Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3081. The fig tree that Jesus cursed has puzzled readers for centuries, and I understand why: at first glance it looks like an overreaction to a piece of vegetation, and Mark even tells us “it was not the season for figs” (Mark 11:13). Why blast a tree for lacking fruit it was not yet…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3080. The humour of Jesus is a subject that makes some Christians nervous, as though laughter were somehow beneath the Man of Sorrows. Nobody asks this question expecting a catalogue of recorded punchlines, and the Gospels preserve no verse that says “Jesus laughed”. But the question behind the question is a serious one: was…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 3079. Jesus walking on water tends to provoke one of two responses: straightforward acceptance of a miracle performed by the Son of God, or a hunt for some naturalistic explanation that keeps the story while quietly removing the supernatural from it. Was He really treading the surface of the Sea of Galilee in a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3078. The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is one of the most arresting phrases in the whole Bible, and depending on which translation you pick up, Revelation 13:8 can sound as though Jesus was actually crucified before the world was even made. That is a staggering thought. Was the cross somehow…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3077. The trials of Jesus, when you lay the four Gospel accounts side by side, turn out to number six distinct hearings, three before Jewish authorities and three before Roman ones, all crammed into the hours between His arrest in Gethsemane and the sentence of crucifixion the next morning. Six hearings, two legal systems,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3075. That Jesus learned obedience is the startling claim of Hebrews 5:8: “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” Read that slowly and the questions crowd in. If Jesus is God, and God knows everything, what was left for Him to learn? And if He learned obedience, does that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3074. “Jesus wept” is the shortest verse in our English Bibles, and it may be the most surprising, because the One shedding tears at the tomb of Lazarus knew perfectly well that within minutes He would call the dead man out alive. Why cry at a funeral you are about to overturn? If you…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3073. The virgin birth is not a decorative detail on the edge of the Christmas story; it is load-bearing doctrine, and if you remove it the whole structure of the Gospel begins to crack. Some treat it as a pious legend that grew up around Jesus after the fact, something a modern believer can…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3068. The Jewish identity of Jesus is the plainest fact on the pages of the four Gospels, yet the question in our title still catches people out. Was Jesus a Jew or a Christian? Put simply: Jesus was a Jew, with a Jewish identity as thorough as any man who ever lived, and he…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3067. Was Jesus a political revolutionary, executed for taking on an empire? Plenty of voices say so, and every age tries to recruit him; our politicised age has recruited him with both hands. To some he is a first-century liberation leader, a political revolutionary confronting Roman oppression and economic injustice. To others he is…