It’s amazing what someone will do with the right motivation. Consider 2 Corinthians 5’s question of what actually motivates the Christian life and ministry.

This may be one of the most offensive, and most needed, passages in 1 Corinthians for the 21st century, in an age where gender itself is treated as a social construct. Consider Paul’s teaching on male headship and head coverings.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It’s the cry Jesus himself took up on the cross. Consider the story of a Korean pastor’s family, buried alive by their communist captors rather than deny Christ, and a hard question: does suffering ever really mean God has forsaken us?

We tend to think we know what Jesus came to do, but the answer shapes everything about how the church is meant to live. Consider Luke’s account of Jesus reading from Isaiah in the Nazareth synagogue, the moment Christ himself defines his own mission.

Jesus appeared to his disciples over 40 days after the resurrection, but Matthew’s gospel chooses to record just one of those encounters: the Great Commission. Consider Christ’s final instructions to baptize and make disciples as the church prepares to baptize more of its own.

In those days there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in their own eyes, the verse that sums up the whole book of Judges as it reaches its final chapter. Judges stands as a picture of life without King Jesus, and what religion looks like when it’s severed from him.

How do you actually make a good decision? This closes out Paul’s three-chapter section on food offered to idols. Consider the Corinthians’ latest poor choice, made on the back of just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

The first sin after the fall led straight to the first murder, brother against brother, and James 4 tells us our own wars and fights come from the same source. Consider the horrifying civil war that closes out the book of Judges.

What does the Lord’s Supper actually mean to you? Consider the contrast between the Catholic view of the mass as a repeated sacrifice and what Paul actually teaches, and Paul’s warning against idol feasts as inseparable from a right understanding of the Table.

How bad can human beings get without God? Judges 19 answers in full, horrifying detail. Consider one of the darkest chapters in the Bible as a picture of what happens when everyone, including God’s own people, does what’s right in their own eyes.