The Joshua Victor Theory

Some musings on Law and Gospel: The Law, when it is preached or taught to us full-strength, convicts us and makes us squirm because it forces us to face the person within us--the person we ourselves hide from and that we hide from others. The Law unveils our deepest and most wicked impulses, impure motives, and base desires. It shows us that at our core we are not what we want to be nor what want others to see and know. God's Law cracks the facade, exposes our weaknesses (if at first only to us) and leaves us burdened with the guilt of this dark self-realization and exposure. So what are we left with? We are left perfectly helpless, ripe for the Holy Spirit to send us His comforting Word of Gospel, that our sins have been forgiven by Christ Jesus' death on the cross. For He has truly seen the depths of our hearts, of the wickedness, malice, the sugar-coated deceit, and the white lies that we use to protect our flimsy facade. But with the sharp two-edged sword of His Word He exp...

A few weeks back, I was stuck in a hotel watching movies, and happened to see part of the Jim Carrey flick "Bruce Almighty." One of the things that stuck out to me was that when Morgan Freeman, who plays God in the film, gives Bruce (Carrey) his powers, one of the conditions he gives for using them is that 'you can't violate anyone's free will.' I didn't get to see the rest of the movie to see how that theme plays out, but I think its a humorous and somewhat accurate caricature of how most Americans see God. God is a benevolent old man, with great powers, but He doesn't dare transgress our free will. So apparently 'free will' is greater than God. I thank God that He is not bound or limited by our 'will', nor does He wait for us to take the initiative before He acts. Thank God that He did not consult us first before decided upon His course of salvation for us in sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross. And I thank God that He did not le...

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The sermon text is the Gospel reading. From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!" Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he ...

Well, after completing my vicarage, I had one exciting trip home. What should have been a two day trip turned into a four day affair. I left Sunday after church and then decided to stay one extra day in St. Louis at my friends' place. Then I left early Tuesday morning to drive the last leg home, and was making really good time when my engine died just before the I-55/ I-80 interchange, which was about 6 hours from Detroit. All of a sudden the engine just stalled and I coasted to a stop, fortunately I still had a shoulder because I was about 50-100 feet from a construction zone w/ no shoulders (thank God!). So after examining the oil, antifreeze, etc, and determining that the engine hadn't overheated and the fluids were fine, I tried to restart it---which it did, and I was preparing to merge back into traffic when it stalled again, and this time I couldn't restart it. I ended up walking about a mile to a factory and they let me use their phone to call AAA. They came to tow ...

Vicarage is nearly over! Tomorrow after church I'm heading home! Since my computer will be disconnected and I'll be traveling, I probably won't post in the next ~2 weeks...but I'll be back. I feel like this is a significant milestone in my education, and only one year left!

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The sermon text is Isaiah 55:1-3a, Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live. I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t go shopping for groceries when you are hungry. According to some people, if you shop while you’re hungry, you are much more likely to buy more junk food or unhealthy food choices. Or you end up buying more than you need. I don’t really know if this advice is generally true, but I know that when I shop hungry I do tend to buy more snack food. Regardless of how true this advice is, here in today’s Word to us from Isaiah and also in the Go...

Since the discussion I posted awhile back on "Submission to government or Independence" is still ongoing somewhat here , I decided to start a new thread. Rick Ritchie posted this comment: Do you have a definition of revolution? Do we just go by the historical label? The Continental Congress was called in part to respond to the king's actions, one of which was to restrict the activities of the Massachusetts legislature. So you have a legal question as to whether or not the king had the right to restrict such activities. The term 'insurgent' itself begs the question. While I would likely side with Bonhoeffer against Sasse, I don't see even Bonhoeffer's action in the same light as the American Revolution. You would have a better parallel if when Hitler dissolved the German parliament, it had continued to meet and it called for armed resistance. So to offer some balance, perhaps, I offer a quote from Gene Veith's book that I just read, "God at Work: Y...