Life Is a Test: Suffering and the Meaning of Life

The Scapegoat in Atonement – Satan’s Power of Death is Nullified Through Christ’s Decent Into Hades

There is a line in Hebrews that Christians quote often, but I am not sure we have always stopped long enough to ask what it actually means. Hebrews says that Jesus became flesh and blood so that through death he might destroy the devil. Hebrews 2:14-15 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh […]

The Resurrection Is More Important Than You Think

If you have ever sat through an Easter sermon and walked away faintly dissatisfied with the explanation of why the resurrection matters, you are not alone. Preachers rightly treat it as the hinge of the Christian faith. Paul says that if it did not happen, we are still in our sins, so it clearly has […]

More on the Gospel and Faith (You Don’t Know What These Words Mean)

There are two words that sit right at the center of everything Christians talk about. Two words you’ve heard a thousand times. Gospel. And faith. Every pastor assumes that everybody knows what these words mean. But what I want to suggest to you today is that most of us don’t really know what either of […]

Life Is a Test: Suffering and the Meaning of Life

There’s a kind of honesty that sounds cruel at first but turns out to be exactly what people need to hear. In 1914, Ernest Shackleton reportedly placed an advertisement in a London newspaper for his Antarctic expedition. The ad read something like this: Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long months of […]

What Is Faith, Really? Why the Greek Word Pistis Changes Everything

A deep dive into the gospel, allegiance, and why understanding one Greek word resolves some of the New Testament’s most perplexing tensions. Most of us think we know what faith is. You believe something. Maybe you trust it. It happens in your head, it’s invisible, and according to a lot of modern Christianity, that’s basically […]