Forgiveness

Our English term conversion is not often used in our translations of the Bible. But lest we commit a word-concept fallacy, we should not conclude from this that the concept captured by our term conversion is infrequently found in Scripture. Far from it. Peter in his sermon recorded in Acts 3...

The aspiration for peace has loomed large in the popular consciousness against the backdrop of continual wars, conflict, and social upheaval. It is the dream of every pageant contestant. And it has its own iconography: the v hand signal and the famous “peace sign” created for the British Campaign...

Remodeling a home (or church) is hard work. Not only does it take a great deal of planning, hard work, blood (if you happen to be accident prone), sweat, and even tears. There are often unforeseen trials that accompany the work, like leaky pipes, rotted wood, and poorly run wires that all need to...

Pomponio Algerio and His Resolute Faith Most tourists to Rome stop by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, in Piazza Navona. Some drop a coin in the water and make a wish. Hardly anyone is aware that in the same square a young Italian man was boiled in a cauldron of oil, pitch, and...

“So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.” – Romans 8:12 Paul’s general argument so far has been to delineate between what is essentially the only two kinds of people there are in this fallen world: those who are in the flesh (i.e., unbelievers, in Adam,...

With the recent epidemic of weekly, if not daily, lethal shootings across the country, does your heart not cry out, “Is God paying attention?” Do terrorist bombings, corrupt business and politics, death inducing dictatorships, and human trafficking around the world go unnoticed? Will the silent...

Recently, Christians have agonized over accounts of false devotion to talented but corrupt church leaders. In outwardly successful churches and ministries, leaders have covered up sin, blamed victims, and blocked investigations to protect gifted but fatally flawed pastors and their ministries. To...

On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronaut Jim Lovell sat aboard Apollo 8 and watched the earth rise over the moon for the first time in history. Reflecting on that moment, he observed: “You can put your thumb up and you can hide the earth behind your thumb. Everything that you've ever known, your loved...

The Christian life is no stranger to apparent paradoxes; apparent because they are not true contradictions. Yet there are many times where we seem pulled between two opposites. Walking the path between grace and truth can be a challenge in our interactions with others. We wrestle with the...

Festo Kivengere and His Message of Forgiveness In 1977, the assassination of Anglican Archbishop Luwum shocked the world. Since his military coup in 1971, the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin had been sowing terror around the country. Being a Muslim, he allowed three forms of Christianity in his country (...