Princeton Seminary President Craig Barnes has a way of opening just about each one of his sermons with a pithy one-liner that grabs your attention even as it sets the tone for the whole sermon. In one of his sermons he opened with this: Sooner or later we all face the frightening thought that we…
In the Harry Potter books, the students at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy have to take a course in “Transfiguration.” There they learn how to change teacups into rats or flowers into candles. And to most people’s minds that is pretty much what “transfiguration” is, too: it is a change of state from…
It’s wonderful when you can see that a very important lesson finally took hold and sunk in for someone. If you are a teacher, then seeing a student avoid making the same mistakes all over again as a result of your instruction is so very rewarding. Some days those of us who teach wonder if…
Compared to any number of you reading this sermon commentary, I’ve had it easy in life so far. My “enemies” (such as I’ve had them) have not exactly risen to headline-grabbing people who kidnap children, rape women, or kill other people. Still, I’ve been hurt by others and even harder to take, I’ve seen people…
The wonder of grace. That is what this brief passage is all about. At the end of these verses Paul once again loops back to previously sounded themes about the wisdom of the world versus the apparent foolishness of the cross. He also hits for a third time the silliness of the Corinthians in balkanizing…
Content related to New Testament