Matthew BoffeyNo church leader wants to admit it, but for many of us it’s true: we still don’t have a sustainable habit for personal Bible study and prayer. Here are five ways forward—true for anyone, church leader or not. 1. Know your why In Man’s Search for...
Logos StaffEverybody has heard of the 12 Days of Christmas. In fact, we’ve all probably sung about them. But what are the 12 Days of Christmas, and who actually celebrates them? What are the 12 Days of Christmas? For more than 1,400 years, the 12 days of...
Mary JahnkeAdmitting this makes me cringe: too often, I gallop through my Bible reading as if it’s another thing to mark off my to-do list. It’s better than not reading the Bible at all, but I’m missing out on so much as I rush by. To help with that, I tried...
John 1:16 reads, “For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” But what IS grace? The briefest definition of grace is “favor,” specifically “unmerited favor from God.” Put another way, it’s receiving what we don’t deserve. ...
Ryan PembertonRyan J. Pemberton—author of Called: My Journey to C. S. Lewis’s House and Back Again and coauthor of Walking with C. S. Lewis—explores Advent ideas for your worship community. For Pemberton, Advent is a beautiful, counter-cultural...
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Faithlife! Enjoy this excerpt from the Lexham Bible Dictionary (included free in Logos) about the role of thanksgiving in the early church. *** Thanksgiving played an important role in the life of the early...
Mark WardWatch Mark Ward’s full interview with Jonathan Leeman on the theology of love. Love is the most important commandment in the Bible. And the second most important. On love for God and neighbor hang both testaments. And at the center of the Bible...
Kay ArthurFor decades, Kay Arthur has devoted herself to mining the riches of the Word and guiding countless others to do the same. She’s championed the truth that every Christian can study the Bible for themselves, regardless of their background. The...
Many of us read Luke 2 at Christmastime, but what Scriptures can we read at Thanksgiving? Here are 54 Bible verses about thanksgiving and gratitude to meditate on during the holiday season or take turns reading around the table on Thanksgiving Day...
Bible Study MagazineReformation Day is October 31. In remembrance, keep reading to explore with David P. Barshinger how the Reformers offer us a model for Bible study. (Or dig deeper into Reformation exegesis with Reading Scripture with the Reformers or The Martin...
Drew LongacreThe Dead Sea Scrolls don’t interest only academics and scholars. Many average Christians have questions, too. Read on for the answers to the most common questions! What are the Dead Sea Scrolls? How were the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered? How...
Brian CollinsEven elementary Bible readers quickly recognize that the Bible includes an Old Testament and a New Testament. For beginning readers, these two great divisions might seem to be equivalent to Part I and Part II. As beginners grow in their...
Gregory GoswellWhat is “paratext”? In short, paratext is everything in the Bible apart from the words. That statement sounds distinctly odd, for most people would simply equate the Bible with the words it contains, but there is, in fact, more in the...
Murray J. HarrisIn order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes. (2 Cor 2:11 NIV) One of the Christian’s defenses against the devil’s stratagems is prior awareness of his purposes and methods. In 2 Corinthians 2:5–11, we discover...
Michelle GroverImprinted among Kristie Anyabwile’s earliest memories is a scene in which she and her grandmother “Miss Nicie” kneel to pray beside their shared featherbed. Kristie vividly recalls the worn tapestry of da Vinci’s The Last...
Richard WinstonIn Matthew 5:17, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” What does this mean? What is the relationship between Jesus’ teaching and the Old Testament? Three...
Andy NaselliWhat Jesus says in Matthew 5:31–32 is a key passage on divorce and remarriage. Here is a phrase diagram of Jesus’ words, made using the Logos Canvas Tool: Evangelicals hold three main views on divorce and remarriage: I believe that what constitutes...
Jonathan T. PenningtonWhoever they are, don’t give them your pearls. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the...
Bible translations cause fights. As if we needed more of those in the church right now. I want to bring peace to Christian conflicts over the KJV, ESV, NIV, and other good evangelical English Bible translations—to End Bible Translation Tribalism...
Bronwyn LeaIf church kids over the years learned that the answer to just about any Sunday School question was “Jesus,” scholar and pastor Jonathan T. Pennington says adult church goers often have similar ingrained responses. Like a call-and-response Rorschach...
One of the big guns often hauled out in Christian fights over Bible translation is the literal gun. “BLAM!” says the literal gun. Then it says in a booming voice, “TRANSLATIONS SHOULD BE LITERALLY ACCURATE, WORD-FOR-WORD!!!” And then it adds another...
Jennifer GrishamSome years ago, Carl Trueman asked a question churches today are reckoning with: What can miserable Christians sing? In the midst of a pandemic, people in your services are likely struggling with fear, anxiety, grief, and uncertainty. We can’t know...
James HamiltonThe Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary is a special new kind of commentary. It includes not just exegetical comments about the meaning of specific verses; it also has a biblical theology section where it traces out the theological themes of a...
John LeeUnlike the Gospels of Luke and John, Mark’s Gospel never explicitly reveals any authorial intent. In A Ransom for Many, John Lee and Daniel Brueske identify Mark 10:45 as the heart of Mark’s Gospel. This single verse is the pivot point of Mark’s...
Guest AuthorBy Terry Dalrymple While governments around the world are focused on poverty alleviation, the church is uniquely called to it. We hear Jesus saying, “Whatever you do to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40)...
You don’t know English; you’re Russian. (Hello!) But you have a Kindle e-reader and you’re learning English by reading. (Imagine with me.) You make a wise choice and you pick up a classic of children’s literature, C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch...
Steven WiniarskiMatthew 15 begins with the Pharisees challenging Jesus over the behavior of the disciples. Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, the Pharisees emerge as Jesus’s chief opposition. They view themselves as the chief interpreters of the law; Jesus’s teachings...
Peter KrolThis article was originally three separate articles that ran in Bible Study Magazine in 2022. We’ve combined them all in one location for easy access. You can use the table of contents below to navigate the content. Table of contentsPart 1:...
Graham ColeThe following is a short excerpt from the already short What Is the Bible? by Graham Cole—one of 17 short books on many current topics in the Questions for Restless Minds series, edited by D.A. Carson. In it, Cole describes the way two different men...
Katie FrenchWhen his childhood dream of being a major league baseball player bit bitter dust, Jim Hamilton realized he’d have to pick another career. He found a new passion: biblical theology, a passion that took off during his studies at The Southern Baptist...