2 John: Loving one another in Truth
At first glance, 2 John might seem to be warmed-over leftovers from 1 John, but appearances are very deceiving in this case. In John’s First Letter, he had addressed three major themes: Regeneration, Truth, and Love. John’s Second Letter is vital to the health of Christ’s Church today not because he ventures into new territory, [...]
Jesus Christ, Stumbling Block to the Jew
So central was this emphasis on the Messiahship of Jesus that within a few years ‘Christ’ (the Greek for Messiah) had ceased to designate Jesus’s function and had come to be a sort of surname. Now all this was peculiarly offensive to the Jew. It was not easy to think of a carpenter-teacher as the [...]
Greek in the Spread of Early Christianity
From Michael Green’s classic Evangelism in the Early Church: The advantages for the Christian mission of having a common language can hardly be overestimated. It did away with the necessity for missionary language schools. Missionaries using it would incur none of the odium that English-speaking missionaries might find in some of the underdeveloped countries; for [...]
One-to-One Bible Reading
Preface: If you go to Redeemer Church in Lincoln, we have extra copies of this book that I want to give away. Please don’t be shy–contact me, and I will get you a copy. I want this book to be a resource for evangelism, discipleship, and leadership training in our community and our church, so [...]
Christian exegesis at its best
I cannot remember a time when I have relied as exclusively on a single commentary for a sermon I prepared as I did this week with Phillip Cary’s masterful work Jonah in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008). In page after page of this book, Cary illuminated a [...]
Ezekiel’s Dry Bones and the Christian Doctrine of Bodily Resurrection
Christian exegetes have wrestled with the connection of Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones and the doctrine of the bodily resurrection since they first preached on Ezekiel 37 from the light of Christ’s own bodily resurrection. While early exegetes drew a very quick line from the resuscitation of the bones to our own bodily resurrection, some [...]
On the Efficacy of the Sacraments
I have been studying up on the sacraments for ordination exams, and, in Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology, I came across an interesting contrast between how Lutheran and Reformed Christians understand the efficacy of the sacraments that I did not previously understand fully. Lutherans understand the sacraments as being inherently powerful, provided that the one receiving [...]
The Provisions of the Prince
At the end of the book of Ezekiel, the prophet sees a vision of a new temple, a new priesthood, and a rejuvenated sacrificial system. The details are uncomfortably specific for Christians who might expect a prophecy to point a little more directly to Christ’s priesthood and sacrifice, and a little less toward jump-starting “the [...]
Ayn Rand wasn’t greedy – she was selfish
Apparently it’s open hunting season on Ayn Rand, beginning with Gary Moore’s “Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Great Recession,” and picked up by Ben Witherington’s “Randian Libertarianism—-An Anti-Christian Credo.” I’m not entirely sure where it is all coming from, but here it is. Now, I have HUGE reservations about Ayn Rand’s philosophy, especially since she [...]
Different Regiments of the Same Army
I have been thoroughly enjoying Perry Miller’s The Life of the Mind in America, which presents a highly complex picture of early American Christianity. One of the interesting issues he describes is the unique way in which Christians in America achieved a form of unity. On the one hand, Miller credits the absence of an [...]
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