Discussion Questions 30 Sept 2023

in Discussion Questions  by Jinha Kim 0 comments

Discussion Questions 30 Sept 2023 : Deepening Intimacy with God: Sacrifice

These questions are here to stimulate dialogue about today’s topic – feel free to skip around or discuss items not listed here.

  1. How do you perceive your role as a participant in God’s plan of atonement and transformation?
  2. Share your thoughts and reflections on the idea that giving and sacrifice are essential parts of your relationship with God. Did today’s sermon shift any thinking for you in terms of your relationship with God? In what way?
  3. Christopher Hitchens criticized the idea of vicarious redemption, where one can claim salvation by merely believing in Jesus. What are your thoughts on this criticism?
    • “I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There’s no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man’s debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.”
  4. How does the concept of sacrifice connect with the idea of finding rest in God, as mentioned in Matthew 11:28-30? What do you think it means to find rest for your soul through sacrifice?
    • Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Thank you for coming today and contributing to our discussion.

by: Jinha Kim

"But those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:14