The Bible is a difficult book. It’s just plain hard to read and even more so, understand. Along with this, there’s some tuff stuff in the Bible. Lots of death, murder, violence, empires rising and falling, epic battles, stories of heroes and their...
I had a professor once who always talked about “belly-button theology”. To be honest, I wrote it off at first because it seemed to make childish very serious matters of theology. Thinking and talking about God (‘theology’) should not include belly...
The book of Genesis is a book of origins. In fact, the title itself, “Genesis”, is the Greek word meaning “origins”. The Hebrew title of the book of Genesis is “bereshith” (ברשית) which means “in the beginning”. We find in Genesis the origins for...
This is a short excerpt from Holiness in Fresh Perspective: Covenant, Cross, and Kingdom. Wipf and Stock, 2014. All rights reserved. Consider Romans 1:1–4 for a moment. This is Paul’s salutation to the churches in Rome. In this salutation, Paul does...
The book of Genesis is a book of origins. In fact, the titled itself, “Genesis” is the Greek word meaning “origins”. The Hebrew title of the book of Genesis is “bereshith” (ברשית) which means “in the beginning” (although there’s still quite a bit of...
The people of Israel, while defeated and sent to exile, maintained hope for restoration. The catalyst for hope came through both the prophets (the exilic and post-exilic Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Obadiah, and...
Jesus redefines what power is. All over the New Testament Jesus is referred to as the Son of God. In our modern context, we interpret this to be the Bible’s way to attesting to the divinity of Jesus. This case certainly can be made, but there is...
We cannot miss how Paul, in the overall structure of the Epistle to the Romans, juxtaposes the contrast between Holy Spirit and the Torah as two different, but related means for sealing the covenants, both old and new. The Holy Spirit as the new...
This week we remember Pentecost (Acts 2). Pentecost is arguably the fourth most important event Church calendar after Christ’s birth, the Christ’s death, and Christ’s resurrection. But what makes Pentecost so important? At Pentecost God’s long...
The book of Exodus never ceases to amaze me. It is, without a doubt, one of my favorite Old Testament books. It’s claim to fame is the dividing of the Red Sea as the climactic event in which the people of Israel walk out of slavery without ever...