Category: Digging in Deeper

Digging in Deeper: Ephesians 5:25

1 Comment

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

If Paul’s words to wives were tough here, his words to husbands are even more challenging.  Wives are called to submit to their husbands as a function of their prior and larger submission to Christ.  Husbands are called to love their wives after the pattern of Christ’s love for the church.  That, of course, prompts a question: How did Christ loved the church?  Answer: He died for her.  He committed Himself to the last breath to seeing her become fully who God created her to be.  Everything he did was for her benefit.  Every single decision He made was filtered through the lens of whether or not it was going to be to her advantage.  For husbands, this is our standard. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Ephesians 5:22-24

5 Comments

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Here it is at last.  The gleaming evidence, lit up by a flashing neon sign, pointing to the fact that Paul is now finally letting out his true colors.  He hates women.  He uses the dreaded “S-word” here.  He thinks women should be submitted, subjected, subordinated to men.  He is convinced, just like everybody else in his day, that they are of less value to society than men.  He was laying a foundation of oppression and injustice here that has persisted in the church until today.  Women should be silent and seated at the feet of their men, catering to their every whim, and treating them as if they were the god of the home.  Disgusting!  Why else would he write something like this? Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Ephesians 4:17-18

Leave a comment

“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.  They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Understanding that by “Gentiles,” Paul is talking about people who are not followers of Jesus, this is an uncomfortable verse.  It’s not so bad that Paul calls us not to do life as they do.  The uncomfortable part–especially given our culture’s embrace of pluralism and a particular understanding of tolerance–is what comes next.  Paul describes them as futile of mind, darkened in understanding, alienated from God, ignorant, and having hardened hearts.  Try tweeting that out sometime. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Isaiah 57:21

Leave a comment

“There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Culturally, we are often taught to think about peace in terms of an absence of conflict.  In the Scriptures, peace is a much more robust concept than that.  It contains the idea of an absence of conflict, yes, but more than just physical conflict, peace in the Bible is concerned with an absence of conflict with God.  It is concerned with a sense of wholeness and completeness to life.  When we have peace, all is right inside of us, whether or not it is right around us. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Isaiah 44:18-20

Leave a comment

“They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand.  No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, ‘Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten.  And shall I make the rest of it an abomination?  Shall I fall down before a block of wood?’  He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

This and the few verses on either side of it is one of my favorite passages in the whole Old Testament.  It ranks up there for me as one of the best in the Bible.  That may not be a very spiritual answer to the question of what this preacher’s favorite verse is, but read it again for yourself.  It’s hilarious.  No other passage in the Bible captures the sheer idiocy of idolatry quite so well as this one does.  And it does it with a sarcastic sense of humor that resonates really well with my own. Read the rest…