We take for granted how crucial love is to goodness, how unnecessary or far from inevitable it was that humanity should by and large embrace it as a virtue. That may be in part why Paul names love as the first in that list of interdependent qualities...

Benjamin Franklin believed the key to a new and lasting society was more than good governance, free of monarchical rule, but moreover the cultivation of true virtue in its populace. The Apostle Paul sketches the contours of virtue in terms of what we...

During–let’s call it what it was–her trespass into the domicile of a family of bears, Goldilocks found one bed too hard, another too soft, and a third just right. In the law of God there’s a way of going too hard on sin. In the grace of God there’s a...

In this passage we see the first mention in Scripture of someone being filled with the Spirit. Filled with “ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic design.” This same eternal creative Spirit is now poured...

It’s a superficial understanding of the Holy Spirit to think He is mostly concerned with our moral lives–whether we are doing what is right (as though that weren’t important). But as we’ll hear Paul continue to elaborate on what life in the Spirit is...

One mark of a sound framework for thinking about reality or ourselves is having what’s called “explanatory power”--that is, it accounts for much of what it claims by what we observe and what else we know. At least one reason we believe the words of...

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: 2 Corinthians 47-12;16LEADER: 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not...

If you are fortunate, one day you might have the chance to say final and loving things to those nearest to you before you die. What would you say? What would be what you most wanted them to know following your passing? In this passage Jesus has that...

What is art but an attempt to bring our attention to beauty our blindness and pace often obscure? We need something to slow us and to help us see. The Holy Spirit we are learning has served many roles in the ministry of the Triune God. In some of...

What is central to the life in Jesus is what some say make that life “impossible.” Not an exercise in futility, but a purpose not to be pursued without necessary help. We’ve been learning of the Spirit from His ministry to and through Jesus. Now we...