Posts from 2022

When we talk about Christmas, we’re talking about the incarnation, about the fullness of God being found to be suddenly and mysteriously human. We Christians get to point at Jesus, someone poor, homeless, gentle, controversial, and despised, and say, “That’s who our God is.” Christmas and incarnation are the good news that God is not far away. God is near, intimately near. And actually, in order to talk about Christmas, we can turn to Matthew or Luke as we often…

In Acts 17, Luke characterizes Athens as a place where people “would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new,” a whole city that treats ideas like commodities, traded every day for the gratification that comes from hearing something new and interesting. This gratification is just one more idol alongside all the others Paul encounters in Athens. He’s here waiting for Silas and Timothy, and in the meantime will converse with people all over town. He quickly…

In Acts 8 we meet two interesting characters. Philip the apostle and Simon the magician. Philip is preaching and healing through the power of the Holy Spirit. Simon is someone in touch with the spiritual realm to also do incredible things. Likely he’s doing many of the same things Philip is doing through the power of the Holy Spirit. But Luke shows us that there’s a great difference between the two. Simon’s magic results in his own personal glory. But…

By Acts 6, the Jerusalem church so far has become known primarily for two things: proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus, and being a source of radical generosity. As we’ve already seen, people like Barnabas are selling everything they own, liquidating all their assets, and bringing it to the church, trusting that that money will end up exactly where God wants it. And until chapter 6, it’s kind of looked like this was being done perfectly.    But now, a new…

When Peter and John go up to the Jerusalem temple one afternoon, they meet a man who’s been unable to walk his whole life. Every day he would have someone carry him to the temple gate so that he could ask for whatever generosity some passerby might feel like offering. As Peter and John walk by, he asks them for the same alms he asks of everyone. “I have no silver or gold,” Peter tells him, “but what I have…

“We say, ‘Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.’ How then was it reckoned to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, and likewise the…

There’s a phrase that pops up five times in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, but nowhere else in his other letters (or in the whole New Testament for that matter).  The phrase is, “in the heavenly places.” Of course Paul has something to say about heaven elsewhere in his letters, but this exact phrase belongs only to Ephesians. Why only Ephesians? We can’t really answer that, but we can at least see what Paul is doing with the phrase here…