God made human beings in his own image, and we’ve been trying to return the favor ever since. But to make God in our image is to diminish his nature.…
After God reminds his people that he graciously rescued them out of Egypt (Exodus 20:1-2), he begins the Ten Commandments in earnest: “You shall have no other gods before me”…
The Ten Commandments do not begin with God saying, “Thou shalt not…” but “I…brought you out.” The preamble of the Decalogue thus indicates that grace was demonstrated before obedience was demanded.…
In C. S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian, Lucy and Aslan engage in an illuminating conversation. (Lucy is one of the Pevensie children, and Aslan, the lion, is the Christ figure in Lewis’s The…
God has landed! Right in a manger. Right on top of cow spit and barnyard bacteria. Jesus came a long way to save us. Two thousand years ago, the eternal…
Headlines are notoriously difficult to write. Even news editors who’ve been in the business for decades can struggle with the task. When you write a headline, you have to summarize…
Luke tells the story of Christ’s birth largely from Mary’s perspective, while Matthew tells it largely from Joseph’s. No attempt is made to bring them into alignment in an artificial…
“If Jesus is who he says he is, then why is he not doing what I expected? If Jesus is who he says he is, then why do I still…
It’s often been said that to succeed in this world, we need to have the heart of a child and the skin of a rhinoceros. In other words, we need…
The most prominent image for the church in the New Testament is “the Body of Christ.” There are about 15 references to it from Matthew to Revelation. The image implies…
In John 8 we read the famous story of the woman caught in the act of adultery—a story so famous that even those who know little about the Bible know…
Everyone loves a happy ending. Most of our fairy tales begin with, “Once upon a time,” and they end with, “And they lived happily ever after.” That’s the way they’re…
If suffering has no ultimate meaning or purpose, then God is a monster. He’s mean, cruel, ugly, vicious, and sadistic. He’s like Sid Phillips in Toy Story—that little hellion who…
Job is a man in agony, and he’s been pelting God with questions because of it. He wants to know—as would anyone—how the Lord could allow him to suffer for…
It’s often been said that good help is hard to find. The book of Job is a perfect case in point. Satan (“the accuser”) doesn’t make an appearance after chapter…
For 30+ chapters in the book of Job, the suffering patriarch erupts in a molten river of intense emotion, basically protesting, “God, my life is excruciating right now, and I…
The world doesn’t seem to be what it ought to be. It is broken as well as beautiful, and that hurts. Has your life ever been affected by crime, poverty, violence,…
In Mark 2:1-12, Jesus famously healed the paralytic, a man lowered on his mat through someone’s roof because of the crowd. Before Jesus restored his legs, however, he restored his…
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