In my expe­ri­ence Chris­tians often ask about the inter­pre­ta­tion of 1Cor. 13:

1 If I speak in the tongues of mor­tals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clang­ing cym­bal. 2 And if I have prophetic pow­ers, and under­stand all mys­ter­ies and all knowl­edge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove moun­tains, but do not have love, I am noth­ing. 3 If I give away all my pos­ses­sions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envi­ous or boast­ful or arro­gant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irri­ta­ble or resent­ful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrong­do­ing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophe­cies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowl­edge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we proph­esy only in part; 10 but when the com­plete comes, the par­tial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I rea­soned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to child­ish ways. 12 For now we see in a mir­ror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the great­est of these is love.

They often focus way too much on the spir­i­tual gifts and miss Paul’s point that speak­ing in tongues is con­sid­ered a child­ish thing that should van­ish with adult­hood. Doesn’t that mean that those who are so fond of speak­ing in tongues got stuck in child­hood and never want to grow up? (more…)

Share and Enjoy

In Matt. 15:21–28 a Canaan­ite woman approaches Jesus and asks him to heal her daughter.

21 Jesus went away from there, and with­drew into the dis­trict of Tyre and Sidon.

22 And a Canaan­ite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, say­ing, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daugh­ter is cru­elly demon-possessed.”

23 But He did not answer her a word. And His dis­ci­ples came and implored Him, say­ing, “Send her away, because she keeps shout­ing at us.”

24 But He answered and said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

25 But she came and began to bow down before Him, say­ing, “Lord, help me!”

26 And He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

27 But she said, “Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their mas­ters’ table.”

28 Then Jesus said to her, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish.” And her daugh­ter was healed at once.

It appears, after ini­tially reject­ing her request Jesus finally gave in to her nag­ging and granted her request. This may not be what hap­pened.  To under­stand what took place, per­haps we should first con­sider the mean­ing of the term “sent”. (more…)

Share and Enjoy

In Gen­e­sis 18 three men vis­its Abra­ham and promise that he would have a son through Sarah. Hear­ing this, stand­ing at the tent door, Sarah laughs.

Gen 18:
13 And the LORD said to Abra­ham, “Why did Sarah laugh, say­ing, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, when I am so old?‘
14 “Is any­thing too dif­fi­cult for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

Abra­ham appears to speak to only one of the men. Chris­tian­ity believes that this was the pre-incarnate Christ. (more…)

Share and Enjoy

Many Chris­tians are curi­ous about this mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure called Melchizedek. What was the reli­gion in Jerusalem before Abra­ham was called? How could he be the high Priest of the Most High when the office of the High Priest was only defined in the Law? Some­how this doesn’t fit into the pic­ture, at least, of tra­di­tional theology.

Gen 14:18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; now he was a priest of God Most High. (more…)

Share and Enjoy

In the pre­vi­ous post we have seen that the gospel (that is “good news”) is iden­ti­fied, for exam­ple, by Mark:

Mark 1:15
and say­ing, “The time is ful­filled, and the king­dom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

The mes­sage, that “the King­dom of God is near”, there­fore, is THE GOSPEL or GOOD NEWS — and every­thing else is commentary.

Of course, you will find peo­ple that claim that there is more than one gospel, such as

1. the gospel of the King­dom
2. the gospel of Christ

Their claim, how­ever, can­not stand because you can clearly see from the verses quoted in the ini­tial post that the gospel of the King­dom IS the gospel of God, which was preached by John the Bap­tist, Jesus, the dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles and also Paul, and it is also called the gospel of Christ. There is no other gospel. It is about God bring­ing about the King­dom pre­ceded by His judg­ment upon the world, from which judg­ment sin­ners had to be saved from, hence the urgency of the mes­sage. (more…)

Share and Enjoy