AT THE TABLE OF THE NEW CREATION IN CHRISTA Socratic Dialogue on Conformity to the Image of ChristYou are a New Creation. The old is gone. The new has come. But you still lose rounds. You still go back to the same door through the same weakness on the same Tuesday morning. And you are not entirely sure whether the problem is your theology, your effort, your surrender, or something deeper than any of those.
So is everyone else at this table. Five people. Four theological traditions. Nine conversations about the most personal question the Christian life produces: what is actually happening in me - and what is my genuine part in it?Socrates guides. He holds no position. He presses every argument to its logical destination and refuses to let anyone escape with a comfortable abstraction. Nathaniel is Reformed and Puritan - precise, rigorous, carrying the full weight of Owen's mortification tradition.
Eleanor is Wesleyan and Holiness - pressing toward the deeper work the blood has purchased, convinced the carnal nature can be addressed at the root. James is Keswick and contemplative - the branch that bears fruit not by effort but by staying connected to the Vine. Christian - sealed, held, working out what God has placed within from the ground of safety and hope rather than fear. And Marcus and Rachel and Thomas and Lydia are in the pews of every church in every tradition - genuinely saved, genuinely struggling, genuinely asking what to do next.
The roads are not the same. They do not all lead to the same place. Were saved. Being saved. Will be saved. The Author and Finisher is on both ends of the race. He started it. He will finish it. Now - run.
AT THE TABLE OF THE NEW CREATION IN CHRISTA Socratic Dialogue on Conformity to the Image of ChristYou are a New Creation. The old is gone. The new has come. But you still lose rounds. You still go back to the same door through the same weakness on the same Tuesday morning. And you are not entirely sure whether the problem is your theology, your effort, your surrender, or something deeper than any of those.
So is everyone else at this table. Five people. Four theological traditions. Nine conversations about the most personal question the Christian life produces: what is actually happening in me - and what is my genuine part in it?Socrates guides. He holds no position. He presses every argument to its logical destination and refuses to let anyone escape with a comfortable abstraction. Nathaniel is Reformed and Puritan - precise, rigorous, carrying the full weight of Owen's mortification tradition.
Eleanor is Wesleyan and Holiness - pressing toward the deeper work the blood has purchased, convinced the carnal nature can be addressed at the root. James is Keswick and contemplative - the branch that bears fruit not by effort but by staying connected to the Vine. Christian - sealed, held, working out what God has placed within from the ground of safety and hope rather than fear. And Marcus and Rachel and Thomas and Lydia are in the pews of every church in every tradition - genuinely saved, genuinely struggling, genuinely asking what to do next.
The roads are not the same. They do not all lead to the same place. Were saved. Being saved. Will be saved. The Author and Finisher is on both ends of the race. He started it. He will finish it. Now - run.