Gospels are not biographies, nor are they just collections of sayings, they focus on Jesus’ death and resurrection. Without either event can’t understand Jesus or the gospel. But we also to see and understand that Jesus is God incarnate and that Jesus is risen else his dearth and the disciples turnaround between end of gospels [&hellip...
In the legal manouvreing at the start of this reading Paul quotes Isaiah: “Listen and listen but not understand look and look but not see!” But if the Bible is perspicuous (listen to The Perspicuity of Scripture) so is creation: we can’t miss evidence of God, but sometimes we don’t want to hear… And what [&hellip...
These five chapters describe Paul’s second and third missionary journeys, amid many trips covering between them about a decade there are lots of exciting stories. The approach Paul took in Athens is of particular interest, it’s a very early example of Christianity not merely translating but contextualising – expressing the message not only in the [&hellip...
Oh, boy! Oh, boy 🙂 What a chapter!? This chapter, full of the minutes of, or rather a report on, the first recorded business meeting of the Christian church, both raises and solves a huge problem Christians have with Scripture, and comes close to, but avoids two of the commonest contemporary (in New Zealand Baptist [&hellip...
Paul’s summarises the Old Testament story from a Jewish-Christian perspective as a world looking for a saviour. Then John showed that still “today” not just in ancient times people are looking for a saviour. Jesus not only died, but rose, and this is the keeping of God’s ancient promises. In Jesus God fills out, fully, [&hellip...
“The Road” or “The Way” common Biblical picture language for a way of life or the direction we are “going”, but it is also used several times in Acts (almost, or probably, only in Acts) as a name for being a Christian. It is a good name because metanoia, repentance, is about turning round and [&hellip...
This week’s readings tell the exciting story of how the Church broke loose. Till this time faith and culture had been intimately related. So if you wanted to convert to Judaism you became Jewish and adopted the rules and customs of Jewish life. In particular you adopted the 613 rules of the Torah. The first [&hellip...
In Matt 26 when Peter was supposed to be praying with Jesus he went to sleep, here a similar physical need interrupts his prayer, he’s hungry (in Peter’s retelling says he fell asleep here too 🙂 But God uses the two situations quite differently – here his hunger gives him a vision! When God says… [&hellip...
There are a couple of things to notice here: firstly how Luke stresses the role of the Holy Spirit (or rather, God, since at the start it is “an angel of the Lord”) it may have been a desert/wilderness road but like Abraham in Gen 12 “he got up and went” our response to such [&hellip...
Stephen is a “martyr” (in English that means someone who dies for their beliefs, but in Greek it means someone who bears witness to their faith). Stephen points to Jesus, and witnesses to truth – even at expense of speaking against “holy” things. In his defense he retells the story of salvation Heilsgeschichte but focused [&hellip...
