Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Philemon 1:3 NASB Lord – It’s hard to miss that fact that Paul distinguished between God the Father (patḗr) and Yeshua the kýrios (lord). That distinction creates an issue for Trinitarian doctrine, but not nearly as significant as Paul’s statement that…
All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; 2 Timothy 3:16 NASB Inspired – Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to poke holes in your favorite English Bible translation. But I do want to point out that there might be a great many…
If he takes to himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. Exodus 21:10 NASB (first published in February 2014, with additions) Conjugal rights – If you were ever to doubt the upside-down nature of the Hebraic view of the role of women, this verse would surely seem to…
“But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” Luke 5:24 NIV Authority on earth – I wrote Cross Word Puzzles seven years ago. A lot has changed since then. In…
For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 NASB Accepted – This verse raises several important questions: 1) Why did…
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18 NASB A helper suitable– We have investigated a lot about the Hebrew phrase ‘ezer kenegdo. We discovered that these words spoken by God about the creation of the woman are filled with royal language,…
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.Philemon 1:8-9a NIV Order you– The letter to Philemon is the shortest of the Pauline material in Scripture. That’s why it comes last in Paul’s work. It is also unique…
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26-27 NASB Rule– There are two important verbs that are…
But I do not allow a woman to teach, nor to exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 1 Timothy 2:12 NASB Exercise Authority– You have got to be kidding me! That is probably the immediate contemporary reaction to the face-value interpretation of Paul’s remark. If what Paul says is really the biblical model for the…
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7 NASB Man – Sometimes Christian theologians argue that because man was created first, men have primacy of authority over women. Bruce Ware makes this argument is his…
