The Bible claims that God speaks true and authoritative words to us through fallible human authors. Peter explains that the Holy Spirit "carried along" these authors, without bypassing their unique personalities, languages, cultures and times. Accepting the Bible as we find it today means accepting the Spirit continued to work through people in history to authenticate, preserve, transmit and translate it into other languages. While Scripture is not as tidy as we might want, the Spirit continues to speak through it, illuminating the abundant grace of Jesus to all who will receive it.

Christianity claims not only that God exists, but that we can know him — despite the fact that none of us can access him in physical, visible or audible form. Christians believe this knowledge of God is nonetheless real, because we experience him in both indirect and direct ways that progressively change us, inside and out.

Why isn’t God more obvious? Paul addresses a pluralistic audience in Athens with three broad arguments: 1) Because we interpret the evidence differently, 2) because we are more religious than we think, and 3) because our love is out of whack. Thankfully, God not only makes himself findable but seeks us out through the person of Jesus, whom Paul refers to in v. 31 as “a man he has appointed.”

Hebrews 13:4 teaches that all Christians, whether single, married, widowed or divorced, are called to “hold marriage in honor” and to “let the marriage bed [sex]” be undefiled. This includes the bracing standard that God designed sex only for the marriage covenant between a husband and wife. Closer investigation of the context around Hebrews 13:4 reveals the surprising genius of God’s design, as well as the surprising grace of Jesus for all of us who repeatedly fail to meet his standards.

Paul’s charge to children and bondservants applies to spiritual children as well: We should honor and obey our spiritual parents as if they were the Lord himself. Knowing how easily this challenge can be abused, however, God places firm limits on the authority of mothers and fathers. At the same time, Paul commends the limitless blessings of honoring and obeying them.

Every Christian has both the responsibility and the privilege to build up people who are spiritually downstream from us. Paul's example of how to do that is characterized by God's Gospel proclaimed with God's energy, humble accountability, God-pleasing, gentleness, self-giving, sacrifice, integrity, and muscular mentoring — exactly the way Jesus builds us up!