Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3027. Jesus is still human now, and His glorified humanity is not a temporary costume He will one day set aside once His earthly mission is fully wrapped up. The incarnation was permanent. The Son of God became a man at Bethlehem, and He remains a man today, seated in heaven, and He will…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3026. Only begotten Son is a phrase that has caused more confusion than almost any other title given to Jesus, because in ordinary English “begotten” sounds like it describes a beginning, a moment when the Son came into existence. That is precisely the wrong conclusion to draw, and getting it right matters enormously for…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3025. Jesus’ descent into Hades is a phrase drawn from the historic creeds, and it has confused almost as many Christians as it has clarified, because the words can sound as though Jesus spent three days suffering in hell. Scripture actually paints a rather different and far more comforting picture of what happened to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3022. Jesus is not idle in heaven, and His heavenly intercession for believers is only one part, though the most frequently mentioned part, of an active present ministry that Scripture describes in surprising detail. He ascended, but He did not retire. Let me set out the main things the Bible tells us He is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3021. Where is Jesus now is a question with a precise biblical answer, and theologians have a specific term for it: the session of Christ, His seated reign at the Father’s right hand following His ascension. This is not a vague spiritual metaphor. Scripture is remarkably concrete about His present location and activity. Let…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3019. Did Jesus really rise from the dead in a bodily resurrection, or is this simply a comforting story the early church told itself? I want to take that question with complete seriousness, because Christianity stands or falls on the answer, and honest people deserve more than a demand that they simply believe. Let…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3016. Jesus had to rise from the dead, and I mean that word “had” with full theological weight rather than as a loose figure of speech. His resurrection was not a fortunate rescue after a plan that had somehow gone wrong at the cross. It was the necessary and always intended second half of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3015. The transfiguration of Jesus is one of the strangest and most wonderful scenes in the Gospels, the moment when the ordinary appearance Jesus had worn for thirty years briefly gave way to something the disciples could barely describe. Matthew, Mark and Luke all record it, and each writer clearly regarded it as too…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3014. The resurrection of Jesus is the hinge on which the entire Christian faith turns, and I say that without any exaggeration. Paul makes the same point in blunt terms in 1 Corinthians 15: if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. He is not softening the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3013. Christ our advocate is one of those short phrases that manages to be both deeply pastoral and precisely theological all in a single breath. John writes, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the…