Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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3 John 2, 11: Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers. Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not…
This is the first Sunday in the traditional season of Lent, and as we enter this season we’ve made some changes in the liturgy. We will not be raising our hands, and we will say rather than sing some of the dialogue between the pastor and congregation. Several of the…
A few minutes ago, you each answered a question I posed to you. I asked you if you would take her as your wife, and whether you would pledge yourself to her as her husband. I asked you whether you would take him as your husband to love and honor…
Thanks to my student Larson Hicks for the substance of this post. Until a command is fully carried out, we don’t have a complete grasp of what the command means or requires of us. “Take Normandy Beach,” solider are told, but that order demands courageous charges, sacrificial death, skillful feints,…
Much as I admire the Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians, I believe they erred when they stripped the church calendar to an annual cycle of fifty-two Sundays. They reduced the rich melody of the earlier calendar to a repetitive ticking of the clock. But the problem actually goes deeper. Israel’s festive…
Paul appears to be describing the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus in Colossians 2:11-12. The “stripping of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ” refers to the crucifixion of Jesus, which fulfills what the rite of circumcision symbolized - the removal of flesh. What is this…
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