Lead Story

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband
is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church. . . .
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for
her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word. . . .
This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”
(Ephesians 5:22-23,26,32)

If you were asked to give a definition for the word love, how would you answer? I suppose it depends on the kind of love you’re thinking about. There are different forms of love. If you’re a parent you might define love as the feeling of deep affection you have for your child (“I love my son to death”). If you’re engaged, you might define it as the romantic attachment you have for your sweetheart (“It was love at first sight”). If you’re a football enthusiast it may mean the great interest and pleasure you have in watching your team play (“I love the Seahawks”).
If you are a Bible student, you may be aware that Greek, the original language of the New Testament, has several distinct words for love. The Greek word eros doesn’t occur in the Bible; it is used in reference to the love of sexual attraction. Philia is the love shared by friends. Then there’s agape (uh-GAHP-ay), the highest and most important form of love. A key characteristic of agape is the willingness to put the welfare/happiness/comfort of others before your own. Agape has been defined as love that decides to do what is in someone else’s best interests no matter what, even when that person doesn’t deserve it.Read More »The Mystery of Marital Love

COVER STORY – PENTECOST

Our lives are constantly changing. Occasionally, those changes feel life-shattering. We move, change jobs, get sick, or lose a friend or family member; the list could go on. We wonder how we can continue, but God knows that His plan for us is not broken. God picks up the pieces of our broken lives and makes us His new creation. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)
Consider the life of Jacob. He fled his home after deceiving his father, fearing that Esau would kill him. He saw firsthand the kind of healing that God is capable of when he returned to his homeland and was met by his brother’s embrace (Genesis 33:4). He had faced adversity of many kinds and had been blessed by God with twelve sons; then he was told that his beloved son Joseph was dead. “And all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and he said, ‘For I shall go down into the grave to my son in mourning.’ Thus his father wept for him.” (Genesis 37:35) His life was broken in a way that no human comfort could mend.
God’s plan was bigger than Jacob understood. He used Joseph to help prepare for a seven-year famine. But God didn’t care only about the big picture. He knew the pain that Jacob was living with and healed him by reuniting him with his son. “Then Israel said, ‘It is enough. Joseph my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.’” (Genesis 45:28) Read More »God Has a Plan for You

“Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”  

(Romans 6:3-4)

Baptists and others like to ask, “When where you saved?” They like to be able to point to a specific time and experience when they “accepted” Christ and committed themselves to follow Him. A friend in Northern Ireland recently gave me a good response to that question. When he is asked, “When were you saved?” he responds, “About two thousand years ago.”

We were not saved by some decision we made or by committing our life to Christ. We were saved by Christ’s death and resurrection alone. When Christ died, we died. Jesus bore all the pain, suffering and shame of our death for us, and by faith we have received all the benefits of His death. So when we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, we are also celebrating our own resurrection.

Now we have a totally new and glorious life. We died to sin. We died to the Law. Now we live with and for Christ. We have been raised with Him to “walk in newness of life.” It is a glorious, joyful life with God.

We cannot describe that new life any better than God Himself did when He inspired Paul to write Colossians 3:1-17. Read these words slowly, thinking of how this is your new life, for you are risen with Christ.Read More »Risen with Christ!

LEAD STORY – TRANSFIGURATION

After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them.” 

(Mark 9:2 NIV84)

One of the wonders of the created world is the process of metamorphosis. When God called into existence the creatures that swim in the sea and fly in the air (on creation day five), He gave to some the amazing ability to change from one form into another as part of their life cycle. One example is the monarch butterfly, which has four stages in its life cycle: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and adult butterfly. A truly remarkable change!

Each year, on the last Epiphany Sunday, the Christian Church recalls the biblical account of the remarkable metamorphosis of Jesus (also known as the “Transfiguration”). One day while He was walking with three disciples on a mountain in Galilee, His lowly appearance was changed. His clothes started to dazzle with whiteness. His face began to shine as bright as the sun.

Jesus’ metamorphosis was, of course, far different from the change that occurs with creatures like the butterfly. For one thing, it happened instantaneously, not gradually. Then, too, Jesus’ metamorphosis did not involve changing into something He wasn’t previously. Rather, it was a revelation of what He already was: God’s all-glorious Son! Whenever Jesus preached a sermon or performed a miracle, people could sense this. “There is something special about Him not visible to our eyes” (Matthew 7:28-29, Luke 8:25). That something “special” was that He was their Messiah in Whom all the fullness of the Deity was living in bodily form (Colossians 2:9, Philippians 2:6-8). It’s just that, during the period of His life on earth, He chose (for the most part) to conceal His divine majesty from their view so that He might live in lowliness, serve them in love, and offer His life as a ransom on the cross.Read More »Butterflies, Jesus, and You

“When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

(Matthew 2:10-11)

The wise men, the three kings, the magi . . . tradition has made these visitors of Jesus to be seen in different ways. We Christians may scoff at wise men in Nativity sets: “The wise men don’t belong in the manger scene! They didn’t get there for two years! They weren’t kings! We don’t know how many there were!” They have become, in many of our minds, the others; strange rich men who came from far away to see the newborn King. They are mysterious; their names aren’t given, and their place of origin is simply referred to as the East. They are outsiders to our usual Biblical narrative that largely follows the Jews up to that point.

The wise men are included in the Gospel of Matthew not because they are a novelty, but because their inclusion was one of the first indications of the new normal for the early New Testament church. They were outsiders, but they were welcomed to worship the newborn King of the Jews as their own King. Matthew himself was also seen by the Jews as an outsider. Working as a tax collector for the Romans, he was seen as a thief and a traitor. The Pharisees disapproved of Jesus’ meal with Matthew and other sinners (Matthew 9:9-13).Read More »Welcome to the Family

COVER STORY – NEW YEAR

Sometimes more is less and less is more. Consider the word resolve. The word mostly conjures up positive images. To resolve is to make a firm commitment to fix a problem or to fill a deficiency. From the same Latin root comes our word resolute—also basically positive. Someone who is resolute is determined and focused. Yet it all seems to fall apart when we lengthen the word to resolution, especially when we add “New Year’s” to it. The whole concept of “resolve” and “resolute” just seems to fade to nothing when we talk about “New Year’s resolutions,” which are more like political promises than firm commitments. No one really expects anyone to actually keep New Year’s resolutions. There’s routinely no true resolve there. And sometimes that’s a good thing.

I once watched a bird try to fly into our living room. The little guy had way more resolve than intellect. The problem was the clean window that he just couldn’t seem to figure out. Over and over again he would throw himself at the window, only to be met each time with an invisible barrier and a sickening thud. From time to time he would pause as if to consider the prize, each time evidently determining that our living room was just about the greatest place he could imagine, and that entrance thereto was well worth the pain and effort.

The problem, of course, was more than just the window. Had the little guy actually achieved his goal, his life would have been instantly and immeasurably worse. We had no desire to have our living room redecorated in white. The window, which he no doubt regarded as his enemy and the source of his frustration, was actually his best friend.Read More »Resolutions Worthy of Resolve

COVER STORY – END TIMES

“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.”

(2 Peter 3:10)

It’s general practice, when people visit the local food market, to check the expiration date on products they are intending to purchase. By confirming that the expiration date is well out into the future, they can be reasonably certain that the milk they buy will taste good (at least for a while), the chips will be crispy, not stale, and the hamburger excellent for grilling. If they purchase an item with an expired date stamped on its label, chances are good that it will spoil soon and be unusable.

Most would agree that checking expiration dates on food products before buying them is a good idea. There’s another date that is critically important for all to be concerned about: the expiration date of the world, when the Lord will keep His promise to return in glory as Judge of all, to destroy the godless, and to take His believers home.

On what date will this happen? Though many have tried to prognosticate this, the truth is that no one knows when it will be, since the Bible doesn’t provide that information. Rather, the Bible teaches that the Last Day will come out of the blue, without warning, like a thief breaking into a house in the middle of the night. Since this is true, an important question for each person to ask is, “What shall I do to get ready for that Day so that, whenever it happens, I will be safe?”Read More »What Is the World’s Expiration Date?