Thursday, January 05, 2006

Weekly Death

"Church shouldn't be a place where the old self is revived for another week, but where it is killed and buried and the new self is created in the likeness of Christ."
--Michael Horton, from the Nov/Dec issue of Modern Reformation

The above quote reminded me of what Kierkegaard saw as the goal of preaching. He wrote that the point of the sermon is to kill those listening...and then bring them back to life.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I know this is an old post and you're probably not expecting a response a year later - but this is a great post. Kierkegaard - and all good Lutherans are so great with this - A sermon that doesn't give both Law and Gospel - imperatives and Gospel indicatives - fails to "kill those listening and then bring them back to life." I've heard so many sermons in my lifetime that only give me my obligations as a Christian and fail to tell me what God has done to fix my inevitable failure.

Bil