The Children of God, Part 1
Listen Now
Our Guests
-
B.A. (Philosophy), Univ of MN
M.Div. Yale Divinity School
Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary
Senior Pastor - Woodland Hills Church (1992-present)
President/Founder - Reknew Ministries
Adjunct Professor - Northern Seminary (2017-present)
Professor of Theology - Bethel University (1987 - 2004)
Author/CoAuthor of 23 books
-
Until recently, Dr. Layton Friesen was the Conference Pastor of the Evangelical Mennonite Conference (EMC). He is now the Academic Dean at Steinbach Bible College and is the author of Secular Violence and the Theo-Drama of Peace.
-
Terry Hiebert is the Interim President at Steinbach Bible College.
Terry enjoys teaching theology, ethics, philosophy, and history. He believes that learning is more than just memorizing information or taking notes in class. Rather, the goal of teaching involves students actively engaging in loving God with their minds and hearts. He finds joy in mentoring students and young ministry leaders in pursuing God’s calling in life and ministry. In years as a ministry leader, he has desired a God’s presence for renewing persons and churches.
-
Carol Penner teaches and writes in the area of practical theology and after many years as a pastor in various Mennonite congregations, she joined the faculty at Grebel. Her research interests include feminist theology and Mennonite peace theology, and abuse issues. She has a popular blog of her worship resources at www.leadinginworship.com.
-
After studies at Fresno Pacific University, Mennonite Brethren Bible College, University of Manitoba (BA Hons), and Harvard University Divinity School (MDiv, ThD), Tom served as hospital and prison chaplain in Winnipeg, as well as pastor in Thompson, MB, and Boston, MA. He served on the MCCanada Christian Formation Council and is presently chair of the Faith and Life Commission of the Mennonite World Conference. His teaching and preaching have taken him beyond North America to Europe, Asia, and Africa. Tom is author numerous articles, both popular and scholarly, as well as books such as Guilt and Humanness: The Significance of Guilt for the Humanization of the Judicial-Correctional System, 1982; Put on the Armour of God! The Divine Warrior from Isaiah to Ephesian, 1997; Ephesians (Believers Church Bible Commentary), 2002); Christus ist unser Friede: Die Kirche und ihr Ruf zu Wehrlosigkeit und Widerstand, 2007; Recovering Jesus: the Witness of the New Testament, 2007; and Killing Enmity: Violence and the New Testament, 2011. Tom and his wife Rebecca are members of First Mennonite Church, Kitchener, ON.
Links and Resources
Books
The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, by Greg Boyd
Secular Nonviolence and the Theo-Drama of Peace, by Layton Friesen
Killing Enmity, by Dr. Thomas Yoder Neufeld
Organizations
Conrad Grebel University College
Music
First Communion, Dane Joneshill
(Spotify | YouTube Music)
Eye to Eye, Peters and Pilgrim
(Spotify | YouTube Music | Apple Music)
“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbour’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
Notable Quotes
Why does Jesus connect the idea of loving our enemies to what it means to be children of God?
“I think Jesus shared the Old Testament understanding of God as the creator, which is that God is the source of everything there is, nothing exists except what has been created by God and nothing continues to exist except as God gives it breath, as God wills it to exist, as God says, yes, it's good that you exist. But here's the thing - the further you go down the path, the more you realize that God must really love his enemies, even in the Old Testament, because God is - according to the Old Testament understanding of God the creator, God is actively, moment by moment, saying about his enemies, “It is good that you exist. Live on, for one more moment, live on. Here’s some sunshine to warm your body as you work against me. Here’s some rain to water your orchards as you hate me. Here let me lend you some logic, let me lend you the power of reason, let me lend you the structures of understanding and meaning that you can use to make your arguments against me.” ~Dr. Layton Friesen
“I think of my children. They are wonderful people, but if one of them had a lot of problems and ended up in jail, I would think they're not living into the identity of the child I would like them to be, but they're still my child, no matter how they act. I love them. For God to challenge us to be children of God, it's like ‘remember who you are.’” ~Dr. Carol Penner
“What the Pharisees said—holiness equals exclusion—for Jesus, holiness means compassion and mercy.” ~Dr. Terry Hiebert
“And I think if we realize that—if we meet the enemy and he, or she, or they are us—that they're human like we are—and we have also created a mess that others are cleaning up—and this compassion, this mercy—maybe it's a bit easier to remind ourselves that it's not just them that's the problem—that we all are part of it. So, Jesus diagnoses this vicious cycle of blaming and exclusion and shows that even evil people will love their friends and hate their enemies. So, a follower of Jesus is no better off if that's all we do, we've got to be better than that.” ~Dr. Terry Hiebert
“It's being godly, not in a fake kind of way, but in a genuine kind of way, saying, “How does God show compassion and mercy on these people, whom I call my enemies?” ~Dr. Terry Hiebert
“The reason for that I think is this: it's only when we love our enemies that we're really loving the way God loves and that's why Jesus says, “that you may be children of your Father in heaven because he causes the sun to shine on the righteous and the wicked and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” So, God loves indiscriminately, he doesn't pick and choose.” ~Dr. Greg Boyd
“Remember the image here in the passage you just read is of God who shines the sun and makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust. This is not a kind of image of well, the sun shines on everybody and the rain falls on everybody, sort of indiscriminately nice. It's rather a very directive action of love.” ~Dr. Thomas Yoder Neufeld
“This is not unique to Jesus in the New Testament. I spent a lot of time working on the letter to the Ephesians, and it's interesting that at the end of chapter four, we are to grace each other or forgive each other as God in Christ has forgiven you. And then a shocking phrase right in the very next verse in chapter five, verse one: “Be imitators of God and walk in love as Christ has loved and given himself for you.” So, this is a key connection. It's not a Mennonite theme to be harped on, this goes to the heart of what it means to call ourselves sons and daughters of God.” ~Dr. Thomas Yoder Neufeld
“I used to think that being a pacifist was about being a doormat, and I used to think that that classic kind of trope of pacifism is the same as passive-ism. But like you said, it's actually not about that, that there's something tremendously empowering about learning to get past our pride, about getting past our ego, and in fact, like you said earlier, about being able to see in the other, even though they're hurting us, even though they may be doing something that we disagree with, but about learning to see in them the image of God.” ~Kevin Wiebe
