Truth AND Love

John is often called “John the Beloved”; he refers to himself as “The disciple Jesus loved”. (John 20:2) In today’s Bible reading, John emphasizes the two-pronged approach to pleasing God: Love and Truth. (2 John 1:4-6, 9) If you’re going to walk with Jesus, you can’t have one without the other. Each day, as I…

Haters Gonna Hate

In today’s Bible reading, John offers the comforting words that haters are going to hate Believers. Gee, thanks John! You sound just like Job’s encouraging friends! But hould we really expect anything else from lost people? Lost people are going to act like lost people! Besides, if they hated Jesus, why would they feel different…

Is Critical Theory Biblical?

In light of the past three months of “mostly peaceful protests” in Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, and New York, the issue of Critical Theory has been on the minds of many. In fact, Critical Theory has been a discussion topic in the Southern Baptist Convention in recent years. Admittedly, I am late to the party and…

From Comfort to Pain

I mentioned yesterday the importance of noting repeated words and phrases in a limited number of Bible verses. In today’s Bible reading, “pain” and its derivatives occur seven times in 2 Corinthians 2:1-7. Evidently not all was well between the Apostle and the church at Corinth. Where the first paragraph in 2 Corinthians 1 was…

Order, Not Chaos

Paul began talking about spiritual gifts with 1 Corinthians 12. In yesterday’s reading (Chapter 13), he talked about love. In today’s Bible reading, he continues addressing spiritual gifts, specifically how the gifts should be used in the church setting. The first thing to note is that things were not just a little bit different in…