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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Apostle Paul

Jonah’s Pauline Move: Finding Mercy for Gentiles in Texts about Mercy for Israel

Jonah is Paul’s typological opposite. Indeed, in the whole Old Testament, it would be difficult to find a more perfect foil to Paul than Jonah. Whereas Paul crosses the sea to enact God’s saving purposes for the Gentiles, Jonah crosses the sea to avoid bringing Gentiles God’s mercy. For that…

by Josh JensenJanuary 11, 2024
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Family

A House for Me

Years ago, I realized that if my children wanted to feel like their house was a home, I needed to be intentional about making our physical shelter a place of spiritual refuge. I began to see the Holy Spirit as the indwelling person of the Trinity—the one who makes His…

by Mandi GerthJanuary 9, 2024
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Charity

On Parrhesia and Gospel Witness

When the crowds encircle Christ in Solomon’s Porch during the Festival of Dedication, they charge him: “tell us boldly who you are!” 1 They do not draw-up to him to with excited anticipation as they did earlier in the Gospel, 2 instead they flank him like a gang of wolves.…

by Mark BriansJanuary 4, 2024
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Deuteronomy

Misunderstanding Moses

1 In Deuteronomy 7:1-5, Moses wrote: When Yahweh your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 3, 2024
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Advent

40 Theses on Christmas

Every Advent witnesses the gruesome reanimation of the voice that whispers “you know , Christmas is just a pagan holiday…” with that sort of conversational ellipsis that does not so much invite further reflection but halts and forecloses it. The claims are several and equally spurious: Jesus wasn’t born on…

by Mark BriansDecember 26, 2023
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Genesis

The Twelve Trials of Abraham

Abraham's life in Genesis is a series of trials. He travels hundreds of miles from his family into a new land, flees from a famine into the hands of a king who takes his wife, and after returning, has to rescue his brother from a war. He's involved with two…

by Donald LinnemeyerDecember 26, 2023

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Eucharistic meditation

2 Kings 12:4: Then Jehoash said to the priests, All the money of the sacred things which is brought into the house of the Lord, in current money, both the money of each man’s assessment and all the money which any man’s heart prompts him to bring into the house,…

February 19, 2006
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Joash, King of Judah

A short play I wrote for my children some years ago. Scene 1: Joash and Zechariah Commotion offstage, and then two boys come on, arguing and tussling over a stick. Joash: Give it back! Give it back! Zechariah: No, it’s mine. You took it from me. Joash: I didn’t. Yours…

February 19, 2006

Return to Routine

Some thoughts inspired by Dale Ralph Davis’ commentary on 2 Kings 12. The opening verses of 2 Kings 12 are formulaic. We have heard these words before, again and again, ad nausea in the history of 1-2 Kings: In the such and such year of so and so King of…

February 19, 2006

Exhortation

Joash was a faithful king, but his faithfulness was not complete. He remained faithful, the writer of Kings tells us, “all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him.” The parallel in 2 Chronicles 24 is more explicit: “Joash did what was right in the sight of the LORD…

February 19, 2006

Mark’s meta-irony, 2

Some thoughts inspired by student papers on Mark 15: The most obvious Markan irony in chapter 15 is the fact that the Roman soldiers mock Jesus for being king of the Jews when He in fact is the king of the Jews. God has the last laugh; God is not…

February 19, 2006

Mark’s meta-irony, 2

Some thoughts inspired by student papers on Mark 15: The most obvious Markan irony in chapter 15 is the fact that the Roman soldiers mock Jesus for being king of the Jews when He in fact is the king of the Jews. God has the last laugh; God is not…

February 19, 2006

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