language – Three Minute Bible

December 26, 2024December 26, 2024

Colossians 2:12b – The Workings of God

… in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Summary: Understanding Paul’s language requires understanding the reality of the spiritual realm.

If being “buried with him in baptism” is a metaphor for spiritual things, how much more is the rest of Paul’s sentence?

Actually, Paul’s sentence is more of a “mixed metaphor.”

The last part, where he writes “the working of God, who raised him [Jesus] from the dead,” is literal and true. God did raise Jesus from the dead. This same Jesus whom God raised to life two thousand years ago is alive today.

September 18, 2023September 19, 2023

Ephesians 5:29a – The Meaning of Everyone

After all, no one ever hated their own body,

Summary: Language can be tricky. Paul uses an expression in this passage that can be misunderstood if we are overly picky about words.

January 7, 2019January 6, 2019

Gutsy

I don’t know if you have ever thought of Jesus as gutsy before, but really, if Jesus had been a cowboy instead of a Jewish carpenter, it is hard to imagine a more tense situation even if he had been surrounded by armed bad guys all holding loaded guns pointed at him. Staring down this crowd of angry Jews was really gutsy. And he didn’t back down from his message one bit:

As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”
“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”