Douglas Moo Quotes

James condemns any form of Christianity that drifts into a sterile, actionless "orthodoxy." Faith, not what we do, is fundamental in establishing a relationship with God. But faith, James insists, must be given content. Genuine faith, he insists, always and inevitably produces evidence of its existence in a life of righteous living.

But naturally my shoulder, sir,’ mooed the animal contentedly, ‘nobody else’s is mine to offer.

Christ who is your life,' (Col 3:4): This identification reflects the relentless Christological focus of Colossians.

As Douglas Moo notes, “God’s ‘giving’ to us is not simply a past basis for Christian obedience; it is its continuous source.”5

In obedience to their king, Jesus, Christian are to build among themselves a genuine counterculture, in which the values of the kingdom of God rather than the values of this world are lived out.

Douglas Moo notes that therefore, while not denying that some in the church may have the gift of healing, James encourages all Christians, and especially those charged with pastoral oversight, to be active in prayer for healing. . . . Similarly, James’ promise that the Lord will raise up (egeiro) the sick person reflects the language of NT healing stories (Matt 9:6; Mark 1:31; Acts 3:7).

Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body? It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them. Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox. "Something off the shoulder perhaps?" suggested the animal. "Braised in a white wine sauce?" "Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper. "But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the animal contentedly, "nobody else's is mine to offer." Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling the animal's shoulder appreciatively. "Or the rump is very good," murmured the animal. "I've been exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there." It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again. "Or a casserole of me perhaps?" it added. "You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?" whispered Trillian to Ford. "Me?" said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes. "I don't mean anything." "That's absolutely horrible," exclaimed Arthur, "the most revolting thing I've ever heard." "What's the problem, Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal's enormous rump. "I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing there inviting me to," said Arthur. "It's heartless." "Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod. "That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. "All right," he said, "maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er ..." The Universe raged about him in its death throes. "I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered. "May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months." "A green salad," said Arthur emphatically. "A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur. "Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have green salad?" "Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am." It managed a very slight bow. "Glass of water please," said Arthur. "Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hurry. We haven't eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years." The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle. "A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good," it said. "I'll just nip off and shoot myself." He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur. "Don't worry, sir," he said, "I'll be very humane." It waddled unhurriedly off to the kitchen. A matter of minutes later the waiter arrived with four huge steaming steaks.

Our God is not a God who discards what he has made, who is defeated by sin and evil. Our God is a redeeming God, a God who is determined to reclaim his fallen world, setting it free from its enslavement to corruption and bringing it to a final state of glory.

Our human vocation is to work and take care of the place where God has planted us, to serve him in our rule in creation as priests in his temple. Caring for the earth is not, in this light, a peripheral biblical theme; it is central to our identity as God’s image bearers.

Paul’s evangelism, his letters suggest, has two great motivations: a sense of obligation derived from what God has done for him and commissioned him to do for others, and a desire that God will be glorified by as great a number of people as possible. We are to imitate Paul by extending God’s grace in the gospel just as he did.

was in Jerusalem again for a conference with the apostles; but far from their teaching me the gospel, they agreed with me about the basic elements of the gospel (2:1–10). D. True, as you may have heard, at Antioch Peter took a different view of the matter, but I did not concede his point; instead I opposed him to his face (2:11–14).

baptism puts us in contact with the death of Christ (vv. 3–4); (2) because we share in Christ’s death, we also will share in his resurrection (vv. 5, 8–10); (3) sharing in Christ’s death means freedom from sin (vv. 6–7).

At first sight, Paul’s command that slaves obey their masters seems simply to endorse the status quo. But we need to see that what he writes here also subtly undermines it. First, it is significant that Paul chooses to address slaves at all, implying not only that they are assembled with the other Christians of the Colossian church to hear the letter being read but that they are responsible people who need to choose a certain kind of behavior. Second, Paul clearly relativizes the status of the slave’s master by repeatedly reminding both slave (vv. 22, 23, 24) and master (4:1) of the ultimate “master” to whom both are responsible: the Lord Jesus Christ. Third, Paul never hints that he endorses the institution of slavery. He tells slaves and masters how they are to conduct themselves within the institution, but it is a bad misreading of Paul to read into his teaching approval of the institution itself. (For

But we should not view the public nature of the letter as simply a lawyer ’s tactic to win his case; it rather reflects the corporate nature of early Christianity, in which no matter was “private” but inevitably affected, and was affected by, one’s brothers and sisters in the new family of God.1163

Paul’s point, as v. 23 will make rather more clearly, is that the false teachers have been making far too big a deal of matters that do not get to the essence of true Christian spirituality: the change of heart and mind that leads to true holiness. Jesus made a very similar point in his rebuke of the Pharisees for their preoccupation with their own rules of ritual uncleanness: “Nothing outside you can defile you by going into you. Rather, it is what comes out of you that defiles you” (Mark 7:15).

The seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher Spinoza observed: "I have often wondered that persons who make boast of professing the Christian religion - namely love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men - should quarrel with such rancorous animosity and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues which they profess, is the readiest criteria of their faith.

Any teaching that in any way detracts from Christ’s exclusive role is by definition both wrong and ineffective. The teachers themselves are probably not denying that Christ was central to God’s saving purposes. They seem rather to be arguing that certain practices must be added on in order to achieve true spiritual fulfillment. But, for Paul, in this case, addition means subtraction: one cannot “add” to Christ without, in effect, subtracting from his exclusive place in creation and in salvation history.

And, at the risk of generalizing unduly, we might suggest that here as well is the point of contact for the application of the message of Colossians to a wide variety of historical and contemporary teachings. Any teaching that questions the sufficiency of Christ — not only for “initial” salvation but also for spiritual growth and ultimate salvation from judgment — falls under the massive christological critique of Colossians.

Yet it does suggest that our notion of Philemon as a “private individual” or of his handling of the Onesimus situation as a “private matter” needs rethinking. We may be injecting into the first-century Christian community a contrast of “private” versus “public” that was simply not present there. Indeed, we will suggest that one of the enduring and extremely relevant teachings of Philemon is the degree to which Christians are bound to one another in all their activities through their common faith. Paul

When people believe in Christ, they become identified with one another in an intimate association and incur both the benefits and responsibilities of that communion. Philemon is fundamentally all about those responsibilities, as Paul, Onesimus, and Philemon, bound together in faith, are forced by circumstances to think through the radical implications of their koinnia.

But more important here is the rhetorical point that they make: Philemon is to respond to Paul because he, Paul, and Onesimus are all “in the Lord/Christ.”1365 The fellowship that is created among those who have faith in Christ (v. 6) brings with it obligations to one another.

However, as Gordon Fee has argued, it is doubtful whether Paul ever uses the language of “spirit” without some reference to the Holy Spirit. Here, then, while the immediate reference may be, indeed, to Paul’s own “spirit,” it is his spirit as taken up into the Holy Spirit. His “presence” with the Colossians, then, is not a simple “you will be in my thoughts and prayers,” but involves a profound corporate sense of identity, based on and mediated by the Spirit of God.

Justificación por la fe y santificación por medio de la lucha

La teología, el «estudio de Dios», no es un mero pasatiempo intelectual. Tampoco

The work of preserving life that Noah undertakes is done under the direction of God; it requires planning and preparation; and it involves skillful labor, the use of human ingenuity and technology. The construction of the ark is perhaps the preeminent biblical symbol of conservation efforts and the preservation of biodiversity (“the animals going in were male and female of every living thing” [Gen. 7:16]). The ark, then, reminds us that our role of working and taking care of the earth includes the good use and application of technology. A biblical approach to creation care may well necessitate, as we have begun to see, a re-envisioning of what it means to be limited human creatures, and it may require of us a willingness to let go of our endless pursuit of “progress” (at least as our societies have defined it) in order that we might embrace richer and simpler ways of life that give space for and promote the flourishing of all of life. But, however reconfigured it all may need to be, such an approach will not involve a retreat from technology, science, art, innovation, and exploration. We need instead to reconsider the purpose of all these human endeavors, to redefine what progress would look like, and to clarify what constitutes good work.

La meta final de la teología es la gloria de Dios, y cualquier verdadera expresión teológica llevará siempre a este propósito.

If our belief in the authority of the Bible means anything, it means that we must submit to what the Bible teaches and bring our own perceptions and ideas into line with Scripture.

We today lack a theology of growth. And so we need to learn how we “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). In particular, we need to learn to cooperate with “the means of grace” that God has ordained for the transformation of the human personality. Our participation in these God-ordained “means” will enable us increasingly to take into ourselves Christ’s character and manner of life.