Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4077. The laying on hands appears repeatedly in the Acts narratives connected to the Spirit’s reception, and I want to work through those specific passages carefully, because the pattern is genuinely more varied than a single, simplified formula for how believers receive the Spirit today. Getting this right matters, because some traditions have built…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1041. Christocentric interpretation reads the whole of Scripture, Old Testament and New, as a unified story that finds its centre and its goal in Jesus Christ. This is not a modern invention layered onto the text from outside. It is the reading strategy Jesus Himself modelled and explicitly commanded, and taking it seriously changes…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1040. Biblical genre is the single most overlooked factor in careless Bible reading, and identifying it correctly is not an optional refinement of interpretation but a basic requirement of reading any piece of literature responsibly, biblical or otherwise. Nobody reads a newspaper editorial the same way they read a birthday card, and nobody should…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1039. Biblical typology is the study of persons, events, and institutions in the Old Testament that God designed in advance to prefigure greater realities fulfilled in Christ and the new covenant. It is one of the most rewarding areas of biblical study once its rules are properly understood, and one of the most abused…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1038. Allegorical interpretation treats a biblical text as a coded surface concealing a deeper, often quite different, spiritual meaning beneath it, and it has a long and influential history in the church, particularly through the Alexandrian tradition associated with Origen and later through much of medieval exegesis. The question of whether allegorical interpretation should…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1037. Literal interpretation is the single most misunderstood term in the whole discussion of how we read the Bible, mostly because critics and defenders alike often use it to mean something it was never meant to mean. I want to state plainly at the outset what this method actually is, because getting the definition…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4076. Second blessing language has circulated in evangelical churches for well over a century, usually describing a dramatic, identifiable post-conversion experience in which a believer receives a fuller measure of the Spirit than they had at conversion. The phrase carries real emotional weight for many Christians who have had a genuinely significant spiritual experience…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4075. Spirit baptism and water baptism are related but distinct realities, and confusing the two has caused more pastoral trouble in Baptist churches than almost any other misunderstanding in this area of doctrine. One is an invisible act performed by the Spirit at the moment a person believes. The other is a visible, physical…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4074. The counsel of God is not a phrase Scripture uses lightly. It describes the settled purpose and plan that God formed within Himself before He ever spoke creation into being, and the question of what part the Holy Spirit plays within that counsel takes us into some of the most careful thinking the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4072. The deep things of God are the subject of one of Paul’s boldest claims about the Holy Spirit, made in passing in a letter to a fractious, spiritually immature congregation in Corinth. In 1 Corinthians 2:10 he writes that God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches…