Matthew 5:4 (ESV) 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. What makes you sad? We all experience sadness from time to time. Some events even put us in a state of mourning. So, what kind of things cause you to mourn? The answer to these questions can say much about where […]
Matthew 5:3 (ESV) 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This first beatitude brings to my mind the words of Paul in 1 Cor. 2:14. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him…” (1 Corinthians 2:14). The […]
For the next several weeks, we are going to be considering the Sermon on the Mount. It is, without a doubt, the greatest sermon that has ever been preached. The primary reason for this is simple—it was preached by the greatest preacher who has ever preached, that, of course, being Jesus, the Christ. Before we […]
Alexander Campbell said, “The doctrine of the cross is the great central doctrine of the Bible, the very essence of Christianity–which explains all the peculiarities of the Christian system.” Campbell was right. There is no doctrine more vital and more important than the cross, for to preach the cross is to preach Christ and Him […]
In Acts 2, after the resurrection of Christ, we have the first gospel sermon preached by Peter. The theme of this sermon was Jesus, and particularly, His resurrection from the dead. God, Peter tells us, has raised Him up and made Him both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:29-36). Not only did God raise Jesus up […]
John 14:6 (ESV) 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Every aspect of this trio of “I am” statements is significant. Jesus begins by emphasizing that He is the way. He opened that way by the death that […]
In our last blog, I looked at a few passages that teach us that Jesus is God. I considered some of the statements of Paul in Colossians 1. A deeper dive into that chapter will reveal that Paul was emphasizing the preeminence of Christ, probably due to some false teaching that was taking place at […]
While Jesus was born in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:7), He was no ordinary man. Of all the people who have ever entered this world, Jesus was unique. Jesus was God manifested in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16). This is certainly not the only passage in the New Testament that refers to Jesus as […]
In Romans 3:21, Paul tells us that the righteousness of God, not His personal righteousness, but the righteousness, or justification, that He imputes to man, comes by faith rather than by the law. The law that he is speaking of is the law of Moses. Paul was constantly writing against the false teachings of the […]
A denominational preacher by the name of Stephan Gola wrote a book entitled, “Divorce, God’s Will.” In this book he sets forth the theory that all divorced people can remarry with God’s approval on the basis that “divorce was never a sin in itself—ever!” Is there any biblical truth to this claim that divorce is […]