Liberating you from bad ideas about God
Have you ever heard the wheelbarrow tightrope walk over Niagara Falls as an illustration for faith? It is a terrible illustration, because it does not accurately portray what faith really is or how faith works. This post considers the illustration and defines faith from Scripture.
There have been lots of strange teachings about the Rich Young Ruler in Matthew 19:16-21 (and Luke 18:18-23; Mark 10:17-22). Did Jesus really mean that the rich can earn eternal life if they give all their possessions away? No. By understanding the cultural and theological view of riches in the days of Jesus, we can better understand what Jesus was telling the Rich Young Ruler.
What does Paul mean about divine election in Romans 9 when he writes about God loving Jacob and hating Esau, making what he wants from clay, and hardening Pharaohs heart? This article answers these questions from Romans 9, and also looks at what Romans 11 teaches about divine election.
It is critical to recognize that the Sermon on the Mount does not contain the offer of eternal life, because if we get confused on this fact, we will think that one gains eternal life by fulfilling the conditions and requirements Jesus talks about in this Sermon.
Here is a truth that will help you unpack many tricky and often-misunderstood Bible passages: Though all believers have eternal life, not all believers are disciples, and not all disciples are believers. Once you understand the difference between believing in Jesus for eternal life and becoming a disciple of Jesus during this life, many tricky Bible texts will make a lot more sense.
When John writes in 1 John 3:14 that we know we have passed from death to life because we love our brethren, he is not talking about how we know we have eternal life, but how we know we are in fellowship with God and one another.
In Romans 5:12, Paul writes that through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned. Almost everybody thinks that Paul is referring to the event in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But is this what Paul has in mind? It doesn’t seem so …
The titles Christ or Messiah refer to someone who has received a special anointing by God to perform a specific task or purpose. Such a definition is true of every anointed person, whether it is a king, a prophet, a priest, or Jesus Himself. This article defines the word Christ and considers John 20:31 and how a proper understanding of the title Christ helps us understand the offer and invitation of the Gospel.
The reason that some people wonder if they can be blotted out of the book of life is because passages like Revelation 3:5 seem seem to indicate that this is a distinct possibility. However, when you understand what the Book of Life actually is, you will also come to understand what Revelation 3:5 actually means.
According to 1 John 1:7-10, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from sin by exposing sin for what it is and then calling us to no longer live in the way of sacred violence.
The blood of Jesus is not a spiritual antidote to sin which somehow removes the polluting presence of sin from our lives. Instead, the blood of Jesus exposes our sacred violence to us so that we can see in our own lives how we make scapegoat victims out of others, and then calls us to no longer live in this way.
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