Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10012 The return of Jesus is not a quiet, unnoticed event. It is the most dramatic, world-changing moment in all of history. Everything changes when Jesus comes back. The question is not whether He will return, for Scripture is abundantly clear on that point, but what happens when He does. The answer unfolds in…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 60085 Few passages in the New Testament have generated more interpretive discussion than 1 Peter 3:18–20: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he also went and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 60096 The question of whether Jonah was swallowed by a great fish and survived is one that divides those who approach Scripture assuming miracles cannot occur and those who take the text on its own terms. For the reader who accepts that the God who created the ocean and everything in it is capable…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07075 The word “gospel” appears so frequently in Christian conversation that it can begin to lose its force through familiarity. But the gospel is not a general category of good religious news or a vague sense of divine goodwill toward humanity. It has a specific content, and that content can be stated with considerable…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10167 The desire to know whether our departed loved ones can see us is one of the most deeply felt questions in the Christian life. It is asked at funerals, in hospital rooms, and in the quiet grief of ordinary days. The answer requires a careful handling of what Scripture says, what it does…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04102 John 20:22 sits in the Gospel of John like a question mark. On the evening of resurrection Sunday, Jesus appears to the gathered disciples, breathes on them, and says “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The same disciples will be in Jerusalem fifty days later when the Spirit falls with wind and fire at Pentecost….
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04057 The resurrection of the dead is at the heart of Christian hope, and it is easy to speak of it in terms of God’s power without attending to the specific way the New Testament describes how that power operates. When Scripture speaks about resurrection, the Holy Spirit is presented not merely as a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04034 The relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit during the earthly ministry is one of the most theologically significant and pastorally instructive areas of New Testament study. Jesus is fully God, the eternal second Person of the Trinity. And yet, during His incarnate life, He chose to live in dependence on the Spirit…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 03017 Most Christians use the names “Jesus” and “Christ” interchangeably, and there is nothing wrong with that. But the two words are doing very different things. One is a personal name; the other is a title of office. Understanding the distinction opens up something genuinely rich about who he is and what God was…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 03014 The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not an optional extra attached to the Christian faith for those who find it encouraging. It is the event on which everything stands or falls. Paul is blunt about this in 1 Corinthians 15:17: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you…