Tim Jr. Krohn

Following Jesus. Trusting God as God. Learning to hear Him through Scripture, His people, and life together.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

I am learning to love as I learn that I am loved.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

3/3

So my prayer tonight is simply that the Spirit of God would comfort Spokane.

That Christ would be near to the people who are grieving and exhausted. That those who lost homes would know they have not been abandoned.

We can mourn what has been lost and still know that our life is in Christ.

A life that fire cannot burn away.

Lord Jesus, comfort my friends, my church family, and my neighbors.

And where we don’t have words, may your presence be enough.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

1/3

I’ve lived in Spokane most of my life and I’ve seen some terrible fire seasons. But this one feels different.

People I know have lost their homes. People I’ve been in community with for years. People I see every week. Friends who really aren’t just friends anymore. They’re family.

And I honestly haven’t known what to say.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

2/3

I keep thinking about Job’s friends.

Before they started trying to explain what happened to him, they just sat with him in silence.

And I wonder if sometimes silence is actually the more loving response.

I don’t know how to make someone’s loss smaller. I don’t know how to replace a home or years of memories. And I don’t want to pretend I can comfort somebody in a way that only God can.

But I know the Comforter.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

I have been given Christ and joined to his people; therefore, their life, worship, burdens, growth, and mission are now matters in which I willingly participate.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

Jesus Christ was sent by the Father. He is the eternal Son of God, God revealed in human flesh to the world. He taught the truth, died for humanity, rose from the dead, established the Church, entrusted his message and authority to his apostles, and continues his work through his people.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

The people of God are not like an ant colony, a group of spiritual officers, or a collection of isolated individuals. Instead, we are a living city and one body in Christ, growing together like a vine. In this community, freedom, love, creativity, and our unique differences come together as one.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

Mr. Crowder, I find an interesting tension in this message. There appears to be a proclamation of salvation wide enough to include all humanity and ultimately restore creation, yet alongside it, a remarkably narrow and critical view of Christians whose understanding differs from the language of union with God.

Everyone is said to have always been loved and included in Christ. Yet when Christians testify that they encountered Christ through guilt, forgiveness, justification, debt, judgment, or acquittal, those testimonies can quickly be dismissed as Western delusion, transactional religion, or the product of a defective framework.

Why should universal inclusion in Christ produce such limited theological charity?

I agree that salvation cannot be reduced to a legal transaction. Christ is greater than every theory used to explain him. But that also means Christ is greater than the currently preferred language of participation, contemplation, and union.

Perhaps the person who speaks of being acquitted, the person who speaks of being healed, the person who speaks of being rescued, and the person who speaks of awakening to union are all seeing the same light from different angles. We all still see dimly. Partial vision is not necessarily false vision.

It seems strange to proclaim that Christ has included everyone while speaking as though only those who describe that inclusion through a particular theological vocabulary have truly understood the gospel.

A universal Christ should produce humility about the limits of human explanations. Otherwise, universal salvation can become another narrow religious system—one that includes everyone in theory while dismissing their testimonies in practice.

I would rather listen for the testimony of Jesus Christ wherever it appears among humanity.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

@douglaswils Interesting that Daniel’s lions’ den appears here. Daniel didn’t choose the den; he chose faithfulness in worship. Paul’s return to Jerusalem seems a clearer example of courage. Still, discernment matters: not every avoided risk is cowardice, and not every risk taken is faith.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

I’m genuinely curious why you describe the gospel as simple but not simplistic. Would it be more or less accurate to say that it is complex but not convoluted?

Could I hear how you would state the gospel so I can evaluate what you mean? Mine is simply this: Jesus Christ is God, he is alive, and I know him personally. That can be stated simply, but there is nothing simple about the reality of it.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

I have one simple question for Doug Wilson: How does taking away an individual’s ability to vote constitute progress?

It seems to me that America—and especially the church—should concentrate on teaching people to obey everything Christ commanded, above all: “Love one another as I have loved you.” The goal is not merely a nation of isolated American individuals, but a priestly people joined to Christ, living as members of God’s household, with Christ himself as the head.

The kingdom of God does not advance by reversing any person’s civil rights or subordinating one person’s political judgment to the will of another. It advances as women and men discover their true identity in Christ and willingly submit together to him as their head. Why take anyone’s vote away when we could instead disciple them to use their voices faithfully under the lordship of Christ?

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

@TheNewMystics Yes and amen. The Joker says something strikingly similar. In Batman: The Killing Joke, he asks Batman:
“So why can’t you see the funny side? Why aren’t you laughing?”

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

@douglaswils What’s Wilsonian Calvinism?

A party with a predetermined guest list, stocked with whiskey and cigars, while Doug pokes fun at everyone else for not showing up.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

@Rainmaker1973 who stole the money, assuming any “money” was stolen at all?

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

I’m not pretending I knew how to spell apokatastasis before this thread. I saw that word and thought "what does Phantastes have to do with this."

But since we’re playing “my doctrine is older than your doctrine,” I’ll play.

My salvation is, at the least on a time scale, 13.8 billion years old. That's before stars, planets, councils, atonement theories, and Greek words being used as theological nunchucks, God had already decided in Christ to save his creation which includes me.

So yes, apokatastasis is old.

But “chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world” is older.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

Big surprise: A media company that may have censored the image on a guest’s T-shirt.

The irony is pretty good. A company representing the kingdom of God using the same normal media tactics as everyone else: remove the image, protect the brand, and make sure nobody sees anything they didn’t pay to license.

FIFA would be proud.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

“I once was conversing with a Christian who also loved to go to a shaman and take ayahuasca in a tent…”

—Jordan Southerland, Why I Love Non-Denominational Christianity

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

Wow, I don’t think I have seen this kind of rhetoric from you before. I’m not bothered by the word “shit.” I’m more concerned that you seem to be straw-manning many Christians by suggesting they believe in a fake righteousness, as though Jesus Christ, the God you preach, is not also the God they preach.

Union with Christ is not the end of the story, Mr. Crowder. Union with Christ is the life by which God builds his covenant people into his dwelling place for the life of the world.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

I think I understand the point that government must not become the final court of appeal. Christ alone is Lord.

My question is about enforcement.

In your vision of Christendom, who enforces the law of Christ’s kingdom on earth? Christian magistrates through human power, or God himself?

Acts 5 is the passage I keep returning to. Peter names the lie of Ananias and Sapphira, but he does not seem to act as executioner. He bears witness to the truth before God.

Is Christian authority, in your view, primarily witness under God’s judgment, or force carried out by men in God’s name?

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

Brother, I’m not sure I can even convey the joy I felt reading this.

I’m a fan of Maximus the Confessor. The whole story of his tongue being cut out and his thumb being chopped off to keep him from bearing witness to the reality of who God is—and the fact that it didn’t stop him in the slightest—is so heroic to me.

And the way he connects the Kingdom to the Holy Spirit in the Lord’s Prayer has spoken deeply to me for so much of my life. So to hear you speak about it now feels like such a confirmation of something the Lord has been speaking to me about for years.

Thank you for being brave in your testimony.

[Tim Jr. Krohn @KrohnJr]

Yes and amen to what you said. Yet brother, you have to pick one cliché and commit to it.

Either sit in the library chair with a smoking jacket and a pipe while offering thoughtful reflections, or wear the beach shirt on an actual beach, under an umbrella, with a margarita in hand, speaking wisdom into the ocean breeze.

The “retired professor on vacation inside a seminary library” look was a lot for my soul to process.