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Questions Week 8 Day 5

by David Joynt on June 22, 2017


DAY 26  

HEBREWS 2:10; 5:7-9


The general who enters the battle and suffers its depredations and dangers is regarded differently by his soldiers. Advice given by someone who has suffered loss bears a mark of authenticity clearer than guidance from someone who has had no such personal experience. In Jesus, God enters the battle and acquires the experience. Christianity is distinctive in seeing divinity and weakness, majesty and humiliation, glory and suffering, as far more from opposites. Hebrews sees Jesus’ suffering as a path that increased his perfection, rather than diminishing his divinity. It makes a huge difference when we undergo pain or feel sorrow, to know Jesus personally experienced rejection, injustice, condemnation, torture, loss, physical and emotional pain, and death. The Christian God does not stand apart from life’s dark side.


What makes Jesus perfect?


FAMILY TIME— Think of a hard family job that you can do together. How does the experience change how you think about each other?

Tags: battle, suffering

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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