On and after the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was very much the driving force behind the activity of the church. But who was the Spirit? Had he existed before this time?
The Spirit certainly existed before Pentecost, because the New Testament tells us that the Holy Spirit is God himself. The Holy Spirit had been active both in the life of Jesus and in Old Testament times. Read more
The New Testament seems to contain a strange mixture of optimism and pessimism. On the optimistic side there is a heaven and so everything must work out all right in the end. But on the pessimistic side is some of the teaching of Jesus: ‘Countries will fight each other; kingdoms will attack one another. There will be terrible earthquakes, famines and plagues everywhere; there will be strange and terrifying things coming from the sky.’ So what are Christians - optimists or pessimists? Read more
The New Testament teaching about the future is not that we look forward to what we do not have at the moment. For the Christian, the present and the future are closely tied together. So before we look at how Christians should prepare for the future, we need to look at the way the present and the future affect each other. Read more
The theme of God’s judgement appears consistently throughout the Bible. Although judgement is an unpopular idea today, it is something we have to face up to. But how will God judge? What standards does he expect?
God’s standard
Some people say that they are reasonably good people - better than some - and that they have done the best they can. But even if that were true, is it enough? Read more
The Christian hope, first and foremost, is in God himself. Because we know God, and learn to have confidence in him, we know that what he has promised will be fulfilled.
Our hope is not for the release of our souls from our bodies, as many people imagine. The teaching of the New Testament is that at the last day, the day when Jesus returns, we shall be raised from death to be with God for ever. Paul expresses it in this way: Read more
‘God created mankind in his own image: male and female he created them,’ says the writer of Genesis. In Greek legend Zeus first created a sexless being. Later, in a fit of divine anger, he split this into man and woman. The division of humankind into two sexes is thus understood to be an imperfect state, a weakening of mankind’s power, because the two sexes pull in different directions. Read more
Humanity’s fall is not just a theological statement; human history and experience show us that the image has been defaced in us all. As Paul puts it, ‘We have all fallen short of God’s standard’. But does this mean that God’s image has never been seen in its fullness since the beginning? No, because Jesus Christ is the perfect image of God. That is the New Testament’s bold declaration. The task of his mission was to lead us back to God and to restore the image in us.
This is where the New Testament connects the study of Christ with the study of humankind. Because Jesus is both true likeness of God and perfect man, he is the promise of a renewed humanity. To be ‘in Christ‘ is to belong to a ‘new humanity‘, just as to be ‘in Adam’ is to belong to the old, sinful humanity. The apostle Paul wrote of the ‘new nature which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator’. As the ‘image of the invisible God‘, Jesus is the model of what men and women were created to be. Read more
One writer has confessed, the longer I live, the more faith I have in Providence, and the less faith I have in my interpretations of Providence.’
Providence is the care God takes of all existing things. So its range and depth are immense. The word itself is taken from
Abraham’s promise to his son Isaac on the way to sacrifice: ‘My Son, God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.’ ‘There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’ says Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play. This is God’s rule as moral governor over all the universe.
There is also God’s forgiveness of the sinner. God’s great acts of salvation are all part of God’s activity in providence: Read more
In recent years there has been a widely-reported resurgence of occultism in the West. This has coincided with a strong movement, in other parts of the world, to return to traditional religious practices. Far more people are now aware of the reality of the spirit world than a generation or two ago. And when we look at the Bible, we find that God has created a universe of which non-material beings form a very real part.
Today people would acknowledge the influence of outside forces on human beings. We are not so autonomous as we once supposed. To an extent, we can be controlled, and sometimes we are. People’s experience, in many parts of the world today, goes along with Jesus‘ teaching to suggest that personal outside forces (angels, demons, spirits) can and do influence the behaviour of human beings. Read more
