I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God Romans 12:1 For the next few days we will examine the teaching of Paul in Romans 12. Sometimes we will have to look at the same verse several time, but rest assured, there…
I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God Romans 12:1 Living – In order for a sacrifice to be “living,” something had to go wrong. You see, in the sacrificial system of Israel, an animal was destroyed when offered to God. …
For YHWH has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleep, and has shut your eyes, the prophets, and He has covered your heads, the seers. Isaiah 29:10 Seers – The word for “seers” is chozim. It comes from a root word chazah. It is not Hebrew. This is an Aramaic loanword. Consequently, trying…
For YHWH has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleep, and has shut your eyes, the prophets, and He has covered your heads, the seers. Isaiah 29:10 Prophets – You and I can be very glad we did not live in the time of Isaiah. The apostasy of Israel in those days caused…
Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Genesis 2:24 Therefore – “Therefore” means that as a result of something previously explained, the following happens. Therefore, “therefore” is a very important word J. Without it we will not know why a man…
for this shall be called woman because out of man this has been taken Genesis 2:23 Woman – There is something crucial happening here, deeper than we can see in the simple translation. It is connected to the formulation of the Hebrew words for man and woman. It tells us something important about roles and…
He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. John 3:36 Obey – Even in translation this verse demands that we see the connection between “believe” and “obey.” But when we realize that John’s thought…
“Are you the teacher of Israel, and you do not understand these things?” John 3:10 Understand – The educational model of this world is not God’s model. This statement has nothing to do with the subject matter. It’s not about “creationism” versus “evolution.” It’s not about how to teach moral concepts (or how not to…
Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her; Genesis 24:67 Took – It’s symptomatic of our Greek cultural ethos that we immediately think of the Hebrew word laqah from the perspective of eros. When the text says that Isaac took Rebekah,…
to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share 1 Timothy 6:18 Good Works – Did you think that doing good (yesterday on agathoergeo) was good enough? Not quite. Paul adds another qualification with the phrase “good works.” The problem is that we don’t see the difference in…
