The Crossings Community is an open worldwide network of Christians dedicated to connecting the Word of God and daily life under the motto, “Crossing Life with the Promise of Christ.” What makes our approach distinctive is our commitment to a theological outlook called the proper distinction of law and gospel.
We regard the Gospel as a problem-solving message — genuine good news for sinners — and the Holy Scriptures as problem-solving literature. In a nutshell, we believe that the Gospel and the Scriptures address a festering God-problem that is in, with and under all our other problems, and for which only the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the corresponding God-solution.
Welcome to the first in a series of videos from the Crossings community called Faith Seeking Understanding. In this series, we will seek to answer a variety of ordinary questions raised by ordinary Christian people as they seek to understand their faith and how it connects to a world around them that is often confusing, dangerous, and even threatening from the perspective of the Christian faith in community, what is the Crossings community? Well, let me begin by saying what crossings is not. It is not a church. It is not a denomination. It is not a religious club. I hope it is not a religious sect. Rather, it is a network of Christians from around the world committed to connecting, crossing, if you will, the word of God with daily life. And how do we do that? We always do that. That one thing happens, the most important thing, that the good news of Jesus Christ gets proclaimed so that people will hear it and trust it and then be freed to serve God’s world around them. Essential and fundamental to that task within the crossings community is what we call the proper distinction between law and gospel. Now, I hope this doesn’t sound too highfalutin or too technical or theological. Actually, it has had a long tradition within the Lutheran community as being an essential tool to being a Christian theologian in the world.
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The distinction between law and gospel, we first of all use to read scripture. We read scripture so that always again, number one, that the good news of Jesus Christ gets magnified. And secondly, so that people receive the comfort, the peace, the consolation, the assurance that only God in Christ can give. The proper distinction between law and gospel is not only the essential way to read scripture, it is also an essential way for the crossings community to read the world and how God is constantly interacting with the world,
The Law.
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God’s action through the law not only governs and protects the world around us in good ways, positive ways, but also is ultimately a diagnosis, exposing the depths of the world’s brokenness and what we call sin the gospel. On the other hand, we’re going to talk a little bit later in another video about the distinction between law and gospel, but the gospel operates in a fundamentally different way. There God is giving there, God is promising. There God in Jesus Christ offers new life to the promise of the gospel so that faith is created so that faith receives this promise of God, and life is transformed and one can live the Christian life with a sense of freedom and service. This will be the point of view of this series, this Crossings community series, faith seeking understanding by crossing the gospel of life with a world that is often confusing and frightening and even dangerous. Ultimately, because of Christ, it is inviting. It is the place where we get to live out our faith, seeking understanding, always trusting and following Jesus.
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