Campus Bible Study

"How do we read Matthew 18:35? Does it not imply that God's forgiveness is conditional on our actions?"

“Does someone need to be sorry in order for you to forgive them?”

"In Matthew 18 with the parable of an unforgiving servant, when the master forgives the servant of debt what is this supposed to metaphorically represent (as Jesus has not yet died?)?"

"Why did the first servant say "Have patience, I will pay you everything" if he knew he could not pay the impossibly large debt? Why did he not ask for the debt to be cleared and admit he could not pay it on his own? Does this imply that we can approach God in this way and attain salvation without complete reliance on him?"

"What is the church Jesus refers to in Matthew 18:17?"

“Some claim 18:20 is about church. Is it? Does the context (of witnesses and prayer) shape how we understand it?" 

"What does Jesus mean when he says to treat an unrepentant brother/sister as "a Gentile + tax collector"?”

"Is Jesus saying in Mathew 19:9 that if you divorce because of sexual immorality, then you are not committing adultery?"

"What about abuse within marriage as a case for divorce?"

"How should we view/talk about marriage between people who are not Christians? Is it more just a legal thing, not model? Is it still possible to model unity? Should we be encouraging (or not) our non-Christian friends to get married? Do we accept the "secularisation" of marriage and just use it as a talking point for the gospel?"

"If faith was only provided once Jesus sent the Spirit after his ascension, was the Spirit at work at all in the OT?"

"When other people come to Jesus with "great faith" i.e. Canaanite woman & Roman official, did they have the Holy Spirit before Pentecost?"

"If faith is either you have 100% or not, why does Jesus tell his disciples "you of little faith"?"

"If John the Baptist is the Elijah figure, what does he restore?"

"In Matt 16:23 - is Satan speaking/working through Peter to tempt Jesus?"

"If we have been given that faith why can we not move mountains?"

"If God gives us "100%" of faith, why do we doubt and lose it?"

“How do we know that 14:1-12 is a flashback?” 

"How do we know definitely that Matthew's placement of the story of John the Baptist's death before Jesus feeding 5000 and walking on water was a deliberate choice? Modern readers of course can see the contrast between the kings but are we certain this was intentional and not just a coincidence? Or forgot to write it earlier?”

“At what point does the flashback end?”

"If food laws don't help our spiritual problem why did God institute them in the law?"

“Matthew 15: 24-28. What does it mean that the "lost sheep" is only the people of Israel and the outsiders are the "dogs"?"

I don't quite get the logic in 13:13. If the reason he speaks in parables is because the people will not perceive or understand, doesn't that mean would be free to speak plainly (given the crowd would not understand either way?). 

I think it is interesting in v15 that God could clearly present the secrets of the kingdom yet deliberately obfuscate it, yet in v18-23, he reveals it to us. I wonder if this has implication of how we proclaim the gospel, that there seems to have been some difference between Jesus teaching crowds and the apostles teaching where the latter is more clear as per v52. Perhaps the question is why does he obfuscate his message and then why does this change?

I have heard it said that the parable of the 4 soils is different after the cross and we now only have those that accept and don't, and Tim said there will be 4 types.

Is the parable of the sower consistent with our certainty of salvation? How can we be sure what type of 'soil' we are - that we won't initially respond favourably before the world chokes the faith out of us? (like the thorns, or the rocky ground)

Is it weird to use hell/weeping and gnashing of teeth as a motivator to trust Jesus? Do we want to focus on God's grace where possible?

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