Donald C. McIntyreWhat does the Bible say about sexual immorality? How does God, through Scripture, comfort the sexually struggling, engage the skeptic, and provide a template for those exasperated by their attempts to live a holy sexual life? Common ethical systems...
Robert ElmerEven beyond the earliest examples in the book of Acts, Christians throughout history have experienced many of the same challenges and frustrations we face. They wrestled with materialism and obedience to God, with sharing their faith and worries and...
Wendy WidderIf someone or something has ever put the fear of God in you, it likely wasn’t a positive experience. And you’d be happy if it never happened again. That cultural idiom is resoundingly negative. But the Bible calls the fear of the Lord the beginning...
Sandra GlahnLife is messy. Really messy. And it presents humans with all sorts of complicated spiritual, social, and legal challenges about what’s right and wrong, or even good or best. Ethics relates to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions. When...
Michael AllenChristians do not have unique possession of the ethical, of what is good and right. The Greeks wrote of the good life; today many different guilds work carefully to police the professional ethics of their respective fields. And plenty of other...
No doubt we’ve all heard somewhere that money is the root of all evil. The saying is deeply embedded in popular wisdom. But is it really true?
Mary DeMuthTake delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires (Ps 37:4). This oft-quoted verse has profound implications for the believer. Before we can explore the landscape of this powerful statement, it’s important we take note of its...
Peter KrolThough the Sermon on the Mount gets most of the attention, the Gospel of Luke records another major teaching event regarding the kingdom of God (Luke 6:20–49), known as the Sermon on the Plain. Concerning that sermon, this article will take up the...
David P. BarshingerThe world with its flashing screens, its promises of pleasure, its offerings of wealth, its promotion of power and fame, screams for our attention. It is like Lady Folly in Proverbs, luring us to fix our gaze on things below. Much of what we see in...
Mark WardWhat is the most violated verse on the internet? Probably love the Lord your God with all your heart. Every online sin draws its nourishment from that root. But right behind that violated verse might be—our second-place winner—Paul’s words: Speaking...
Envy typically means the desire for something someone else has. It can be used as a noun or a verb. So, for example, we might avoid envy (the noun) or we might envy someone (the verb). Jealousy is a close cousin, though it’s often interchanged with...
One of the greatest threats to our study of the Bible is our familiarity with God’s Word. When we believe we already know something, we tend to stop laboring to understand it. Familiarity thereby breeds presumption. And when presumption reaches full...
Daniel K. EngThe Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7) contains some of the most memorable sayings of Jesus: Love your enemies. Seek first the kingdom of God. The Lord’s Prayer. Do not judge. Figures like Mahatma Ghandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were heavily...
Michael F. BirdAmong the divine attributes, none is so mysterious and sublime as that of divine holiness. In systematic theology, the divine attributes—aspects of God’s character and being—are normally divided into two categories: the incommunicable and the...