Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 3056. The genealogies of Jesus look, at first glance, like the least promising material in the New Testament: lists of names, many of them unpronounceable, standing between you and the story. I meet plenty of readers who confess they skip them entirely. I understand the temptation, but I want to persuade you that these…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3055. Open Matthew 1 and Luke 3 side by side and you will meet a genuine puzzle: two genealogies of Jesus that do not match. Matthew begins with Abraham and works forward to Joseph. Luke begins with Jesus and works backward all the way to Adam. That difference of direction is easy enough to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3052. The historical Jesus is a phrase you will meet in television documentaries, paperback bestsellers and undergraduate courses, usually delivered with a knowing tone: behind the Christ of the church’s faith, we are told, stands a rather different figure, the real Jesus of Nazareth, whom scholarship must excavate from beneath layers of legend. The…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 3048. The deity of Christ is often said to be a later invention, a doctrine bolted onto the memory of a humble rabbi by councils and emperors centuries after his death. You will hear it in university seminars, in bestselling novels and from courteous visitors at your door: Jesus himself, we are assured, never…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3054. Is Jesus Michael the archangel? If you have ever spent an hour on the doorstep with Jehovah’s Witnesses, you will have met this claim, for it is a load-bearing wall of Watchtower theology: the Son, they teach, is really Michael, the first and greatest created being. The idea also had a home in…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3053. How is Jesus different from other religious leaders? It is one of the most common questions a thoughtful unbeliever asks, and it deserves a serious answer rather than a slogan. The world has produced many revered religious leaders: Moses and Muhammad, Buddha and Confucius, gurus and philosophers beyond counting. Popular culture likes to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3046. Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29). With those words John the Baptist introduced Jesus to Israel, and he chose his image with care. He did not say behold the Lion, or the King, or even the Messiah, though all would have been true. He…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3045. Messiah and Christ both mean the anointed one, and that single fact unlocks more of your Bible than almost any other piece of vocabulary. Many people assume Christ is simply Jesus’ surname, as though Joseph and Mary were Mr and Mrs Christ of Nazareth. It is nothing of the kind. It is a…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 3044. Son of David is the very first title given to Jesus in the New Testament: ‘The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham’ (Matthew 1:1). Blind men shouted it in the streets, crowds sang it on Palm Sunday, and the religious leaders bristled every time…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3043. Jesus is Lord. Three words, and the earliest, shortest confession of the Christian faith (Romans 10:9). Long before the creeds of the councils, before the New Testament was even complete, believers were baptised saying it, persecuted for it, and executed rather than transfer it to Caesar. Yet familiarity has flattened it. For many…