Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
The student of Scripture should always have a map open next to their Bible as they read. If possible, they should also travel to Israel, not to make a pilgrimage, but to see the context of the land in which these stories took place. These are not fairy tales made up about fictional fantasy lands; these are stories about real people in real places interacting with a real God.

All Articles

You have heard that after his sufferings and death Christ our Lord arose from the dead and entered upon, and was enthroned in, an immortal existence.
The Gospel restores us to our true humanity, embeds us in the body of Christ, feeds us with Christ’s own body, and offers us a community.
The pain of God’s silence strikes Jesus harsher than any nail ever could. “For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you rejected me?
It is an ineffable mystery that God suffers, and our preaching must bear out that mystery. One can only emphasize that God is truly man and that God suffers and dies on account of the personal union. But we do not emphasize the suffering apart from the divine nature, or as if the divine nature was not fully His at particular moments. The personal union causes us to deal with the whole Christ.
It’s the following that caught my attention this week. It seems especially appropriate to consider this Sunday, for Holy Week is designed to help Christians follow Jesus through his last and consequential days.
Every misty road and agonizing moment of indecision reminds us that life is not about becoming—or finding—perfection. Life is the One who is perfect.
When we preach Jesus crucified for the sin of the world, Jesus crucified to put away God’s harsh judgment, that good news creates faith
If sin is not “imputed” or “reckoned to” the sinner then who is it reckoned to? The good news is that it’s reckoned to God
The texts compel us to deal with the “new thing” (Isa.43:18) that God is doing, namely, preaching the righteousness of faith to all nations. God’s judgment of justification is now for all. It has nothing to do with the flesh and everything to do with faith.
What he says in this parable has significance for us today, and needs to be preached. But the application is not direct and therefore should be done carefully.
Where contrition is evident, the conscience has already been prodded, piqued, finally terrified. More Law only serves to confirm the lie this person is already at risk of believing: that the last work of the conscience is also God’s last word. But God’s last word is the word of absolution, not the confirmation of the conscience’s testimony, but now its contradiction.
In our own lives, we might find that the Law is not an alien word, whether we call it our conscience or our values, our Holy Writ, or our municipality’s laws and regulations