Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Introduction Isaiah 21 can only be understood in the light of its placement in the architecture of the second “volume” of the prophecy (chapters 13–27). The contents are arranged in twin sevenfold “columns” that represent the great bronze pillars of Solomon’s Temple: Jachin and Boaz, priest and king. The priestly…
A Biblical Reflection on the Purpose of the Constellations The starry heavens hold a place of wonder in the hearts of men. Since man’s creation we have looked up into the heavens and have beheld its glory. This is particularly true of the night sky. The stars, in their shinning…
The case for there being five discourses within the Gospel according to Matthew is a hard one to challenge: surely the closing formula “when Jesus finished these sayings” as found in 8:1, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, and 26:1 settles it once and for all. And by the five instances of the…
The Long Commission The Great Commission of Matthew 28 has long been a cornerstone of American Evangelicalism. It has formed and fashioned the American church’s missional impulse. Yet when viewed from the wide lens of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, the Great Commission is revealed as one of the pillars…
I am delighted to see that more and more churches in the Reformed tradition are now recognizing that all baptized children are members of the body of Christ and therefore ought to be communing with the rest of the body at the Lord’s Table. This has been decades in the…
Good leaders have always been rare. In today’s world, they seem extinct. Joe Rigney’s recent book Leadership and Emotional Sabotage digs into the spiritual reasons for the leadership epidemic and recommends cures. Rigney starts with a summary of a book by Edwin Friedman called A Failure of Nerve . Friedman’s…
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Occasionally, I run into people who have never heard of Ken Myers and his Mars Hill Audio ministry. What a tragedy, I think. In case you happen to be one of the darkened multitude, Myers is one of the best-informed Christian cultural commentators of our time, and his audio magazine…
In a Biblical Horizons lecture, Rich Bledsoe argued that the doctrine of justification by faith was the doctrine that needed to be emphasized in the 16th century to exorcise the medieval world where power was based on condemnation. Because of Luther, everyone could stand up to the condemnation of the…
Baptism unites the baptized to the church, which is the bride of Christ. Brides take the name of their husbands, and thus all who are baptized take on the name of Jesus - they are Christians because “Christ” is their Husband’s name. Only feminists would want the baptized to keep…
Gary Burge points out in his NIV commentary on 1 John that the relative pronoun that begins the letter is neuter, even though the subject (LOGOS) is masculine. Drawing on Raymond Brown, he suggests that the neuter is used because it covers not just the person of Jesus the Word,…
It’s common to reconcile James and Paul on justification by saying something like “Paul’s faith is not the faith that James is talking about, and James’ justification is not the justification Paul is talking about.” That is, James is talking about some kind of demonstration of being in a justified…
Doug Ingram suggests in his 2004 Grove Book study of Ecclesiastes that the book has a peculiarly postmodern emphasis on the ambiguity of the world and human life. Pointing to the proliferation of studies of Ecclesiastes over the past decade and a half, he writes that while modern readers find…
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