Studying the Person and work of Jesus Christ—His deity, humanity, virgin birth, sinless life, atoning death, resurrection, ascension, and future return.
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 60022 The claim that Jesus of Nazareth rose bodily from the dead is either the most important fact in human history or the most successful deception ever perpetrated. There is no middle ground. If it happened, it changes everything about what it means to be human, what death is, and who God is. If…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 03016 The question of why Jesus had to rise is not the same as asking why the resurrection matters, though the two are closely related. To ask why He had to rise is to ask what would have been left incomplete, unresolved, or false had the tomb remained occupied. The answer is sobering: without…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 3063 Few statements in the Apostles’ Creed have generated more confusion than the phrase “He descended into hell.” What does it mean? Did Jesus, between His death and resurrection, actually go to the place of the damned? Was He suffering there? Preaching there? Triumphing there? Christians have debated this for centuries, and sorting through…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 2071 “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). These words, spoken by Jesus on the night of his arrest, have been among the most contested in Christian theology. Arians used them to argue that Jesus is a lesser being than the Father. Others have suggested they refer only to Jesus’ incarnate condition and…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 60082 The Word of Faith movement is one of the most widely diffused streams of popular Christianity in the world today, with roots in mid-twentieth century America and branches now extending across every continent. Its central teachings about health, wealth, confession, and the power of spoken faith are encountered across television networks, megachurches, and…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 03087 The book of Ruth is four chapters long and tells a story set during the period of the judges. It could be read simply as a moving account of loyalty, loss, and redemption within an Israelite family. But the genealogy at its close, tracing a line from Perez through Boaz to David (Ruth…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 7086 The term “scapegoat” has passed so thoroughly into ordinary language, used to describe anyone blamed for things they did not do, that its biblical origins can become obscured. The original scapegoat appears in Leviticus 16, as part of the Day of Atonement ritual, and it provides one of the most vivid pictures in…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3013 1 John 2:1 is one of those verses that manages to be both deeply pastoral and precisely theological in the same breath: “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 Father, Jesus Christ the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 2013 The phrase ‘eternal generation of the Son’ appears in no single verse of Scripture in those exact words, and that immediately raises a legitimate question: is this a doctrine the church developed to explain what Scripture teaches, or is it an addition that goes beyond what Scripture says? The answer matters, because the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 02030 James 1:13 states it plainly: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” That sounds straightforward enough. Yet the same New Testament that gives us that verse also tells us that Jesus was tempted…