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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As I was reading Romans 7 today, I was reminded of a pivotal scene in one of my favorite movies, As Good As it Gets.
Nicodemus, like us, does not really have phantoms and dragons in his head. He has just one demon, one virus, one malady: he lives in fear.
If we get past Sunday School moralizing what do we discover in the Old Testament?
An introduction to Bo Giertz's, Romans: A Devotional Commentary
God’s Law is a death sentence for us sinners. There is no winning beneath the Law of God.
How should we read Paul, ya’ll? Why reading the Bible like a Southerner makes sense of confusing passages.
The Gospel predominates when hearers receive the saving gifts of Christ as God’s final word to them.
The veil was not torn to let us in but to let God out.
When we focus on God's self-giving Word, when we turn our attention to Golgotha, we are shown a wholly different way of viewing the Commandments.
I’ve always been more at home in the Old Testament than in the New Testament.
There is just something about the idea of not being ‘under Law’ that sets off all kinds of alarms in the minds of many Christians.
God is for us in His foolish, scarred Word and Wisdom. Nothing is against us, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.