Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9105. What does 1 Timothy 2:12 mean in context? Few verses in the New Testament are quoted more often with less attention to what surrounds them, and few are dismissed more quickly by people who have decided in advance what Paul is allowed to say. I want to walk through the passage carefully, because…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6022. Paul warns Timothy about teachers with a seared conscience, and the image he chooses is a surgical one. He is describing a moral sense that has been burned until the nerve endings no longer report anything at all. It is one of the bleakest phrases in the New Testament, and it is worth…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1057. public Scripture reading is commanded in the New Testament, not simply permitted as an optional liturgical flourish, and I think many churches, my own included at various points, have quietly let the practice shrink until Scripture is heard mainly in short snippets attached to a sermon rather than read at length in its…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4. Why does Paul call right teaching sound doctrine, and what does the word sound actually mean? When he tells Titus to ‘teach what accords with sound doctrine’ (Titus 2:1), he reaches for a word that might surprise you. The Greek term behind sound is hygiaino, and its plainest meaning is healthy or wholesome….