“The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”1 Tim. 1:5 ESV Paul’s two letters to Timothy are gold, especially for any young person seeking strength and guidance for their Christian lives. I often read them. The above verse can be taken as a kind of program for the Christian life: love, issuing from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith. Love: The word in…
In this blog, I want to look at something Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:20. I quote: “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” 2 Cor. 1:20. What does Paul mean? HELP FROM JOHN´S GOSPEL I believe a verse from John´s gospel can help us here. Let’s see if John 19,30 can shed some light for us on 2…
Note 2, 2021 Last year I wrote a number of blogs concentrating on central themes in the letters of Paul. I want now to write blogs on John’s gospel, touching also on the 1.st letter of John. PAUL Paul’s letters are situational documents in the sense that they are written amid the pastoral pressures of his evangelistic work. Except for 1&2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon, they are written to specific churches, to answer questions that arose in the various missionary…
Originally posted December 2019 PART 1: THE WRITINGS OF LUKE Luke´s writings in the New Testament comprise Luke-Acts; a two-volume work, which in fact represents more of the New Testament than even the letters of Paul. Paralleling the 3 other Gospels in portraying the ministry of Jesus, this work goes further, recording the history of the early Church up until the time Paul reaches Rome. This is unique for Luke among Gospel writers, and will impact the way we read…
In a short while, the season of advent will be upon us! In these very troublesome times, I have decided to republish some material that I wrote some time ago! First up will be 3 blogs about Jesus teaching on prayer in the first 3 gospels. These each now have an audio file to make it easier on my Norwegian readers. Then will follow 5 blogs on texts in the Bible commonly read by Christians in the Christmas season. They…
FOR YOUR ENCOURAGEMENT! I said last time that I wanted to write one more blog on healing – pastoral and practical. I stumbled upon this video on YouTube, which I want to share with you instead. It is by someone whose ministry I know and greatly respect – Nicky Gumble! Nicky Gumbel read law at Cambridge, where he also became a Christian. Having practised as a barrister, he felt called to the ministry. He read theology at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford…
INTRODUCTION With my last blog, I entered the general area of healing! We looked at Isa. 61,1-3, and the role of the Messiah. Today I want to continue, by looking at Luke 4,18. And I will end with a later blog on Acts 10,38. I am thus holding these three scriptures together as summarising the ministry of Jesus: Isaiah 61,1-3, Lk. 4,18 and Acts 10,38. But before I get onto Luke 4,18, I need to clear the way for some…
DURHAM UNIVERSITY UK, AUTUMN 1974 Before I went to Durham to study in the autumn of 1974, I can with hindsight see that God had started to speak to me. I was in search of answers. I was filled with the desire to find compassion for other people in my own heart. I said to myself, “When I get to Durham I’m going to attempt to find out if God is real or not.“ I got installed in Grey College,…
THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE GOSPEL WRITERS In our New Testament we have 4 Gospels, followed by the Acts of the Apostles, followed by the letters of Paul, followed by other letters. And of course, the ministry of Jesus preceded the birth of the Church, Paul´s missionary journeys and the letter writing of Paul. A timeline is formed in the head, with the ministry of Jesus, followed by the Cross, followed by the birth of the Church and the ministry of…
Preliminaries: They are liturgies designed to lead us into a personal encounter with God. Authorship: Traditionally many psalms are ascribed to David. Though this tradition may be accurate – we know that David loved music and wrote psalms (1 Sam. 16,14-23 and 18,10) – modern scholars see the superscriptions to the psalms (where an author may be mentioned), as being added later by those who collected and edited the psalms for use in the temple worship. A psalm like psalm 23,…
It may seem that I did my best in the last post to tell you that you need to be some kind of expert to read the Bible and profit from it. Yes, we should know the extent of the task undertaken in giving to us these texts. And yes, we should know of the issues involved in interpretation. But if we do, our common sense will take us a very long way, as we read, and we will know…
The Bible contains 66 books, containing widely different types of text, different authors, and composed at different times. Scholars will argue over their age, but we shall not be far wrong to say generally that they come to us from a distance in time of several thousand years. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew (with the exception of parts of Daniel, which are in Aramaic), and the New Testament in Greek. These languages are now dead, meaning that though…