1 Corinthians 3:8-23 Web

For Reading and Meditation:     Ephesians 2:14-22

There can be little doubt that meeting together with other members of God's family is a powerful way of bringing about a changed perspective. Another thing that happens when we go to church or meet together in Christian fellowship is that we are reminded that the very existence of the Church in today's world is...

For Reading and Meditation:     Hebrews 12:14-29

George MacDonald writes: "Nothing is inexorable but love – For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for...

For Reading and Meditation:     Galatians 2:11-21

The argument presented by pluralists that Christians must view their religion as one among many, and Jesus as only one Savior among others, must be firmly resisted. It may sound arrogant to say so but it is nevertheless a fact that Christianity is unique, absolute, definitive, ultimate, and final. Critics of the...

The day referred to is the day when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, when the dead shall be raised, and the judgment commence.

Oh, what a day will that be! Then every covering shall be removed; and every secret exposed. It will be a revealing day, a convincing day, a confirming day, a condemning day, a justifying day. Then our motives will all be discovered, and our intentions laid bare. Hypocrisy will be condemned, and deception punished.

O beloved,...

"Ye are Christ's." You are his by donation, for the Father gave you to the Son; his by his bloody purchase, for he counted down the price for your redemption; his by dedication, for you have consecrated yourself to him; his by relation, for you are named by his name, and made one of his brethren and joint-heirs. Labour practically to show the world that you are the servant, the friend, the bride of Jesus. When tempted to sin, reply, "I cannot do this great wickedness, for I am Christ's."...

The unsaintly saints in Corinth had been squabbling over human leaders in the church. To some Paul was the ideal. Others made Apollos their favorite. And still others felt that Cephas was superlative. Paul is telling them that it is ridiculous to limit their choice to one when all these men belong to them. Instead of saying, "Apollos is mine," they ought to say, "Paul, Apollos and Cephas are all mine."

It is a word for us today. We err when we become exclusive followers of Luther,...

When the Bible speaks of man in his tripartite being, the order is always spirit, soul and body. When men use these terms together, the order almost invariably is body, soul and spirit. Sin has turned God's order upside down. Now man puts the body first, then the soul, and the spirit last of all.

The two non-material parts of man's being are his spirit and his soul. The spirit enables him to have fellowship with God. The soul has to do with his emotions and passions. Although it is not...

In this verse, the temple of God refers to the local assembly. Paul is not speaking to individual Christians but to believers collectively when he says "which temple ye (plural) are." The saints in Corinth comprised a temple of God.

It is also true, of course, that individual believers are a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle brings this out in 1 Corinthians 6:19 : "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which...

When we think of a heretic, we usually think of someone who holds and propagates views that are contrary to the great fundamental truths of the faith. We think of men like Arius, Montanus, Marcion and Pelagius who lived in the second and third centuries AD.

I do not propose to reject that definition of heretic but to broaden it. A heretic, in the New Testament sense, also includes anyone who obstinately promotes a teaching, even of secondary importance; that causes division in the...

The way to possess unlimited treasure is to give yourself away. How little the philosophers who sought by alchemy to obtain the art of transmuting mean things to precious, - how little did they dream that the art of acquiring worlds of wealth had been long before divulged, and that it consisted simply in giving one's self away to Christ. Men are victims of the unhappy delusion that their own self is a nucleus, a beginning of wealth, around which they must wrap acquisition after acquisition,...