Read Reflect I wish I could have been there at the so-called Jerusalem Council! I would have liked to hear just how they all interacted with the issues and each other. What Luke does tell us about the meeting can help churches in our day work through conflict. They took time to gather the facts. […]
Read More Holy Spirit, conflict resolution, grace-led life, graceRead Reflect As Luke continues to describe the emergence of the Church in the world, he brings us to one of the most critical turning points in the whole Story of God’s plan to save the world. Up to this point, Luke has been telling us about how the Holy Spirit was winning people to […]
Read More grace, law, circumcision, requirements for salvationRead Reflect Luke is telling us about how the early church was led to resolve a major crisis in God’s Story of salvation. A meeting takes place in Jerusalem. Peter, Paul and Barnabas share the exciting news about how God has been saving Gentiles, winning them to faith in Jesus as Messiah and Lord, giving […]
Read More gentiles, inclusion, God’s plan, ethnicityRead Reflect I wish I could have been there at the so-called Jerusalem Council! I would have liked to hear just how they all interacted with the issues and each other. What Luke does tell us about the meeting can help churches in our day work through conflict. They took time to gather the facts. […]
Read More grace-led life, grace, Holy Spirit, conflict resolutionRead Reflect Luke is such an honest man. He wants us to see how the Holy Spirit worked to spread the good news of Jesus Christ throughout the world. An exciting story! But it not an easy story. Luke is honest: the messengers of the good news face conflict and have to compromise, or do […]
Read More grace, conflict, moral issuesRead Reflect We call the book “The Acts of the Apostles.” But as we read the book we realize we should call it “The Acts of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles.” For as Luke shows us in this text, the real leader of God’s mission in the world is not an apostle, but the […]
Read More listening, Holy Spirit, leader, God’s mission, controlRead Reflect In this moving story we find four miracles of grace. First, a slave girl is set free. In the name of Jesus she is freed from demonic possession and from human economic exploitation. Thank you, Lord! Second, human beings worship God in really crummy circumstances. Luke says that around midnight, while lying on […]
Read More grace, freedom, miraclesRead Reflect The letter to the Galatians is one of the first the apostle Paul wrote. It is his angriest. Angry? The apostle of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, angry? Very angry. Why? Because some people had infiltrated the church with “another message,” or, as he literally puts it, “another good news.” People […]
Read More anger, salvation, good deeds, sufficiency of Jesus’ deathRead Reflect He who once persecuted the church became one of the church’s greatest theologians. Indeed, no one, except Jesus himself, has had a greater impact on the church’s theology than Paul. What caused the change in Paul? An apocalypse. That is the word Paul uses to describe his conversion. He had an apocalypse. In […]
Read More apocalypse, conversion, revelationRead Reflect No one else had had the experience the apostle Paul had. An apocalypse, a breaking-through-from-hiddenness by Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. And then, years alone with the risen and living Jesus in the desert, as Jesus further opened up the gospel to him. What a fortunate human being! After those years, […]
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