Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09024 Few pastoral situations are more delicate or more important than the question of what the church should do when a member sins publicly. Get it wrong in one direction — moving too quickly, too harshly, or with the wrong spirit — and the church becomes a place of fear rather than grace. Get…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08084 The Bible presents Satan as genuinely active in relation to human sin: not a mere symbol of moral evil but a personal, intelligent adversary with specific strategies and identifiable methods. It is equally clear that his activity never removes human responsibility. Both halves of that picture are essential, and collapsing either one distorts…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 6018 Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians contains one of the most practically searching distinctions in the New Testament. Writing about the response of the Corinthian church to a previous letter of correction, he draws a line between two kinds of sorrow over sin that feel superficially similar but move in completely opposite directions….
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 6019 Jeremiah 17:9 is one of the most searching verses in the Old Testament: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” It is the kind of statement that either strikes the reader as obviously true or provokes significant resistance, depending on how comfortable they are with a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 6015 The word “world” appears hundreds of times across the New Testament, and it does not always mean the same thing. Reading it as if it did produces significant confusion, particularly in passages that seem to say contradictory things. John 3:16 says God loved the world; 1 John 2:15 says do not love the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 6017 The question sounds almost too obvious to need answering. But the tendency to attribute one’s sin to the devil’s influence, to external circumstances, or to factors beyond one’s control is deeply embedded in human nature, going back to the very first act of human disobedience. The Bible addresses it with considerable directness, and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 6013 The phrase “besetting sin” is part of the common vocabulary of Christian conversation, yet it comes from a single verse in Hebrews and carries a meaning that is both precise and practically urgent. Understanding what the writer actually means helps to address a pattern of struggle that every believer knows something about, even…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 6014 Temptation is one of the universal experiences of the Christian life, and it raises a genuine question about God’s purposes. If He is perfectly good and desires our holiness, why does He permit the conditions under which we are drawn toward sin? The biblical answer is more carefully nuanced than a simple reassurance,…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 6012 Most people have heard of the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. They have been woven into Western culture for centuries, appearing in Dante’s Inferno, medieval art, and countless theological discussions. But where do they actually come from, and do they carry genuine biblical authority? Where They Come…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7009 Near the end of his first epistle, the apostle John writes something that has puzzled believers for centuries: “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that…