After promising him a son who would inherit the covenant promise to rescue the world, God commands Abraham to sacrifice him. And Abraham's willingness to do so is not a testament to his great capacity to believe in God, but his confidence in God's great...
Being tempted and giving in to sin is like being seduced, impregnated, and eventually killed by the baby. But God, our heavenly Father, has brought us to birth by the word of His gospel so that we can experience his good and perfect gift, the first and best of his...
Paul's hardships are well known – he lived his life as an ambassador for Christ as a walking dead man. But while some of his fellow Christians thought this made him a failure, he insists in 2 Corinthians that his weakness and impending death made him look...
In some mythologies there are places that are “thin”: spots where the divine is really close to the experienced word. Moderns Westerners, of course, believe all places are “thick”: essentially closed off to the transcendent world. But at the Transfiguration Jesus...
Paul believes that in Christ he has been made free from all human control, but instead of exercising that right to serve himself he gives that freedom away in order to preach the gospel free of charge. This call to living in Christian freedom for the sake of serving...
The commonly held view in the West that freedom and knowledge are the most important values leads to the running over of church members who disagree about issues not commanded or forbidden by God, but for Paul, the goal of the Christian life is not head knowledge or...
