matthew on Disagreement

Preaching Commentary Paul’s Gospel In 1 Corinthians 1:17-25 we find the gospel that Paul preaches summarized in Christ’s crucifixion. Here in 2 Timothy 2:8, Paul’s gospel is encapsulated in Christ’...

Preaching Commentary Paul’s Gospel In 1 Corinthians 1:17-25 we find the gospel that Paul preaches summarized in Christ’s crucifixion. Here in 2 Timothy 2:8, Paul’s gospel is encapsulated in Christ’...

We may have more disagreements with nonbelievers, but our disagreements with fellow believers are more problematic and more emotionally charged.

Christian disunity is and remains a massive impediment to the gospel itself—the proclamation of which is and should be evangelicalism’s strong suit.

I was walking in San Francisco along the Golden Gate Bridge when I saw a man about to jump off. I tried to dissuade him from committing suicide and told him simply that God loved him. A tear came to h...

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.

The Church is not a clean, well-lit place where everything runs smoothly and actions automatically match ideals. It is, in the words of the Gospel, a field of chaff and wheat growing up together and b...

O God, who through your Son has taught us that a house divided against itself must fall: Save us, we beg you, from the danger of a divided allegiance; unite our hearts to fear your name; and grant tha...

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The defining problem driving people out is …just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary American life simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is d...

People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.

The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a far larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sin...

Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason.

I have a lot to be humble about.

In one of his letters, the philosopher and psychologist William James shares a conviction regarding his focus not on big, grand things, but with the small “almost invisible” decisions: I am done wit...

The world has always despised people from the wrong places and with the wrong credentials. We are always trying to justify ourselves. We need desperately to feel superior to others. And everything abo...

“You are so wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?” “No!” cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. “With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a p...

Here is the heart of the paradox: Technology is a brilliant, praiseworthy expression of human creativity and cultivation of the world. But it is at best neutral in actually forming human beings who ca...

The point is this. If you want to know what it means to talk about God being ‘in charge of’ the world, or being ‘in control’, or being ‘sovereign’, then Jesus himself instructs you to rethink the noti...

Christ is building His kingdom with earth's broken things. Men want only the strong, the successful, the victorious, the unbroken, in building their kingdoms; but God is the God of the unsuccessfu...

If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, mind your own business, and Jesus says, there is no such thing as your own business. The w...

Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the Davidic line was the common narrative for how most peop...

When we live our lives by the story of unlimitedness, we believe small equals powerless.

Advent 2023: Make Some Noise! AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the David...

The incarnation is a kind of vast joke whereby the Creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers... Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by i...

When Martin Luther discovered that some had begun calling the first Protestants “Lutherans,” he strongly objected. It is funny to think that some 500 years later, many are still known by his name: ...

The context The parables we hear this week are part of a collection of parables of the Kingdom collected by Matthew in chapter 13 of his gospel account. As with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7),...

Politicians compete for the highest offices. Business tycoons scramble for a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. Armies march and scientists study and philosophers philosophise and preachers preach an...

I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant...

The context The parables we hear this week are part of a collection of parables of the Kingdom collected by Matthew in chapter 13 of his gospel account. As with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7),...