Some Jews come to ask Jesus to plainly declare Himself the Christ, but He tells them what He already said, but they take up stones because Jesus makes Himself out to be God. Jesus tells them that they do the same thing when they use the title of God for their religious. Jesus then hears that Lazarus has died. He stays for two more days and then returns Judea to Lazarus' home. Thomas cynically suggests that they will be going to their deaths by returning to Judea, as well. When Jesus visits the f...
Jan 22, 2011•28 min
Jesus tells the parable of the Good Shepherd, which recalls Zechariah 11, Ezekiel 34, and Malachi 2. A father must feed his children first, and likewise the priests must tend their flocks before themselves. Jesus uses an example of sheep who come to the shepherd's name to explain Himself. He is the gate for the sheep, and while a hireling would abandon his flock, the good shepherd will not. Jesus will put his life down voluntarily to save His flock, and He will pick it up again. This is somethin...
Jan 15, 2011•46 min
Jesus and the authorities get into a heated argument. Jesus tells them that He knows the will of the Father, and that the authorities do not. Jesus then says that Abraham saw His day, and that before Abraham was, I am, referring to the name of God. The authorities then take up stones against Jesus, but He escapes. Jesus then heals a man born blind, but the Pharisees question the man, who tells them that Jesus did it on the Sabbath, and defends Jesus. The Pharisees throw the man out, who goes and...
Jan 08, 2011•33 min
John 8 begins with the narrative of the woman caught in adultery. This section, while an authentic eyewitness account of the Gospel, was probably not written by John, since early manuscripts attached it to different gospels or different parts of John, but it was too important to be left out of the Gospel altogether. Jesus proclaims that He is the Light of the world. Darkness is used to denote that which is not of God throughout the Bible. Psalms 27, 36, 119, Numbers 6, and Isaiah 49 correlate li...
Jan 01, 2011•47 min
Jesus says that He is the bread which has come down from Heaven, that we must physically eat His body to have eternal life, and that He will raise those who believe on the last day, and this upsets many of his followers. Jesus states these things clearly and without equivocation and makes no attempt to offer a more crowd-pleasing teaching. John next tells of Jesus teaching at the Fesival of Booths, where Jesus states that His teaching comes from God, not from any man, which hearkens back to Jere...
Dec 25, 2010•37 min
Jesus is provoking the religious with His statements; if the statements are true, we must worship Him, if they be false, His blasphemy would carry the punishment of death. Whatever His followers knew, His detractors understood this. A number of people listen to Jesus preach for a day, and by the end, they are hungry. Jesus finds a boy with five barley loaves and two small fish. With this, five thousand are fed, and the scraps from the loaves (and from no other food) fill up twelve baskets. This ...
Dec 18, 2010•44 min
Jesus heals a man who has been paralyzed for 38 years. The man takes up his mat and is accused for taking up his mat on the Sabbath, ignoring the great feat of healing that just took place. When pressed on this point, Jesus declares that He is working on the sabbath because His father is working. This stirs up some people because while there was a Jewish tradition of calling God our father, calling Him one's own father means that the speaker is either blaspheming or the begotten son of God. Jesu...
Dec 11, 2010•32 min
Jesus returns to Galilee after the arrest of John, but even at that time, the disciples of Jesus were baptising more people than John the Baptist. Even still, there is no evidence that any baptisms were sacramental baptisms before Pentecost. As He travels through Samaria, and runs into a woman who is drawing water at high noon, trying to avoid the others in the community. Jesus baits the woman into asking Him about the "living water" that he can give her. He explains that this water will become ...
Dec 04, 2010•49 min
John identifies several Passovers that span the length of Christ's ministry, and the first Passover that is identified is the one when Jesus cleanses the temple. Since the synoptic gospels say that this happened on the last week before Jesus' death, this raises the very real possibility that Christ cleansed it more than once. Jerusalem was packed during the days leading up the Passover, and to avoid having travelers driving livestock through the town, the livestock trade was brought into the out...
Nov 27, 2010•38 min
John's gospel takes the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist at length, because John the Evangelist was a disciple of John the Baptist, and then discusses several signs. A sign is something that signifies something else, in this case, pointing to the spiritual reality that we might not otherwise notice. The first sign is the Wedding Feast at Cana. The wine runs out at a wedding feast, and Mary (never called by name in John's gospel) asks him to do something. Jesus asks what the situation had to ...
Nov 20, 2010•43 min
Jesus was present at the creation, and all created things were created through Him. In that beginning, the Son was in dynamic relationship with the Father. John talks in the introduction about logos (the Word), life and light, which can be used, along with love, as a mnemonic of John's themes for English speakers. John the Evangelist then takes time to talk about John the Baptist. The Jewish establishment came to ask John who he was shortly after he baptised Jesus, and John tells them that he is...
Nov 13, 2010•41 min
The Church recognizes four apostolic witnesses to the Gospel. Three of them are known as synoptic, that is, they recount the same events. The Gospel according to John, however, recounts many events that do not appear in the other three. John states that he is writing so that we may believe, but it seems that this was written to Christians, so that they might truly believe in a time when the Jewish and Christian groups were diverging. Irenaeus, who was the disciple of one of John's disciples, sta...
Nov 06, 2010•40 min
Paul began Romans talking about how many gifts the Roman church had. At the end, Paul makes reference to some times that he has had to remind them. The final doxology talks about the obedience of faith echoes the identical phrase at the start. Paul also tells them that he intends to make the Gentiles a priestly offering to God. Here he does not use the term for the governing priest (presbyter), but rather the Greek term for priest (hieros). The Greek term was not used for the office of priest, s...
Oct 23, 2010•41 min
Paul continues that those of us who are strong must "bear with the failings of the weak" rather than pleasing ourselves. It is in this sense that we should try to live in harmony with our neighbors--not a false harmony of placation, but truly tying to build him up in faith. A Jewish Christian, for example, may opt to keep some of the Old Testament observances, and a Gentile should not try to dissuade him from doing that. Likewise, a Gentile will not be bound by the old precepts, and through that...
Oct 23, 2010•39 min
We are to welcome those weak in faith, and by the same token, we are not to allow those less afflicted with scrupulosity to set the standards. God has welcomed them both, and it is not our place to pass judgment. We will all stand in judgment before God, and we should leave Him that task. This does not mean that we cannot in charity diplomatically object to errors in the essential things of religion. Even though we are to provide allowances for opinions, we are not to give those who hold stricte...
Oct 06, 2010•33 min
We are to be subject to governing authorities, because they get their authority from God. Even while Rome treated the Jews and the Christians harshly, Rome's infrastructure is what allowed Christianity to flourish. Paul knows that there is no need of insurrection, since God will provide for His people what they need. These governing authorities have ben allowed to exist by God, therefore, he who resists them resists what God has appointed. This does not mean that these rulers are good, or that t...
Oct 06, 2010•47 min
It may be tempting to be proud of the gifts that God has given us, especially if they are striking gifts, like the gift of prophecy, but we have all been given gifts and these gifts do not make us great, but rather reflect back on God who has given them to us. These gifts must be administered with virtue. Paul gives a list of things that Christians must do, among them to hate evil, love good, and to repay evil with good. If you do that, those who do evil against you will either bring distress up...
Oct 02, 2010•30 min
Paul asks us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. Some religions claim that the body is evil and thus that we should be ascetics. Others claim that since our bodies are not of any consequence, we should be free to do whatever we want with them. Christianity tells us that this is wrong, and that since God has created our bodies good, they are good, and we must not defile those bodies by committing evil acts with them.Our bodies will rise again, as perfected bodies, on the last day. Thus, ...
Sep 20, 2010•46 min
God foreknew some of us who would be saved. These are people who are granted salvation through God's grace, not through any other means. Paul declares that he is an apostle to the Gentiles and that he magnifies his ministry in order to stir his fellow Jews jealous and thus to save some of them. Some of the chosen people were broken off because of their unbelief, but Gentiles should also be concerned, since they are an artificial graft onto the branch of Israel, while Israel naturally belong that...
Sep 13, 2010•51 min
So has God rejected His people? No, God has used a people (or rather, a group who are no people) to provoke them to jealousy. The Psalms declare that God will not abandon His people. Paul notes that God had preserved a remnant in Elijah's time, and God is doing that at the time of Paul's writing. These people are not chosen by their achievements, but rather by the grace of God. There are some who refuse to knowingly reject Christ, and are satisfied that He was put to death. Those have hardened t...
Sep 06, 2010•30 min
People cannot know Christ unless men are sent to preach His gospel to them. This must convict us to proclaim the Gospel to the world. Mission cannot exist without striving to convert the people. God says in Torah that He will stir Israel, a foolish nation up to jealousy to those who are not a nation, and in Isaiah, God says that He will be found by those who did not seek Him. They have heard His Gospel, and for those who have not accepted Him, God has forged a new nation out of the Gentiles. We ...
Aug 30, 2010•23 min
Paul's desire is for all to be saved, both Jew and Gentile. This would not seem to have been accomplished, since there were many who tried to kill him when he returned to Jerusalem. Paul tells us that the Jews were not reckoned the promised land for their own righteousness, but that this righteousness comes from God. Paul also reminds us that Moses has petitioned for the Hebrews, asking God to have mercy despite their sinful ways. When you combine this with the fact that the prophets tell us tha...
Aug 23, 2010•51 min
God has allowed some people throughout history to become vessels of wrath so as to make examples out of them, as He did with Pharaoh. Even in such cases, however, God does not make such a person commit evil: it is still his own choice. It is for this reason that God still finds fault in such people, and why we cannot blame our behavior on our being unable to resist His will. The reason for this is beyond our understanding, but it is something that we can see evidence for from the time of Isaiah....
Aug 16, 2010•45 min
Paul is troubled by the fact that the Jews have not come to Christ, and he says that if it were possible, he would cut himself off from Christ to save all of them. To the Jews belong sonship of God, still to this date. The covenants and the law belong to them as well. The lineage of Christ by the flesh comes from the Jews. Paul looks a little more closely at the lineage, and notes that there is more to it than simply birthright, and that some descendants of Abraham are not part of the Jewish peo...
Aug 09, 2010•35 min
After you have entered into life in Christ, returning to the life of flesh will only result in condemnation. Even though our bodies are dead, our spirits will remain alive, and the body will arise on the last day. We have become heirs to God, provided that we suffer with Him. Flesh is subject to decay, but this decay shows us that there is something coming, something greater that will show the glory of the undecayed world. Without something to show us what hope will bring, there would be reason ...
Aug 02, 2010•50 min
If we are in Christ, then we cannot be subject to condemnation, since Christ's death had taken on all that we could be condemned for. To say otherwise would mean that Christ's death was not effective. Jesus took on the likeness of sinful flesh, that is, the appearance of Christ's flesh was that of the flesh of sinful men. Paul points out that what is in the flesh is opposed to God, and that Christians are now in the spirit, not in the flesh, or else we could not please God. If we do not set our ...
Jul 27, 2010•32 min
Grace is just another name for the Holy Spirit. When we live under grace, our lives are transformed by Him, and we must not be idle, but rather keep embracing Him and bringing grace into our lives. Paul laments the fact that he is still in the flesh, sold into slavery to sin. As such, Paul still does things that he does not want to do. No good comes from the flesh, but bad things come from the flesh. We are, in a sense, dragged along by sin, and yet we choose to do these things we abhor. As long...
Jul 19, 2010•24 min
Paul says that Christians can expect to triumph over sin, but that it remains possible that some may still sin, but some may incorrectly interpret this that Christians will never sin, or never be tempted to sin, or conversely, that no one can ever triumph over sin. Paul is joined by I John in this assertion. Our original sin was completely destroyed in baptism, and we are no longer enslaved to sin, but we are all tempted, even Christ. We are given a spirit of love and discipline to resist this, ...
Jul 12, 2010•57 min
Paul tells us that the Christian ought no longer to be slave to sin, which is a very powerful statement indeed. Since Jesus died one for all and died to sin once for all, we, too are to be like Christ and put to death the sinful parts of ourselves, and not a wasting death, but a final, decisive excision. This does not relieve us of the burden of temptation, but God gives us the grace to reject sin, if we act on it. We are no longer under the law, but under grace, but we still have the duty to av...
Jul 05, 2010•32 min
Chapter 6 of Romans starts a new section in Romans, dealing with the necessity of using our faith to be conformed to the Lord's will. We must thus strive for holiness, apart from which no man will see God. We must increase in love to establish ourselves unblameable before God and make holiness perfect in the fear of God. Paul thus makes it clear that our souls must grow or else we cannot be doing God's will. Some have chosen to selectively quote the first five chapters to mean that works are not...
Jun 28, 2010•48 min
