1. Marriage is part of the created order. It is designed to meet a basic human need for companionship and is meant to last a lifetime. By design marriage is to be a harmonious partnership.
Gen 2:18-25 18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Continue reading
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Jesus taught that, as shown in the creation account, God has always intended for a man and woman to form a lifelong bond in marriage, and not divorce (Matthew 19:1-9). He taught that there is always adultery (sexual sin) in divorce and remarriage (see also Matthew 5:31-32). Jesus said that when there is divorce and remarriage, either the divorce might be a consequence of adultery or else the remarriage results in adultery. But where there is divorce and remarriage there is adultery, either as the cause or the outcome. According to Jesus then, divorce and remarriage always involves sexual sin on someone’s part.
In the Bible there are many stories and teachings about sexual sins and their consequences. Continue reading
Share this article: An old song asked the question, “Have you ever been lonely? Have you ever been blue?” Surely every thinking, feeling person has felt lonely and blue. Three thousand years ago the Psalmist appealed to God, “Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart have multiplied; free me from my anguish.” (Ps 25:16-17 NIV) Truly, loneliness and depression are appropriately described as anguish and affliction, inflicting deep suffering on those who experience them. It is natural to crave deliverance from loneliness and a troubled heart, and going to one who is greater and who understands and has answers is the way to find relief. Continue reading
Share this article: 2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (NIV)
Eph 4:22-24 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (NIV)
A new calendar is on the wall and we’re all learning to write “2002” on our letters, checks, reports, and so forth. For a year we practiced writing “2001” and now we have to change. Continue reading
Share this article: Matt 28:18-20
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (NIV)
A prominent and widely published contemporary Church of Christ “preacher” has recently said, “With the exception of the thief on the cross, Scripture provides us no example of an unbaptized heaven-bound soul. The thief, however, is a wonderful exception. His conversion forces us to trust the work of Christ and not the work of baptism. Remarkable, isn’t it, that the first one to accept the invitation of the crucified Christ has no creed, confirmation, christening or catechism? He never went to church, gave an offering, was never baptized. He said only one prayer.”
Of course, Scripture actually provides multitudes of examples of “unbaptized heaven-bound” souls. Continue reading
Share this article: Heb 10:26-29
26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? NIV
Jesus chose twelve men, designated apostles, to learn from him in a special way. Among these twelve was his betrayer, Judas Iscariot. Continue reading
Share this article: In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, the distinctive features are meant to emphasize certain ideas that Matthew wanted us to understand (a few of which were previously discussed). Likewise there are pointers included in the Chronicles genealogies, emphasizing those who can be included in the families of Israel Continue reading
Share this article: Several sections of our Bible contain lists of successive names, known as genealogies. We find genealogies in such diverse places as Genesis 5, Exodus 6, 1 Chronicles 1-9, Matthew 1 and Luke 3. These passages (and a few other genealogical sections) tend not to be popular reading, and are generally not much appreciated or well understood. However, there are several important Biblical truths that only come to us properly through an awareness of these genealogies. Continue reading
Share this article: For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 1 Cor 2:2 NIV
There is a song, “None of Self and All of Thee,” which begins with the idea that a person without Christ has “all of self, and none of Thee” and that there is then a gradual progression of growth and experience in knowing Christ to “some of self, and some of Thee” and then “less of self, and more of Thee” until finally, triumphantly, there is “none of self, and all of Thee.” Is the intended message, and the goal of Christian faith, simply to be more like Jesus, to put Jesus first, or… the annihilation of self? Continue reading
Share this article: “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.” Revelation 22:12 NIV
Some will be concerned that freedom from death and Hades for Christians will undermine the Biblical doctrine of final judgment. In the Bible there is clearly a distinction at death between the righteous and the unrighteous. Continue reading
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