bible and theology on Jesus' Earthly Ministry

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...

The world of Jesus was not the Old Testament Hebrew world. Like the United States now, Israel was multicultural, including a combination of Aramaic, Greek, and Roman influences. The people looked Jewi...

We should also note that while Jesus had the biggest work assignment in human history-he had been invited to "save the world"-he never spent weeks writing a vision statement with steps for s...

Lord—You’re the God who notices. You notice a desperate woman who touches Your garments in a crowd. You notice a lonely, little tax-collector in a tree. You notice a blind man on the roadside, a widow...

The kindness of Jesus. We are quick to think of his power, his passion, and his devotion. But those near him knew and know God comes cloaked in kindness

It is as strange a scene as there is in the Gospels. Even without the voice from the cloud to explain it, they had no doubt what they were witnessing. It was Jesus of Nazareth all right, the man they&...

During the life of Jesus on earth, the word He chiefly used when speaking of the relations of the disciples to Himself was: “Follow me.” When about to leave for heaven, He gave them a new word, in whi...

The witness of the New Testament is, therefore, twofold: it transcends the land, Jerusalem, the Temple. Yes: but its History and Theology demand a concern with these realities also. Is there a reconci...

When Christians discuss the life of Jesus, they usually are thinking of the period from his birth in Bethlehem to his resurrection from the dead following the crucifixion at Calvary. This life lasted ...

The ministry of Jesus does not end with his resurrection. In his ascension he does not abandon his humanity. He is not the ascended Lord apart from everything that has happened between his incarnation...

Christ, because He was the only Man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only Man who knows to the full what temptation means.

Thus, from the standpoint of the gospels, the mighty deeds of Jesus, healings and exorcisms alike, were the product of the power which flowed through him as a holy man. His powers were charismatic, th...

One of the most convicting things I have recently come to realize about Jesus is that He was never, not once, in a hurry.

His poverty was so great that He was born in another man's house, and buried in another man's tomb.

The very purpose of Christ’s coming into the world was that He might offer up His life as a sacrifice for the sins of men. He came to die. This is the heart of Christmas.

Origen, in the third century, had a great analogy. He told of a village with a huge statue—so immense you couldn’t see exactly what it was supposed to represent. Finally, someone miniaturized the stat...

But it wasn’t just his new message that made Jesus irresistible. It was Jesus himself. People who were nothing like him liked him. And Jesus liked people who were nothing like him. Jesus invited unbel...

With a certain oversimplification we can trace easily enough the three options open to Jews in Jesus’ day. … First, the quietist and ultimately dualist option, taken by the writers of the Dead Sea Scr...

The gospels are earthy. People are close to the earth. They travel here and there by foot. They eat the live heads of grain growing from the soil as they walk through the fields. They get grubby and h...

In these acts of love Jesus created a scandal for devout, religious Palestinian Jews. The absolutely unpardonable thing was not his concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed . . . ...

Why did it disturb the religious leaders that Jesus ate with “sinners”? To eat with someone is an important symbol of fellowship. And in those days, the Jews had a rule: one is not to have such fellow...

My central claim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing—by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself.

In what sense, then, did Jesus declare that the Kingdom of God was present? Our answer must at least begin with His own answer to John: “The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf...