Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 0025 The book of Acts gives us a snapshot of the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem, immediately after the Day of Pentecost. Three thousand people had just been baptised. The church had suddenly grown from a small band of disciples to a substantial movement. And Luke tells us how they lived: “And they devoted…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3052 You may have heard the phrase ‘the historical Jesus’ and wondered what it means. Is it different from the Jesus we read about in the Gospels? The term comes from academic scholarship and refers to attempts to reconstruct who Jesus was using historical-critical methods. For Bible-believing Christians, there is only one Jesus, the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3056 Genealogies can seem like the driest parts of the Bible. Lists of names, one after another, with difficult pronunciations and unfamiliar figures. Many readers skip straight past them. But the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke are far more significant than they first appear. They are not mere record-keeping. They are theological…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3055 When you read Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel, you encounter something puzzling. Both give genealogies of Jesus, but they are different. Matthew traces the line from Abraham through David to Joseph. Luke traces the line from Jesus back through David to Adam. But the differences go beyond direction. Even within the section from…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3057 Jesus was a master storyteller. When crowds gathered to hear him, he often taught through parables: short, vivid stories drawn from everyday life. The sower and the seed, the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, the talents, the pearl of great price. These images have shaped the imagination of the world for two thousand…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3058 The Gospels tell us about Jesus’ birth, his presentation at the Temple, the visit of the Magi, the flight to Egypt, and his family’s return to Nazareth. Then there is silence. Luke alone records a brief glimpse of Jesus at age twelve in the Temple. After that, nothing until his baptism at around…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3059 Every few years, some book or documentary claims to have discovered evidence that Jesus was married. Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code popularised the idea that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children. In 2012, a fragment called the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” made headlines before being exposed as a modern forgery….
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 3044 When we read the Gospels, we encounter the title ‘Son of David’ applied to Jesus with striking frequency. The blind call out to Him using this name. The crowds shout it during His triumphal entry. Matthew opens his entire Gospel by declaring Jesus to be “the son of David, the son of Abraham”…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 3048 Some claim that Jesus never actually said He was God – that this was a later invention by the Church. They point out that Jesus often called Himself the “Son of Man” and referred to God as His Father, suggesting distinction rather than identity. Is this accurate? Did Jesus actually claim to be…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 3030 The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness raises a profound question. If Jesus is God, and God cannot sin, then was His temptation genuine? Can a temptation be real if there is no possibility of yielding to it? Some argue that if Jesus could not sin, His temptation was merely a show, a…