Cornerstone Curriculum, Official Certification Edition - Mentor's Guide

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adopted children do. Imagination becomes a curse only if it becomes an exercise in vanity. ~ C. Seerveld. “Imagination.” The New Dictionary of Theology. S. B. Ferguson, ed. (electronic ed.). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000. p. 331. Indeed, the only way to get at the stuff of mission is through the motifs: God is the bridegroom who is wooing to himself a people which will be his bride and co-regent throughout the endless ages, and God is a warrior who will once and for all defeat the devil, death, and the effects of the curse to usher in a new reign of righteousness and peace. The motif of the bride and bridegroom is prominent in both the Old and New Testaments. In Scripture, the marriage relation is used often to make sense of God’s relationship to his people. Israel is pictured as the unfaithful wife of Yahweh God in Hosea, the wife he is determined to restore to full love and faithfulness in the future Kingdom. This same vision is used to lay out the deep intimacy and affection between Christ and the Church in the New Testament, with the exception that the Lord himself through direct influence and the apostolic ministry is preparing the Church as a virgin bride waiting the coming of her heavenly bridegroom (2 Cor. 11.2). John the Baptist is the Lord’s “friend of the bridegroom,” analogous to our “best man” today, who prepared the way of the Lord (cf. John 3.29). Jesus made mention of this bridal imagery in his kingdom teaching (cf. Matt. 22.1-14; 25.1-13), and it was used throughout the apostolic instruction and prophetic vision (2 Cor. 11.2; Eph. 5.22-24; Rev. 21.2, 9; 22.17). Likewise, the Lord as divine warrior is the one who comes to crush the head of the serpent, as mentioned in the protoevangelium of Genesis 3.15. Every dimension of the life and ministry of Christ can be understood in the framework of him acting as the divine Son of Man charged with the task to defeat the enemies of God and usher in the reign of God with joy and power. For instance, Leland Ryken summarizes Paul’s Christology in these terms, using the divine warrior motif as the organizing principle to comprehend it: Thus Paul could later look back on the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ in the light of divine warrior imagery. For

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