@FirstChurchofJerusalem
Today's Early Church Wisdom
“I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people, I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
~ Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD) From the Preface to his lost ‘Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord’
This week's Psalm is Psalm 31 'My Rock, My Shield, My Song'

Escape From Sin

Sickness and suffering take many different forms, but why do they exist and where do they come from? Do they have a root cause, and if so, what is it? Christianity has an answer to these questions, an answer that is unpacked in the Bible, and which can be summed up in one small word of three letters: sin. We see in our world today a widespread flight from moral reality. There are many today who do not like to talk about sin. As a psychologist I have observed that when people do not want to talk about something it is often because they feel threatened by that thing in some way. Not talking about it becomes a defensive manoeuvre by which they may avoid facing it. This widespread aversion to the use of the word ‘sin’ reflects a deep underlying flight from the world of moral reality, an escape into the fantasy that there is no such thing. Whether we like it or not, sin is real, and because sin is real, we have a problem. Everything bad, everything wrong, everything evil, comes from sin. We have a problem, and it’s called ‘sin’. Sin is real: we ourselves sin, and we are surrounded by sin and suffering on every side. Sin is an unmitigated evil. In its every aspect and in its every manifestation sin is directed against God. There is only one way to escape the power and penalty of sin and that is through the Cross of Christ.