Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
It took a parody. I devoted a section of a chapter in Deep Exegesis to Peter Enns's work, I've critiqued him on my blog here and here and here , as well as the similar work of John Walton, here and here . To my knowledge, neither Enns nor Walton…
The establishment of same-sex marriage is not a bolt from the blue, but the logical outworking of a series of related developments in America’s practice and understanding of marriage. Same-sex marriage was unthinkable just a few decades ago. What made it thinkable wasn’t a concerted campaign on the part of…
Unless Obergefell can be reversed soon through the next two presidential elections and the retirement/replacement of renegade SCOTUS judges (Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Breyer are the first up), this will turn out to be the greatest American tragedy for the civil liberties of persons of faith, for the cause of sexual…
With same sex marriage now legalized in many Western countries, and militant Islam ravaging the East, Christians might be wondering what God is doing. With the repeated failure of predictions of an imminent second coming, is the Bible any help to us at all in predicting what will happen next?…
When I was expecting my first child, an older woman gave me the best nugget of parenting wisdom that I have. She told me to always remember that my child is my sister-in-Christ before she is my daughter. I have clung to these words in so many situations as I…
Male-female distinctions define marriage in a particular direction: the gift of generation and of generations. With its decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has done its part to deny and destroy this reality, and further the modern process of legalizing child abandonment, while at the same time violating…
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INTRODUCTION Jesus opens His sermon pronouncing blessings. The Beatitudes imply certain attitudes and kinds of behavior, which are spelled out in the rest of the sermon. Above all, the Beatitudes are promises. As the one anointed by the Spirit, Jesus announces that God is working to turn the world right…
Matthew 5:20: I say to you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. I’ve suggested in the sermon that Jesus is giving His disciples and the crowds instructions in redemptive righteousness. He is telling them and us how…
“I say to you,” Jesus said, “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” It’s easy to soften the force of this. Don’t. Jesus is not talking about His own personal righteousness imputed to us. He’s not talking about a…
In a 2003 article in JBL, Glen Stassen of Fuller Seminary examines what he describes as fourteen triads in the sermon on the mount. Along the way, he challenges the almost universal assumption that 5:17-48 is a collection of “antitheses,” arguing that Jesus’ instructions are not dyadic (as “antithesis” suggests)…
In a 1987 article and a 2005 revision (published in his Studies in Matthew ), Dale Allison offers a careful treatment of the structure of the sermon on the mount. To begin with, there are multiple verbal parallels between 4:25-5:2 and 7:28-8:1: “great crowds followed him” (4:25; 8:1); “the crowds”…
Jesus teaches the disciples on the mountain, we’re told in 5:1. Jesus sees multitudes, sits down, and the disciples come to Him. On the mountain, there is a circle within the circle. This is a new Sinai. Around Sinai, and around the tabernacle, there was a circle of priests and…
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