Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1049. Few passages in the Gospels are as beloved as the story of the woman caught adultery, found in John 7:53 through 8:11. Jesus’ words, “let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her”, have become proverbial even among people who have never opened a Bible…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 4137. Three times in the farewell discourse of Jesus, recorded in John 14-16, the Holy Spirit is called “the Spirit of truth.” The first occurrence is in John 14:17, the second in 15:26, and the third in 16:13. Each appearance of the title adds something specific to our understanding of why this title belongs…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4136. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper” (John 14:16). The phrase “another Helper in John 14” is one of the richest descriptions of the Holy Spirit in all of Scripture, and a single Greek word at its centre carries more theological weight than most readers realise. Jesus…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4135. “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:38). The rivers of living water are Jesus’s own image for the Holy Spirit, and the setting in which He speaks these words adds considerable weight to them. This is not a quiet…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04029 The role of the Spirit in worship is something I wish more congregations understood, because so much confusion about worship comes from forgetting it. We argue endlessly about styles, instruments, song choices and volume, as though worship were a matter of getting the externals right. Jesus cut straight past all of that in…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 11099 In much of the Western church, persecution is something that happens to other people, to Christians in restricted nations, to believers in hostile cultures, to the early church. The assumption is that the normal Christian life, at least in a free society, should be relatively comfortable. Scripture does not share this assumption. The…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 12002 Situational ethics is one of those frameworks that sounds reasonable on the surface but unravels when examined carefully. The basic claim is that moral decisions should be made entirely on the basis of the situation at hand, with love as the only absolute principle, and that rigid moral rules should give way when…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 7104 This is perhaps the most important question anyone can ask: How I can have a personal relationship with Jesus. Christianity is not primarily about following a set of rules or joining an institution. It is about knowing a person, Jesus Christ, and being known by Him. The good news is that a personal…
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhat is eternal security? Can we lose our salvation? No! is the emphatic answer.
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 3001 This is perhaps the most important question any person can ask. It is the question Jesus Himself put to His disciples at Caesarea Philippi: “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15). Your answer to this question determines your eternal destiny. It is not enough to know about Jesus; you must know…