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.

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Everything in Scripture is God revealing himself to his people, you and me.
The Parable of the Lost Sheep bursts through the confines of convention and demands that we embrace the messiness of life and the unpredictable ways in which God's grace and forgiveness operates.
Caesar boasted: “I came. I saw. I conquered.” Christ can rightly say: “I came. I saved. I ascended.”
It’s not our eloquence or persuasive rhetoric that changes hearts, but the Word of God that pierces through the hardened shells of unbelief and breathes life into the dead bones of sinners.
This is an excerpt from chapter 9 of “What Can Really Know?: The Strengths and Limits of Human Understanding” by David Andersen (1517 Publishing, 2023).
The Lord’s Prayer is liturgy and catechism, action and instruction, praxis and theology.
No matter how far away they wander, God always hears the prayers of his children.
Prayer is not just about asking for things. It's about receiving what has already been given to us in Christ.
God cares about our real life where we actually are. He is present in the everyday.
When we forget that we live by promise, that's when the danger tends to creep in. Because failing to embrace promise means we usually fall back into notions of luck, or even worse--into works.
Tim wanted everyone to know to the deepest part of their being that they were justified by Christ alone.
The Lord knew how it felt to be a rejected stone.