The parable Jesus told to a lawyer who did not want the truth has embedded in it the three fundamental orientations toward other people — and only one of them is the philosophy of Jesus. Most people consider themselves to be in the third category —…
Jesus was “a man of sorrows” — and he was also a man of deep, unshakable joy. The New Testament does not present these as contradictions. It presents them as dimensions of the same great soul. The church has a long tradition of depicting Jesus primarily…
The Pharisees were the most religiously meticulous people in the ancient world. They fasted twice a week, gave tithes of mint and cummin, washed hands before meals, and prayed loud prayers at street corners. And Jesus called them hypocrites — whitewashed tombs, full of dead men’s…
The New Testament is the inspired Word of God because Christ, who possessed all authority, delegated it to the apostles, and the Holy Spirit guaranteed the accuracy and completeness of their record. Some people accept the Old Testament as inspired by God but hold the New…
“It is well to tell the sick of a physician; the poor of riches; the dying of life; the lost of a Savior; and the impenitent of hell.” The opening line is exactly right. This is not a subject a preacher enjoys. But silence on hell…
God and man value things differently; man is forever putting first what God puts last, and last what God puts first — so the whole art of right living is to see and rank things as God does, and “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.”…
In the Bible a “fool” is not the simple or unintelligent but the morally condemned, and Scripture marks out four classes — the atheist, the ignorant church member, the rich fool, and the “wise fool” who knows God’s will and will not do it, the last…
God has always blessed obedience and condemned disobedience; there is only one way to obey — to do what God says, as He directs — but four ways to disobey: refusing, adding, subtracting, and substituting, and all four stand equally condemned. Man is the most disobedient…
Life is shaped by its decisions; Scripture is full of those who chose well and those who failed to choose at all, and every soul must finally make the great decision for God personally — for no one, in heaven or on earth, can make it…
The church is a divine-human institution: its strength is wholly in its divine element — God’s plan, Christ’s blood, His headship, the Spirit’s indwelling — and its weakness is wholly in its human element, the frail members who carry the work; so the cure for the…