There comes a time in most any Christian’s life when they find themselves faced with disappointment in someone they deeply admired. Perhaps it is a family member, close friend, mentor, teacher, or spiritual leader whom we discover has concealed sin in their life, or been revealed to have lived a sort of double life where they didn’t practice what they preached. This occurrence tends to be a wide door to extreme disappointment, bitterness, resentment and uncertainty. Read on →

It’s a fact of life today that we’re busier than ever before. We go to work, we take work home, we stay glued to our phones and plugged into social media in ways that were unheard of even a decade ago. Most of us rush from one appointment to the next with little time to think about what we’re doing, or what this moment truly means. Far too many of us are too busy with life to actually engage in it. Read on →

One of the most interesting things about the Apostle Paul, both in terms of the Jewish tradition he inhabited as well as the larger Greco-Roman (Greek and Roman influence) world within which he spread the gospel, was his emphasis on “thinking.” “Have this mind among yourselves which was also in Messiah Jesus…” (Phil. 2:5) “But those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” (Rom. Read on →

For so many Christians, the central symbol of the Christian faith is also the most enigmatic. What exactly happened at the “theological level” when Jesus was crucified? God is apparently taking out His wrath for the whole human race on His beloved Son—the great penal substitution—the righteous and just wrath of God, and so on. Right? And yet, somewhat surprisingly, the gospels say very little about this particular, shrunken way of telling the Christian story. Read on →

Israel’s Scriptures were crystal clear–the opening of Genesis, the books of Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Daniel–there was only one God in and over the whole universe, and He was the good Creator God, Israel’s God, the God of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham, and so on. This long and rich tradition of Jewish “Monotheism” persisted up through the time of Jesus Himself and on through the early Church. It provided the context within which, and in relation to which, the earliest Christians first formulated the doctrine of the “trinity”: one God in three persons. Read on →

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control…” (Gal. 5:21). There are several remarkable things about this passage worth reflecting upon. For one thing, this verse comes within one of Paul’s densest arguments about how you know who truly belongs to the people of God. In other words, this description of the “fruit of the Spirit” does not come within a larger discourse about nice, but essentially optional, emotional feelings which the Christian might have. Read on →

There is a story of an Anglican Bishop who, while teaching at Oxford (England) and serving as a resident Chaplain, encountered a first-year undergraduate student at orientation who said to him, “Hello. You know, you probably won’t be seeing much of me. You see, I don’t believe in God.” To this the Chaplain calmly responded, “Hmmm, interesting, which ‘god’ is it that you don’t believe in?” With a look of puzzlement, the young student responded back to the Chaplain, “Well, umm, the old man who sits up in the sky on a cloud and occasionally looks down to condemn people of this or that.” To this the Chaplain nodded in recognition and with a slight smile replied, “Hmm, I see. Read on →

The passage is Luke 20:26. The scene is “Jesus in the Jerusalem temple surrounded by the temple authorities.” The question is: “How then should God’s people relate to the political powers that be?” The chief priests ask: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” (Luke 20:22) But, a bit of the larger context: “Jesus had set his face toward Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). Israel’s true king, having proclaimed the coming of God’s sovereign and saving rule on earth as in heaven, set his face toward the heart of Israel itself—the king is on his way to the great city, to Jeru-shalom (English: Jerusalem), “the City of Shalom”, or, “the City of Peace.” But when the king arrives, he says, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!” (Luke 19:41). Read on →

John’s Gospel, from it’s opening lines all the way to its end, is a story of how God’s sent Son rescued the whole of creation. The Gospel begins, deliberately evoking the beginning of the Bible’s creation story, “In the beginning…” (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1). John is telling us—with all the imagery about a new beginning and about “light” and “darkness” (John 1:4-5)—that this is the story of the new creation, the fresh renewal brought about by God’s Son. Read on →

To many Christians, and actually to many non-Christians as well, one of the truly puzzling features of the whole Bible is its constant concern with the ancient people of Israel. It’s quite an oddity when so many Christians throughout the world are actually not ethnically, and probably never were religiously, Jewish. What are these “Gentile” Christians, or indeed modern Jews, to make of the Bible’s obsession with the people of Israel? Read on →