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All You Need is Love Daily Devotional -18

by David Joynt on April 28, 2021


1 CORINTHIANS13:3 | 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

 Tertullian: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” (Apologetics)

 The earliest Christian confession was “Jesus Kyrios,” meaning Jesus is Lord. Kyrios, translated King or Lord, was a title taken by the Roman Emperors. Oaths of allegiance were made to “Caesar Kyrios.” This brought Christians into a conflict of conscience and a clash of loyalties. Roman authorities saw a refusal to acknowledge Caesar as Kyrios as tantamount to disloyalty or treason. In addition, some emperors found it easy to blame Christians for accidents and disasters, like Nero, and others, like Diocletian, wanted to eradicate Christianity in favor of the traditional pantheon of paganism. Persecution meant moments when life was literally on the line. Miraculously, the persecuted church, driven underground, still flourished.

 What has been the hardest challenge to your convictions?

 

Tags: conviction, challenge

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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