King James Version Bible (KJV) With Apocrypha PDF

This poem addresses the burial and rejection of Christ’s body, using images of coldness, hardness, and stone to explore themes of human indifference, sin, and divine love. The poet begins by questioning where Christ’s body is placed, lamenting that it finds rest on ‘a cold hard stone’. Despite the existence of ‘so many hearts on earth’, none is receptive enough to ‘receive thee’, symbolizing the rejection and abandonment Christ endures even in death. The stone, a literal image of Christ’s tomb, also symbolizes the hardened state of human hearts unwilling to accept or contain him [ … ]

Saint Maximus the Confessor interprets Christ’s saying about the lamp set upon a lamp stand (Matthew 5:15; Luke 8:16) as a theological statement about the Incarnation and the Church. The ‘lamp’ is Christ himself — the eternal Word of the Father, who has taken human nature and become visible within creation. The imagery unites revelation and embodiment: divine wisdom, formerly hidden, is now manifest through the humanity of Jesus [ … ]

The opening passages of John’s Gospel affirm key, central truths concerning the nature of Christ. He is the Word, the perfect, ideal and original Word giving meaning and life to all utterance. We sense here the influence of classical Hellenic philosophy on the developing understanding of Christ through the first century. And, from the very first verses of his Gospel, John affirms the divinity of Christ. Christ is with God, the Father, and he is God. God the Father and God the Son are distinct and too of one being; they are consubstantial [ … ]