The Suffering And Victorious Christ

American theologians tend to focus on the great hope Christians have through Christ's resurrection, emphasizing Christ's victory while minimizing or ignoring his suffering. Through their engagements with Japanese Christians and African American Christians on the topic of Christology, Richard Mouw and Douglas Sweeney have come to recognize and underscore that Christ offers hope not only through his resurrection but also through his incarnation. The authors articulate a more compassionate and orthodox Christology that answers the experience of the global church, offering a corrective to what passes for American Christology today. The book includes an afterword by Willie James Jennings of Duke Divinity School.

Victory through Suffering talks about the ups and downs that believers face while traveling and navigating their daily lives, as well as teaching and leading others to Christ. During difficult times, one learns to reflect on oneself very deeply as well as how to go through rough times. Difficult times enable us to do God's will to love ourselves and others as well as to lean on his word to become stronger. When we are victorious, we can overcome any circumstances, as the Bible tells us that we are overcomers (1 John 5:4-5). We suffer when we resist the will of God, and we prevail when we obey his will.

What are believers to do when belief and lived experience collide? Must the experience of suffering be hidden or pushed aside in favor of only “positive” expressions of praise during corporate worship? Focusing on the premise that “worship is not pain denial,” this book seeks to reveal the dearth of soul care within modern corporate worship, and the multidisciplinary approach needed to build and implement a more thorough approach that calls and enables believers to weep with those who weep, to bear one another’s burdens, and continue Christ’s ministry of reconciliation.

Divine Suffering is an inter-disciplinary study that draws from systematics, philosophy, biblical theology, and pastoral experience. In addition to covering topics like the suffering of the Father in the Son and God’s cruciform vulnerability, this book also explores how divine suffering animates the Christian gospel and resonates in the ongoing persecution of believers. The study of the suffering God has everything to do with Theology, History, and Church Mission. Like exploring a cathedral from all its entrances, both scholars and seekers will find ample opportunity for theological challenge, biblical insight, and missional hope. To accomplish this, both Scripture and doctrine are closely investigated. Today, divine suffering must face the contemporary realities of protest atheism, escalating wars, new studies in relational theology, and dialogical personhood that presses the need to explain a Christian message about the kind of God who is not only transcendent but also personal. Divine Suffering introduces us to the history of God, not just the God of history. In this study, we meet a God available to our pain though not diminished by it. Mounting forms of grief need to be met with an equally pastoral understanding that validates suffering without valorizing it.

In the last few years, 9/11, a tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and many other tragedies have shown us that the vision of God in today's churches in relation to evil and suffering is often frivolous. Against the overwhelming weight and seriousness of the Bible, many Christians are choosing to become more shallow, more entertainment-oriented, and therefore irrelevant in the face of massive suffering. In Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, contributors John Piper, Joni Eareckson Tada, Steve Saint, Carl Ellis, David Powlison, Dustin Shramek, and Mark Talbot explore the many categories of God's sovereignty as evidenced in his Word. They urge readers to look to Christ, even in suffering, to find the greatest confidence, deepest comfort, and sweetest fellowship they have ever known.

Gustaf Aulen's classic work, 'Christus Victor', has long been a standard text on the atonement. Aulen applies history of ideas' methodology to historical theology in tracing the development of three views of the atonement. Aulen asserts that in traditional histories of the doctrine of the atonement only two views have usually been presented, the objective/Anselmian and the subjective/Aberlardian views. According to Aulen, however, there is another type of atonement doctrine in which Christ overcomes the hostile powers that hold humanity in subjection, at the same time that God in Christ reconciles the world to Himself. This view he calls the "classic" idea of the atonement. Because of its predominance in the New Testament, in patristic writings, and in the theology of Luther, Aulen holds that the classic type may be called the distinctively Christian idea of the atonement.

- The story of Job told for the first time with clarity, non-contradiction, understanding and coherence. - The true Christian Suffering: What is it, how and why it must be entered and what is its purpose - all great surprises for every saint of God, small or great. - The prevailing "gospel or suffering" is debunked, freeing the Christian truly to STAND confidently, without fear, in Christ for victory after victory and for his/her crown of life. This read will quicken the steps in the way of the Lord, lift the head in expectation, assurance and hope, and cause the heart to rejoice (Paulinian Boast) in the merciful, gracious and unchanging (predictable and reliable) GOOD ALMIGHTY. This work tackles some traditional and absurd teachings on the Book of Job along with that accompanying "Gospel of Suffering," which some have built to support these teachings. It removes the darkness from God's character and sets the disciple of Christ free to stand in the light of a good God who does not tempt (test or try) his saints. It shows that the statement by the young Elihu, that God will not afflict, is not only true in itself, but is the unfailing word of God. All readers, from the young Christian to the elder, will come away with a joyful freshness in the knowledge of the true Sovereignty of God. And burdens carried long now, and unnecessarily, will fall from many. Robert Sydney Reyes was added by the Lord to the Church several decades ago. He is not a scholar nor an expert, nor is he degreed in Theology. He owes no allegiance to any religious organization but accepts, as he should and must, all true children of God as his brethren, as he with them in the divine purpose mature into the stature of the fullness of Christ and await the certain return of our Lord Jesus Christ for all the saints. "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."