Discussion of a biblical passage or topic.
Suppose a stranger rushed up to you and said, “You’re a new creation! The old you is dead. God is at work in you! You’re a participant in the divine nature. You’ve got to think new thoughts and live a new way.” You might think that person was nuts. Those statements sound absurdly over the top. Yet, if you’ve obeyed the gospel of Jesus Christ as we discussed in last month’s post (Part 2), those…
Last month, we considered 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10 to show our sins create a debt that must be paid. Click here to read that post. Today, I want to explore how we can all avoid being in a certain group of people. A phrase in verse 8 says Jesus will deal out “retribution to those who do not know God, and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thessalonians 1:8 NAS). In the Apostle Paul’s day, those…
The quote in the title of this post is taken from Acts 16:30. The question was asked by a jailer addressing Silas and the Apostle Paul, whom he had thrown into prison less than a day earlier and fastened in stocks. One of the central messages of the New Testament is an urgent plea: that we recognize our need to be saved. This post concerns the grave seriousness of our sins. Every sin we commit…
One great irony in the Genesis account of creation is this: Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil which brought death while neglecting the tree of life, from which they were permitted to eat. As I prepared to write Paradise Unfallen, I found myself pondering a question: What exactly would the fruit and leaves of the tree of life have done? A friend suggested that if Adam…
As modern-day Christians, we often reflect with thankfulness that we no longer have to keep all the rules and regulations God’s people followed under the Law of Moses. Yet we should remember that we serve the same God as the Old Testament Israelites. When God judged and punished His people, it was not because they failed to observe some fine point of the Law. His wrath came because they neglected and rejected His most basic…
Lydia said, “How can we trust the Bible anymore? They keep coming up with all these new Bibles, and they’re changing it.” Ruby and I shared a picnic table with Lydia and her friend Amy after a long October day exploring the booths at the St. James Art Show in Louisville, Kentucky. Lydia and Amy (not their real names) were strangers to us, but our conversation was friendly and wide-ranging on family, the state of…
I recently watched a YouTube interview by David Perell with the poet Dana Gioia. Though I hadn’t heard of Gioia before, I was struck by his depth of knowledge and love for language. He mentioned that while reading; he records memorable lines and ideas in what he calls Commonplace Books. I love that concept—especially when it comes to reading the Bible. Gioia’s habit reminded me how powerful it is to retain what moves us—whether by…
The book of Acts tells the story of how the church of Jesus Christ was established and began to spread, just as He promised in Matthew 16:18. If you read Acts carefully, you’ll notice how often baptism appears whenever someone responds in faith and repentance to the gospel. In fact, the words baptism and baptized appear twenty-two times in Acts. A study of those passages would be valuable, but here I want to explore something…
We live in an age where division and violence seem to touch every corner of the world. Some individuals have taken it upon themselves to act as judge and executioner, killing those whose ideas or behavior they deem evil—and disturbingly, others justify these actions. But this is not righteousness; it is the work of the demonic. The ongoing cycles of death and retribution we witness are not in humanity’s best interest—they are strategies of forces…
My March email mentioned I started teaching a class on the book of Ephesians. We completed Ephesians, and the book’s last chapter focused on the warning that we’re in a war against an array of wicked spiritual beings led by the devil. Our enemy’s objective is to steal, kill, and destroy. What tactics does the devil use to achieve these objectives? Matthew 4 describes the devil’s temptation of Jesus, and the passage provides insight into…