Revelation is a letter, and like any letter in the first century, it begins with a formal greeting. John speaks on behalf of the triune Lord to a group of churches under profound pressure, and in all their hardship he announces to them grace and...

What is the book of Revelation revealing? It is a revelation of "what must soon take place," a message that belongs to Christ and is shared with his Church. But as we will find in the coming weeks, the revelation not only belongs to...

In Deuteronomy, after giving the command to Love God with all our heart and soul and strength Moses commands the people to take measures to live and remember the commandments and to teach them to their children. Likewise in the Great Commission, Jesus...

Judas Iscariot has left the Last Supper with the intent to turn Jesus in. Night has fallen on Christ and his disciples. Jesus tells them that the moment of his glorification has come, which here means that Messiah is about to offer himself up for...

Jesus is approached by a man who understands well that love summarizes the Law...at least he understands in theory. He asks Jesus to do him the favor of specifying who exactly it is that counts as a neighbor? In Jesus' reply, he tells the story...

The Scriptures do not set apart holy living as "religious" living, while commands having to do with people are put in a separate category. Rather, what it means to be holy is for the gift of ourselves to God to overflow into a gift of...

Both the Greatest Commandment and the other which is "like" it give the order to love. In the first, it is to love God; in the second, to love our neighbor. If law describes what it is that we each owe each other, then God's law says...

When a scribe asked Jesus what he thought was the greatest commandment, the answer Jesus gave may have seemed odd to the scribe and certainly to us. It is odd, because the first thing Jesus points to doesn’t appear to be a command at all. It’s a...

Why must God give commands? The answers of Scripture to this question are many, but chief among them is that the commands of God are given so that we might live. The law describes what it looks like to truly live, but if we have failed to embody...

In the poetry of Isaiah 60, when the Israelites return from exile, they bring the nations with them. While this might be figurative, God's people were right to expect a great ingathering of the nations. Christ was on his way, and when Christ is...