@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'

The Wonder of The Cross

At the Cross Jesus has saved us from the total corruption of our being and its inevitable consequence of eternal separation from Him and from all that is good. Were it not for the Cross we would be lost and bound in sin forever. We might not like to think it, but everyone is rotten to the core, even the best of us. Yes, some are worse sinners than others, but all have sinned, and all are rotten, corrupted by sin. The truth, as it is plainly stated in the Bible, is not pretty by any stretch of the imagination. That is why we all need to be born again. When we are born again, our spirit is made new, and the process of renewing the mind can begin. But before then everything that we are is dark and corrupted. Prior to the regeneration of the new birth, the soul exists in a condition of depravity - our whole being is corrupted, black as sin, every one of us. When God opened my eyes to see the full horror of this reality, I was stunned, for I directly experienced the utter helplessness of our human condition without 