What Is the Gospel?
Let me start by stating the simplified answer to the question, “What is the gospel?” The “gospel” is an expression in Scripture that simply means “good news.” It is best to think of the gospel in three related parts. The Gospel – Jesus is the Messiah, the promised saving King described in Scripture. He came […]
What Is Unity in the Bible? (It’s Far More Important Than I Thought.)
And the first prize for most unifying religion goes to… Easy answer, right? Obviously, the answer is supposed to be Christianity, isn’t it? And yet the church isn’t always very unified—at all. At last count, there are over 45,000 Christian denominations globally. Narrow it down to just one denomination, and chances are that even that […]
Because You Say So, I Will
God’s ways are higher than our ways, so it’s no wonder that some of His commands don’t always make sense to us. Throughout the Bible, we see examples of people being asked to do things that defy human logic. In the fifth and sixth chapters of Luke, Jesus repeatedly asked people to take actions that […]
Why Do We Confess Jesus as Messiah and Lord?
We call the “good confession” what Christians confess out loud when they convert to Christ. Early Christian formulations of the good confession point to two important ideas. First, confessing that Jesus is the “Christ” is saying that he is the promised Messiah of Israel. The Old Testament contains promises, titles, prophecies, and sufferings regarding the […]
Did the Gospels Borrow from Pagan Mythology?
Mythology in the Greco-Roman world had dying and rising god-men—Apollo, Asclepius, Hercules, Tammuz. Serapis was called Lord. Half the Greek gods were said to be born of virgins. Hercules ascended to heaven. Just how unique is Jesus’ deity? What’s original about Jesus as being born of a virgin and being the Son of God? Is […]
Encountering God’s Amazing Grace
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23, ESV) Literary editors claim that the phrase “free gift” is redundant. They say the idea of free is implicit in the definition of “gift” and so is unnecessary to mention. However, Paul […]
Resisting the Lure of Legalism
“Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them?” (Mark 7:18, NIV) Let’s talk about legalism. I know about legalism because I used to be a legalist. At the time, I didn’t believe legalism was really a thing. I’ve actually said to people, […]
Beatitudes: The Path of the Kingdom
Jesus’ original audience often misunderstood him because they filtered his teachings through their preconceived worldview and the skewed questions that flowed from it. We have a different worldview with different questions, but we basically do the same thing. In the Sermon on the Mount, where we see a bunch of rules, Jesus is trying to […]
