J-Curve Session 4: (Pastor Matt Carter, Chapter 5)

Brick Lane Community Church
in

Class Description: Session 4, Chapter 5

Chapter 5: In Harvard, Union with Christ Comes Alive

What makes you a person with gravitas? Where do you find your identity when you feel it’s important that others know who you are? The kingdom of God is counter-intuitive. The way up is actually down. Identifying with Jesus in his sufferings offers us the opportunity to participate in an eternal kingdom that offers us more than we’ve yet dared imagine.

Class Notes:

1.    Pp. 51-52: read pink highlight: 

a.    Paul’s answer to the question about how we balance believing and becoming is not to turn to the law or to reach out for more grace, it is to focus on a relationship.  Why is this so counterintuitive for us?

2.    P. 53 top: Respond to the following statement: “The concept of being in Christ is mystical - that is, we can’t reduce it to categories we can see and touch.  But the same is true of beauty, love, and almost everything we value.”

3.    Pp. 54-55: 

a.    How does being in Harvard have the potential of placing a person on the failure-boasting chart?

b.    Is the analogy of being in Harvard helpful to you in terms of thinking what it means to be ‘in’ something?  How does it relate to our being in Christ?

4.    Pp. 56-57: Study the chart here:

a.    How is being in Christ so far superior to being in Harvard?

b.    Is it easy for you and I to identify the things we’re ‘in’ in order to create identity and worth?

c.     What are some of those?

d.    Do we teach ourselves through comparative analysis (like PM’s chart) how far superior Christ is. 

5.    P. 57: Read pink highlight: Focus on the final sentence.

a.    Can you envision how the constant reenactment of willingly participating in Christ’s sufferings and resurrection might move us to the place where we actually know Christ more deeply?

6.    P. 58: Respond to the following quote: “For most Christians, union with Christ is a vague, even sterile idea, but when you begin to experience in the J-Curve the doing part of the union, the being part of the union comes alive.”