Listen to The Daily Word online.   Is faith in Jesus a one-time event or an ongoing commitment?   In my ministry as a pastor, I have seen people’s faith wax and wane. I know of one young man, for example, who gave his heart to Jesus, became actively involved in church, and even participated in summer-long missions projects, only to reject Christianity in his college years. I could multiply stories like his, but I think you get the point. You also probably know people who at one point in their lives professed faith in Christ but now do … Continue reading Keep the Faith! (1 John 2:24-25)

  Listen to The Daily Word online.   Who is the real Jesus?   Last year, just in time for Easter, the National Geographic Society published its translation of The Gospel of Judas, a second century Gnostic writing that makes a hero out of Judas Iscariot. According to this so-called gospel, Judas betrayed Jesus at Jesus’ behest, in order to liberate the divine spark of Jesus’ soul from its imprisonment in Jesus’ body.   No reputable scholar that I know of thinks The Gospel of Judas is historically accurate.[1] But some scholars—not to mention many ordinary readers—think that historically accurate … Continue reading The Real Jesus (1 John 2:20-23)

  Listen to The Daily Word online.   Is it ever okay to leave your church?   When my father pastored a church in the 1970s and 80s, he calculated that 25-30% of the church left it every year. It had nothing to do with his preaching, which was excellent. Instead, the area in which he ministered was full of young, upwardly mobile families, whose jobs moved them around quite a bit. The other churches in the area had a similar rate of turnover.   Recently, an email correspondent of mine shared the story of why she left her mainline … Continue reading Love Jesus, Love His Church (1 John 2:19)

  Listen to The Daily Word online.   As a writer, I am asked occasionally to submit an article for publication. Attached to these requests is a deadline, usually not far off. Having a deadline helps me focus my research and writing so that I can turn out a good article in a short time.   According to 1 John 2:18, we all live under the deadline of eternity.   Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know that it … Continue reading Under an Eternal Deadline (1 John 2:18)

  Listen to The Daily Word online.   According to John 3:16, God “loved the world” enough to give his Son for its salvation. But according to 1 John 2:15, Christians are forbidden to “love the world or anything in the world.” If God loves the world, why can’t we?   In his commentary on 1 John, Colin G. Kruse helps us answer this question by teasing out four different senses of the word world in 1 John:   The word kosmos occurs 23 times in 1 John, and its meaning varies according to context. In one place it means … Continue reading If God Loves the World, Why Can’t We? (1 John 2:15-17)

  Listen to The Daily Word online.   The church is (and ought to be) a multigenerational community. Unfortunately, powerful forces in our society tend to pull the generations apart. But the gospel has a unique power to bring them back together again.   What are some of the powerful social forces that pull the generations apart?   The first is space. Many people don’t live near their extended families. They are cut off from day-to-day relationships with their grandparents, parents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews. Instead, they live in suburban neighborhoods where most of the people are strangers … Continue reading The Multigenerational Church (1 John 2:12-14)

  Listen to The Daily Word online.   I once had a conversation with a Christian man about interracial marriage. He strongly opposed such marriages and argued that our church should not publicly condone them. (As part of a series on marriage, we had photographed couples in the church and showed their pictures during a worship service. Several of the couples were interracial.) I replied that there was no room in the church for bigotry because God created us all equally and offers salvation to all freely.   Which one of us was right?   The man offered a laundry … Continue reading Are Christians Haters? (1 John 2:9-11)