archimandrite […]

The Love of God and Our Spiritual Transformation

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:18-05:00August 8th, 2012|Categories: Biblical Theology, God's Character, Orthodoxy, Spirituality|

Galatians 5 refers to the acts of the human flesh, that is the acts that come from our sinful nature. Here is how Paul puts it:

¹⁹ The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰ idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹ and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

What we need, more than we realize, is the gift of repentance. Repentance does not come readily to us. The reason is that so few of us fathom the real problem of sin. This problem is only disclosed to us though Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Repentance for sin is possible. But it is only possible and appropriate “where there is a personal relationship” (His Life Is Mine, 42). We must encounter the living triune God in order to experience the “fear of the Lord.” But we often mistake this fear because we turn it into an end, or goal, and then […]

How Then Shall We Be Saved?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:18-05:00August 7th, 2012|Categories: Biblical Theology, Gospel/Good News, Orthodoxy, Spirituality|

For much of my life I thought “being saved” meant accepting Jesus in a moment of faith. Those who were saved had done this faith act/decision and those who were not saved had not yet done it. “Are you saved?” really meant “Have you prayed to receive Jesus?” Time to think, the fullness of the truth of Holy Scripture, and great grace, have all conspired to change my view quite significantly. Let me explain.

The word saved refers to being rescued, to our deliverance. While conversion is the beginning of our new life it is just that, a beginning. The conversion itself may not even be something that a person is deeply aware of existentially. The reality is what matters – “new life” has begun. Paul says: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here” (2 Cor. 5:17). Another way to translate the last part of the first sentence is: “that person is a new creation.” Thus the main point here is our becoming “a new creation.” Jesus is making everything new thus when he puts […]

Form vs. Freedom, or Spirit vs. Structure

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:18-05:00August 6th, 2012|Categories: Scripture, Spirituality|

I wrote in my last blog about the danger of activism in living the Christian life. For me, growing up as an evangelical in the South, this meant sharing my faith in order to get people “saved.” This really was the most important thing you ever did. Week after week I heard sermons that ended with, “Come to Jesus. Walk down the aisle while we sing this closing song and he will save you right now!” I tended to always feel rather guilty about this since I had not done enough to keep my friends from going to hell. Even though I did my fair share of witnessing, and inviting the lost to come to my church, this culture never sat well with me. I wanted to be more like Jesus but did not understand what this had to do with growing into the freedom of grace.

Over time I understood that there was a necessary tension, a tension that ran through all Christian practice for over 2,000 years, between form and freedom, or structure and spirit. The more I met Christians from different backgrounds, especially as […]

Our True Identity: How We Restore Deep Spirituality in a Technological Age

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:18-05:00August 3rd, 2012|Categories: Discipleship, Spirituality|

In Galatians 5 Paul reasons with believers that they have been given a “new” freedom that allows them to live out a principled liberty that is not the result of rules but rather that of a new heart, a new life force. This principle alone can produce the deep spirituality that we desperately need in our highly technological age. This is actually how we discover our real identity and then live out an interior spirituality that is rooted in Christ alone. Here is how Paul expresses this freedom:

¹⁶ So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law

Our inner lives are veritable battlefields. The “flesh” is our fallen human nature, not our mortal bodies. This nature remains with us until our last day yet we […]

Keep in Step with the Spirit: Growing Deep in Spirituality

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:18-05:00August 2nd, 2012|Categories: Love, Spirituality|

One of the more important texts in Paul’s correspondence with the churches of Galatia is a reminder that we should always pursue deep spirituality in an age overrun with new technologies and media images that threaten our very humanity. I quote in full (NIV 2011) this text from Galatians 5 and urge that you read it meditatively:

¹³ You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ¹⁴ For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁵ If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

¹⁶ So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. ¹⁸ But if […]

Barack Obama: The Story, Part 7

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:18-05:00August 1st, 2012|Categories: America and Americanism, Books, Politics|

In the last part of my opening statement, in Part 6 yesterday, I said that Barack Obama was a Christian. I realize that this statement is controversial with many. (I’ve already noted that 17% of Americans think he is a Muslim and I have to guess that a lot of these people are conservative Christians.) I have had so many conservatives tell me that there is simply “no way that Barack Obama could be a real Christian.” I understand why these Christians say this but it reveals a lot more about their misunderstanding of following Christ, and believing the good news, than about Barack Obama’s faith and practice. Stories of Obama’s personal faith abound and significant numbers of evangelical pastors have spent private time with him and testify to his vibrant, deep faith. As for his social views they are shaped far more by the famous theologian Reinhold Niebuhr than by totally secular sources. But what is most intriguing to me, in the Maraniss account, is the role that Pastor Alvin Love had in his life when Obama was a single man in his mid-20s living […]

Barack Obama: The Story, Part 6

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:16:18-05:00July 31st, 2012|Categories: America and Americanism, Books, Politics|

In this review article of David Marniss’s account of the early life and formation of Barack Obama I will now attempt to tie various loose ends together and draw some conclusions based upon this lively and well-written social biography of the early life of our 44th president. My seventh review article, published tomorrow, will complete this series.

My personal conclusion, after reading this lengthy work based upon obviously careful research, is that Barack Obama is our first postmodern, globalist president. I also believe, based upon his own words and the witness of numerous friends of his that I know in public and (and in several instances) in private, that Barack Obama is a thoughtful and deeply engaged Christian. I will define these three terms at the conclusion of my seventh article tomorrow.

Barack Obama was deeply impacted, as a developing boy, by the absence of his father. This is true of so many children in our time. This is one reason that he seems to care so deeply about the breakdown of the family. I know critics will say that his policies are not helpful to families, and […]