How many of us find ourselves making resolutions for 2026 that we had already made in prior years? What happened with those? Thankfully, our biblical tradition brings with it some guidelines for orienting ourselves…

John the Baptist proclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) But many biblical scholars in the modern world agree that the very phrase “takes away the sin of the world” might have been added by evangelists later.

Why would God care about the quality of human lives so much? Could it be simply because God loves humans? Or is there a deeper mystery involved? According to Swedenborg, the answer to these questions is yes to all.

For what reason did God have to incarnate into the human world taking human form? According to the Gospel of John, it was love for humanity, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”(3:16)

What the first Christians chose to focus on was not figuring out the mysterious nature of Jesus, but learning and living the message of Jesus. For them, theological debate was less important than the experiential reality of love taught by Jesus.