Incarnational theology

Make a list of the people about whom you can say: He really lives like the Bible says a Christian should live.

I have a mental handicap: Preach me a hundred sermons on righteousness and it doesn't register unless I can mentally picture someone I know who lives that way.

That's the power of incarnational theology. Who would have thought it had noetic consequences?

I heard a sermon on the following text: "always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh" (2 Corinthians 4:10,11).

It was mere poetry.

Then I learned about a Christian inmate in Michigan who didn't push back when a younger inmate walking in his direction muscled him off the track during a pecking order yard confrontation. Instead, Troy stepped down himself and let the "fish" (new inmate) pass --- then took him by the elbow, looked him in the eye and said, "How's it goin'?" Troy "carries in the body the death of Jesus."

Many years ago my sister visited a friend and took her little Kate with her. During the visit, Kate was on the friend's lap, and said to my sister's friend: "You're the ugliest woman I've ever seen." The friend responded gently: "Yes, Kate, but isn't it nice that Jesus loves even ugly people?"

When sermons walk around like that, I get them.