Romans 13:1–2 makes a claim that many readers resist before they finish the sentence. It says every governing authority has been established by God. Not the good ones. Not the fair ones. Not the ones you voted for. Every one. And then it says that resisting those authorities is resisting God himself. Before examining what … Read more
Every debt has a due date. Every financial obligation, every borrowed favor, every unpaid tab eventually comes to an end. Paul knows this. And in Romans 13:8, he builds an argument around it. His point is not that Christians must live without debt of any kind. His point is sharper than that. Pay everything you … Read more
Israel was still bringing sacrifices when God said this. The altars were not empty. The rituals were being performed. But God looked at the whole picture and said: I want something you have not given me. Hosea 6:6 is not an attack on worship. It is a diagnosis of worship that has been hollowed out … Read more
Cyrus the Great stands out in Scripture as one of the most unexpected instruments God ever used. He was a pagan king, a Persian, and a conqueror who had no personal covenant with Israel’s God. Yet Isaiah named him by name more than a century before his birth. And when he finally came to power, … Read more
One miracle in the Gospels does more theological work than almost any other. Matthew 14:22–33 is not simply a story about a man walking on water. It is a carefully constructed account that reveals who Jesus is, what faith looks like under pressure, and what happens when a disciple’s eyes shift from Christ to circumstance. … Read more
Paul wrote this verse after describing the kind of suffering that would break most people. He had been beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned, left for dead, and constantly hunted by opponents of the gospel. In 2 Corinthians 1:8, he said the pressure had been so severe that he and his companions “despaired of life itself.” These were … Read more
A pastor once told the story of a man who came to faith not through a sermon, not through a long theological argument, but through a single verse written on a cardboard sign held up in the back of a stadium. The man had gone to a football game. He was not a Christian. He … Read more
Jesus had been beaten, mocked, stripped, and nailed to a cross. And His first words were a prayer for the people doing it. Not a curse. Not a plea for rescue. A petition for the forgiveness of His executioners. That is either the most extraordinary moment in all of human history, or it is something … Read more
More than four hundred years before the crucifixion, God described it. Not vaguely. Not in symbols that could mean anything. But with a specificity that would not make full sense until a Roman soldier pressed a spear into the side of a dead man on a Friday afternoon outside Jerusalem. Zechariah 12:10 is one of … Read more
A young man in our discipleship group brought up Daniel 1 during one of our sessions. He had been reading through the book of Daniel and stopped at verse 8. He read it twice and then looked up with a question none of us expected. “Was Daniel really risking his life over a meal?” The … Read more