“The Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
This is one of my favorite verses in this whole story. This verse seems like almost an afterthought when you first read it, but I think a good argument can be made that it reveals more important information about God’s character than anything else in this section. Let’s talk about why.
Read the rest…
“But because sexual immorality is so common, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman should have sexual relations with her own husband.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
This past Friday we started talking about sex. So far we have concluded two things. The first is that this is something we should be talking about. As followers of Jesus and given the state of our culture, we’ve got to be having a positive and productive conversation about how we should approach this touchy subject. The second thing was this: Sex is good and we should be enjoying it…but only in its proper context. It is a gift from God and like any other gift from God, if we use it as He intended, we will enjoy its rich fruits to their absolute fullest. The last question we asked was what we should be doing about this. Let’s talk about that now.
Read the rest…
“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
So, the first time we looked at this verse, we established the rather uncomfortable truth that we either love or hate the people around us. If we are not committed to intentionally moving them in the direction of Jesus, we hate them. It may not be an intense, emotional, passionate hatred the way we might normally think of when we hear the word, but throughout the Scriptures the word “hatred” often means to merely reject. Even without the emotion, if we reject the people whom God has accepted, we have a problem. What John says next makes all of this even more uncomfortable.
Read the rest…
“If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Every now and then you come across a verse you’d rather just leave alone all things considered. If you could unread it somehow you might really consider doing that. Or, you could be convinced to make up something that isn’t totally true in order to fall generally in line with whatever it seems to be saying. This is one of those verses.
Read the rest…
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
The fruit of the Spirit. Even if you’re not a Jesus person you may have seen the phrase before on a piece of kitschy artwork in a store that tries to market to Jesus people. Even if you would consider yourself thoroughly secular in every regard, you have to at least admit it’s a pretty good list of attitudes or mindsets or character traits or whatever else you want to call them.
Read the rest…
The Nexus 