Chris Bobblett Ministries

08/31/2026

I’ve always thought Paul’s sermon in Athens is fascinating. Standing among people who do not yet understand the gospel, Paul does not begin by saying: “God is far away, but I can tell you how to get Him to come near. He says almost the opposite. “He is not far from each one of us.” Then: “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” - Acts 17:27–28

Paul announces divine proximity before his audience even understands its meaning. They are already living in God while ignorant of the God in whom they live. Their ignorance is real. Their idolatry is real. Repentance is necessary, but repentance isn’t convincing a distant God to approach them.

Paul calls them to change their minds because the God they have been searching for has never actually been far away. That completely changes evangelism. The gospel isn’t: “God is over here with us Christians. Come join our group and maybe He’ll accept you.” The gospel announces: The God you do not yet recognize has come near in Jesus Christ.

Repent. Wake up. Turn from the illusions that have kept you from recognizing Him. Discover the One in whom your very existence has always been held.

Union does not eliminate repentance.
Union gives repentance somewhere beautiful to turn.

We aren’t merely turning away from something. We are awakening to Someone. And perhaps that is why the gospel is actually good news.

08/29/2026

What if we have been reading Revelation through the wrong lens?

For many Christians, Revelation has become a book of fear—charts, timelines, Antichrists, beasts, blood, destruction, and predictions about the end of the world.

But Revelation was never written to terrify the Church. It was written to unveil Jesus. And perhaps the most important moment in the entire book happens in Revelation 5.

John is told, “Behold, the Lion…”
But when John turns to look, he doesn’t see a lion.
He sees a Lamb standing as though slain.

That matters.

Jesus does not suddenly become someone different in Revelation. He does not abandon the enemy-loving, self-giving love revealed on the cross and become another kind of God.
The greatest revelation of Revelation is that Jesus is still the Lamb on the throne.

The One who conquers does so through cruciform love. The One who reigns still bears the wounds. And the throne of the universe belongs to the Lamb.

That changes how we read everything that follows.
I wrote this book as an introduction and commentary through the first eleven chapters of Revelation from a historical, partial-preterist, Christ-centered, and grace-filled perspective—taking seriously the first-century world in which John wrote while refusing to interpret anything in a way that contradicts the Jesus who perfectly reveals the Father.

If Revelation has frightened you, confused you, or simply never made sense to you, I hope this book helps you see it again.
Maybe Revelation isn't primarily about escaping the world someday.

Maybe it is about learning to see the world differently because the Lamb is already on the throne. (pt2 coming early 2026)

Available now on Amazon:

The Revelation of Jesus Christ : Part 1: Revelation Chapters 1-11

08/29/2026

Morning Musings

I believe the cross is central to the Christian faith. But how we understand the cross matters, because every theology of the cross ultimately becomes a theology of God.

For many Christians, the story has been told something like this: humanity sinned, God’s justice demanded punishment, and because God could not simply forgive, Jesus stepped in and absorbed the punishment that God otherwise would have poured out upon us.

But I have increasingly become convinced that this is not the fullest—or most faithful—way to understand Calvary.

The New Testament does not give us one neat theory of atonement. It gives us a rich collection of images: reconciliation, sacrifice, ransom, liberation, victory, forgiveness, covenant, healing, and new creation. The early church especially emphasized Christ’s victory over sin, death, and the powers that enslave humanity.

And at the center of all of it is this astonishing statement:

“God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” — 2 Corinthians 5:19

God was in Christ.

The Father was not standing at a distance from Jesus, demanding that someone suffer before He could forgive.

Calvary is not the Son rescuing humanity from the Father.

It is the Triune God entering into the darkest depths of the human condition in order to rescue, reconcile, heal, and restore His creation.

And that distinction matters.

Who killed Jesus?

Human beings did.

Rome crucified Him.
Religious powers accused Him.
Empire condemned Him.
Human violence nailed Him to a cross.

But God did something extraordinary with our violence: He entered it, absorbed it, exposed it, forgave us in the middle of it, and ultimately defeated it through resurrection.

That is why Jesus can hang from the cross and say, “Father, forgive them.”

He isn’t convincing the Father to become forgiving. He is revealing the Father who has always been forgiving.

Jesus told us, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.”

So the God we see healing enemies, touching lepers, welcoming sinners, eating with outcasts, forgiving offenders and restoring the broken does not suddenly become a different God at Calvary.

Jesus is still the face of the Father—even on the cross.

The cross absolutely deals with sin.

But perhaps sin is deeper than a legal debt requiring divine retribution. Sin is a power that corrupts, enslaves, wounds, alienates, accuses, and ultimately produces death.

And Christ enters directly into that machinery and breaks it from the inside.

This is why Paul can speak of Christ disarming the powers and triumphing over them at the cross.

The cross is not primarily the place where God finally gets the violence His holiness requires.

It is the place where God takes humanity’s violence upon Himself and refuses to answer violence with violence.

We give Him hatred.
He gives forgiveness.

We give Him accusation.
He gives mercy.

We give Him a cross.
He gives us resurrection.

And resurrection is essential to the gospel because Calvary without Easter is simply another ex*****on.

But Easter is God’s declaration that sin will not win, violence will not win, empire will not win, accusation will not win, and even death itself will not have the final word.

Christ will.

So yes, Jesus died for our sins.

But the gospel is even bigger and more beautiful than the idea that Jesus died to save us from God.

In Jesus, God Himself has come to save us from everything that destroys us.

That is the God revealed at Calvary.

And He looks exactly like Jesus

08/14/2026

Somewhere along the way, many Christians were taught that the end of the biblical story is that the world gets worse and worse until Jesus finally rescues His people by taking them away from the earth.

There’s just one problem: That isn’t the direction the biblical story is moving.

The Bible doesn’t end with humanity escaping earth for heaven. It ends with heaven coming to earth.

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with humanity.” — Revelation 21:3

Jesus didn’t say, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall escape the earth.”

He said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” — Matthew 5:5

Paul doesn’t describe creation as disposable. He says creation itself is groaning for liberation and will be set free from its bo***ge to decay (Romans 8:19–21).

Revelation doesn’t climax with the saints abandoning creation, but with Christ declaring:

“Behold, I am making all things new.”

Not making all new things. Making all things new.

Biblical eschatology is not ultimately about evacuation. It is about resurrection. Restoration. Renewal. Reconciliation.

It is the announcement that Jesus Christ has defeated the powers, conquered death, and is Lord.

“He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” — 1 Corinthians 15:25–26

And remarkably, Scripture says we are invited to participate in that reign.

We are called a royal priesthood.
We are told we will reign with Christ.
We pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

That prayer makes very little sense if God’s ultimate plan is to abandon the earth.

The Christian hope is not: “Someday Jesus will get us out of here.”

It is: “Jesus is Lord, His kingdom has come, His kingdom is coming, death will be defeated, creation will be liberated, and God will be all in all.”

That is a much bigger hope. And I believe it is a much more biblical one.

08/14/2026

Romans 8 says nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not death, life, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, height, depth, or any created thing.

Nothing.

If nothing can separate you from His love, then your failure is not stronger than His love. Your confusion, your immaturity, your bad theology, and the places where you still stumble do not make the Father step back and reconsider His affection for you.

His love is not waiting to see whether you perform well enough to remain lovable. That is the love Jesus revealed.

And that is the love grace begins to work through us. And before we ever try to love others this way, that love has to become real to us. Otherwise, we will turn unconditional love into another work. We will huff and puff and try to love everybody, but underneath we will still be drawing from our own limited supply.

That will wear you out.
Love is always a response to love.

We love Him because He first loved us. Our love for other people works the same way. It is the overflow of the love we know He has for us.

He loves you because He loves you because He loves you because He loves you because that’s who He is.

08/13/2026

I don’t believe Scripture teaches that we still possess an “old nature” that must gradually die. Paul says, “our old man was crucified with Him” (Romans 6:6), not that he is being crucified a little more every day. Likewise, “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). The old humanity has already been dealt with in Christ.

I’m also not convinced sanctification is primarily a lifelong process of becoming something we are not yet. The New Testament repeatedly speaks of believers as already sanctified (1 Corinthians 1:2; 6:11; Hebrews 10:10, 14). What continues throughout our lives is not our sanctification itself, but our awakening, maturity, and conformity of mind to the reality of who we already are in Christ.

When Jesus calls us to “take up our cross daily,” I don’t see Him describing a daily ex*****on of an old nature. He’s inviting us to continually lay down the false self, the ego, illusions, and independent identity that tries to live apart from God, and live from the union that has already been established in Him.

So I would say the Christian life is less about becoming Christlike through a slow internal transformation and more about discovering, believing, and expressing the Christ life that has already been given to us. Maturity isn’t moving from old nature to new nature; it’s growing in the knowledge and manifestation of the new creation we already are.

08/13/2026

I heard someone say recently that if revival does not begin with repentance, then it is “unauthorized” and not genuine revival.

I understand what they are trying to protect. Transformation matters. Sin matters. Following Jesus actually changes us. But everything depends on what we mean by repentance.

John preached repentance. Jesus preached repentance. Peter preached repentance. But we can make a serious mistake when we hear the word repent through centuries of religious baggage rather than hearing it in its biblical world.

The Greek word is metanoia (μετάνοια), from meta and nous. At its heart, it describes a profound change of mind, perception, understanding, and orientation. And in the Christian spiritual tradition, the nous came to mean something deeper than mere intellectual reasoning—the inward faculty by which we perceive and apprehend God.

So biblical repentance is not simply, “Think harder about how terrible you are.”

It is an invitation to see differently because God has come near.

Listen carefully to Jesus:

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
— Matthew 4:17

We often preach that sentence backward.

We make it: “Repent enough, and maybe the Kingdom will come near.”

Jesus announces: “The Kingdom has come near; therefore, repent.”

The nearness of God produces the metanoia. Repentance is not the price of admission into God’s presence; it is the transformation that happens when the reality of God’s presence begins rearranging the way we see everything.

That is enormously different from groveling before God, rehearsing everything wrong with yourself, or attempting to generate enough sorrow to persuade God to send revival.

Paul gives us remarkably similar language in Romans 12:2: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The word translated transformed is metamorphoō (μεταμορφόω)—the same verb used of Jesus’ transfiguration. And what is being renewed? The nous.

In other words, Christianity is not primarily behavior modification. It is transformation flowing from renewed perception.

We behold differently, therefore we become differently.

And this is why I become cautious whenever repentance is presented as the prerequisite we must manufacture before God is willing to move.

What if revival does not begin with people convincing God to come?

What if revival begins with awakening to the God who has already come near?

What if repentance is not getting God to change His posture toward us, but allowing the revelation of God’s goodness to change our posture toward Him, ourselves, and one another?

Paul asks, “Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4).

Not terror into repentance.
Not shame into repentance.
Not self-hatred into repentance.

His kindness leads us into metanoia.

And yes, genuine encounters with God expose things in us that need to change. Grace is not opposed to transformation; grace produces transformation. When I see Christ more clearly, some attitudes cannot survive that vision. Some prejudices have to die. Some addictions lose their attraction. Some bitterness must be surrendered. Some ways of treating people become impossible to justify.

But I am not changing so God will come near.

I am changing because in Christ, God has come near.

That distinction changes everything.

Perhaps the fire of genuine revival is not God finally responding to enough human repentance.

Perhaps repentance is what happens when people awaken to the fire that has been burning in the heart of God all along—the inexhaustible love revealed in Jesus Christ—and encounter Him so deeply that they can never see God, themselves, or the world the same way again.

That is metanoia. And that kind of repentance really can change everything.

08/11/2026

Somewhere along the way, we made holiness strangely small.

For many of us, holiness became a list of things you didn’t do.
Don’t smoke. Don’t drink. Don’t cuss. Don’t go there. Don’t associate with them. And if you avoided enough of the wrong things, you were considered holy.

But you can never touch alcohol and still be drunk on pride.

You can never smoke a cigarette and still breathe contempt toward your neighbor.

You can keep every religious rule and still be bitter, judgmental, unforgiving, and painfully unlike Jesus.

That should tell us something.

Jesus gave us a much deeper vision of holiness.
He moved beneath behavior to the heart. Beneath appearances to desires. Beneath rule-keeping to the kind of person we are becoming.

You can avoid adultery and still objectify people.
Avoid murder and still carry hatred.
Tithe faithfully and neglect mercy.
Know Scripture and walk past the wounded.

Jesus was never interested in merely producing well-behaved religious people. He came to make us whole, to teach us how to become fully alive in love.

This doesn’t mean our choices don’t matter. Of course they do. Some things wound us. Some enslave us. Some diminish our capacity to love. Wisdom asks not merely, “Is this allowed?” but, “Is this making me more free, more whole, more loving, more like Christ?”

That is a much deeper holiness than behavior management.

Paul says, “The whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

The goal has always been love.
And love is far more demanding than legalism.

It is easier to avoid a drink than to forgive someone who betrayed you.
Easier to condemn someone else’s life than to love your enemy.
Easier to keep a religious checklist than to become merciful.

Maybe holiness was never primarily about how many things we could remove from our lives. Maybe holiness is about how much our lives can become filled with the life and love of Jesus.

Until His compassion becomes ours. His mercy becomes ours.
His forgiveness becomes ours. His way of seeing people becomes ours. Because the clearest evidence that we are becoming like Jesus is not simply what we no longer do.
It is how deeply we have learned to love.

08/10/2026

Imagine a father saying to his child: “Son, I love you, and I desperately want to forgive you. But I’m also just, and justice means someone has to pay. I cannot simply forgive what you’ve done. Someone must suffer. So either I punish you—or I punish someone else in your place. Only after enough suffering has occurred can I finally forgive you.”

Now imagine calling that good news.

Yet beneath much of the Gospel presentation many of us inherited is precisely this retributive legal framework:
Sin creates a debt.
Justice demands punishment.
God cannot forgive without payment.
Jesus takes the punishment.
Now God can forgive us.

But is that really the God Jesus revealed?

Because Jesus was forgiving sins before the cross.
He did not tell the paralytic, “I would forgive you, but legally I cannot until someone is punished.”

He simply said: “Your sins are forgiven.”
And when Jesus teaches us about forgiveness, He never describes forgiveness as requiring the punishment of a substitute first. He tells us to forgive freely, repeatedly, even extravagantly—because this is what the Father is like.

So perhaps we need a better lens for understanding the cross, a better atonement theory.

The cross was not Jesus rescuing us from God.
It was God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.

The Father was not standing at a distance demanding blood while the Son persuaded Him to become merciful. Father, Son, and Spirit were acting together in one movement of self-giving love to rescue creation from sin, death, corruption, and the powers that enslave us.

Jesus did not die so that God could finally love us.
Jesus died because God already loved us.

He entered the very worst humanity could produce—betrayal, violence, accusation, empire, religion, torture, shame, and death and allowed it all to exhaust itself upon Him. And then God answered humanity’s violence not with greater violence…
but with resurrection.

The cross certainly reveals that sin is serious.
But perhaps the seriousness of sin is not that it makes God incapable of forgiveness. Perhaps sin is serious because it destroys us—and God loves us too much to leave us enslaved to it.

That gives us a very different vision of salvation:
Not a Father who needs someone to hurt before He can forgive,
but a Father who, in the Son, enters our hurt to heal us.
Not a God whose holiness prevents Him from coming near sinners, but the Holy One who comes all the way into our darkness to bring us home. Not divine justice as an eternal demand for retribution, but divine justice as God's relentless determination to set His creation right.

Maybe the Gospel is more beautiful than the version many of us inherited. Maybe the cross does not change God's mind about humanity. Maybe the cross reveals just how far God has always been willing to go to change humanity's mind about Him.

“For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.”
—2 Corinthians 5:19

08/10/2026

The Gospel becomes strangely un-evangelical when the good news is announced like this:

“Jesus has done everything necessary to save you—but none of it becomes yours unless you make the right decision.” Or:

“Christ loved you and gave Himself for you—but you remain outside of what He accomplished until you give your heart to Him.”

However sincere that language may be, it subtly shifts the center of salvation from Christ’s finished work to the adequacy of our response to it.

The Gospel announces something far better.

Before it is an invitation for us to do something, it is the proclamation of something God has already done in Jesus Christ.

God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). In the incarnation, the Son did not merely come alongside humanity; He assumed our humanity. He entered our condition, carried our story, confronted the powers that enslaved us, passed through death, and raised human nature into resurrection life.

Jesus therefore did not merely accomplish something for humanity from a distance. He accomplished salvation as one of us and on behalf of us.

This is why the New Testament can speak so audaciously:

“When one died for all, therefore all died” (2 Corinthians 5:14).

“As one trespass led to condemnation for all, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (Romans 5:18).

“As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22).

The decisive act of salvation, then, is not our decision for Christ but Christ’s decision for us.

Even our faithful human response to God finds its foundation in Him. Jesus is not only God reaching toward humanity; He is humanity perfectly responding to God. In His faithful obedience, self-offering, death, and resurrection, He fulfills from within our humanity the covenant faithfulness we could never manufacture for ourselves.

This does not make faith unnecessary. It finally puts faith in its proper place.

Faith does not create our reconciliation.
Faith awakens us to it.

Faith does not persuade God to receive us.
Faith discovers that in Christ we have already been received.

Faith does not make Christ ours.
Faith opens our eyes to the astonishing truth that Christ has already made us His own.

The Gospel therefore does not say, “Here is what God might do for you if you respond correctly.”

The Gospel announces, “Here is what God has done for humanity in Jesus Christ. Believe this good news. Wake up to it. Receive it. Live in the freedom of it. Become who grace has revealed you to be.”

And that changes the entire character of Christian faith.

We no longer have to live anxiously examining the quality of our believing: Did I believe enough? Was my prayer sincere enough? Did I surrender enough? Did I really give Jesus my whole heart?

Our confidence was never meant to rest upon the strength of our grip on Christ.

It rests upon the strength of Christ’s grip on us.

Our assurance is not ultimately found in the perfection of our faith, but in the perfection of His faithfulness.

That is why the Gospel is genuinely good news.

Salvation begins with Christ.
Salvation is accomplished in Christ.
Salvation is revealed through Christ.
And even our response is made possible because Christ has already come all the way into our humanity and brought humanity home to the Father.

We do not believe in order to convince God to say yes to us.

We believe because, in Jesus Christ, God has already spoken His eternal Yes to humanity.