Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04047 When Paul writes that “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7), he is describing something that belongs to the entire church across all ages. Spiritual gifts are not occasional divine extras for particularly devout believers. They are the normal means by which the Spirit…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 04048 The gift of prophecy is among the most discussed and most misunderstood gifts in the New Testament. Some believers treat every impression or sense of spiritual prompting as “a word from the Lord.” Others conclude that genuine prophecy ended with the apostolic age and that anyone claiming to prophesy today is at best…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04044 Being sensitive to the Spirit’s leading is one of those phrases that Christians use regularly but rarely unpack. It can sound mystical or subjective — as though some believers have a special spiritual sixth sense that others lack. But the New Testament’s teaching on this is more concrete and more accessible than that….
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04045 There are few more striking statements in the New Testament than Paul’s declaration in 1 Corinthians 6:19: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” That a human body — mortal, material, subject to hunger and tiredness and decay —…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04042 Most Christians have heard that it is possible to grieve the Holy Spirit. The phrase comes from Ephesians 4:30, where Paul writes: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” But what does grieving the Spirit actually look like in everyday life? And…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04043 Galatians 5:16-25 contains one of the most practically important passages in Paul’s letters. In a single sustained argument, he sets out two contrasting ways of living: life driven by the flesh, and life shaped by the Spirit. The contrast is not between the irreligious and the religious. It runs through the middle of…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04040 When Jesus told Nicodemus that no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit (John 3:5), Nicodemus was baffled. The idea that a grown man could somehow be born again struck him as absurd. But Jesus was pointing to something far more radical than a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04041 Few passages in the New Testament have generated more theological controversy than Hebrews 6:4-6. Here the writer describes people who have been “enlightened,” who have “tasted the heavenly gift,” who have “shared in the Holy Spirit,” and who have “tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 03017 Most Christians use the names “Jesus” and “Christ” interchangeably, and there is nothing wrong with that. But the two words are doing very different things. One is a personal name; the other is a title of office. Understanding the distinction opens up something genuinely rich about who he is and what God was…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 10066 Replacement theology, also called supersessionism, is the belief that the Church has permanently replaced Israel in God’s plan, and that the promises God made to Israel in the Old Testament are now fulfilled spiritually in the Church rather than literally in the nation of Israel. This teaching, whilst widely held throughout church history,…