There are a number of New Testament passages that associate the concepts of the new age of the Spirit, believer unity, covenant membership, and indwelling of the Holy Spirit with the symbols of the temple, Christ’s body, the Eucharist, table...
other believers. In Paul's language, people become members of God's family when they become Christians. We must keep in mind that when we become members of God's family that it is a family that sends. There is not a single member of the family of...
All Saints Day is quickly approaching (Nov 1)! This is a Christian Holiday celebrated primarily within the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions (it’s less celebrated in Protestant tradition, as is often the case with events in the...
I mentioned in this post that the Bible compares Jesus and the Church to a married couple. I noted that the points of comparison between the two are deep love and commitment (self-sacrificing love and commitment). This isn’t the only metaphor the...
The Bible calls the church is the “Bride of Christ” (Rev 21:2, 9-10; John 3:29; Mark 2:19). But what are the points of comparison between a husband and wife and the Church and Jesus? First, there is a deep love between the two. This love is self...
This is a warning that this post is a bit more academic. Read at your own risk! Living in Haiti has forced me to develop a deeper theology of suffering. Suffering has been at the center of my thinking for the past number of years and has become the...
At first blush, the Synoptic Gospels (Matt, Mark, and Luke) are so different from the gospel according to John. Two of the three Synoptics start with the genealogy of Jesus (Matt and Luke). Mark jumps right into the story with John’s ministry...
Mark 2 is one of my favorite chapters in the New Testament. I love this chapter because Jesus does something quite radical that is rather easy to miss (interesting that we can miss something radical when we don’t have the eyes or context to see it)...
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...
What is the salvation narrative? In a phrase, the salvation narrative is the story of God’s single plan to re-establish his reign through his chosen human agents in the creation; to renew the world and its righteous governance. To borrow N. T...