I now read Christ's being "lifted up" as image language echoing a passage in the letter to the Ephesians that speaks of God putting all things "under his feet" (Ephesians 1:22). As a beautiful paraphrase puts it: God has put everything without exception into Christ's...
The people of Christ, the last Adam, is the people of the End and the New Age, the people of the future as well as the seed of Abraham. It is also the people of the Spirit, who is a sign of the End. Indeed Paul calls the Spirit an arrabon (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; cf. Eph....
Modern-day individualism has diminished and diluted the communal emphasis in Scripture. Piety has become compartmentalized, relegated to a private personal pocket of life. The result is a religious consumerism which describes worship as “attending the church of your...