Aaron Simms's Blog, page 20

Receiving the Kingdom of God like a child

Luke records a parable of Jesus in Luke 18:9-17:

[Jesus]also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’

But the tax collec...

The Tabernacle and the Epistle to the Hebrews

As part of my preparation for a study on the Epistle to the Hebrews, I found some interesting and helpful pictures online of models of the Tabernacle. God had instructed the Israelites to build the Tabernacle during their sojourn in the desert (Exodus 25 and following). The writer of Hebrews makes many points of comparison and contrast with the Old Testament Tabernacle.

TheTabernacle was the place where God had promised to dwell in the midst of His people. Itwas organized into three main sect...

“Striven with God and with men, and have prevailed”

Events in this world can get a little disheartening at times. We have trouble and problems. We face difficult choices and challenges. There’s times when we can’t bear to read or watch the news, because it’s too depressing.

This isn’t a new problem. People have struggled since Adam and Eve first sinned, because the outcome of their sin was the in-breaking of decay, death, and other evils into God’s good creation. Therefore, our parents, their parents, and our line of ancestors all the way back...

Plato and Socrates – Christians?

It may come as a surprise that many of the early Christianapologists viewed the Greek philosophers Plato and Socrates very highly. Justin Martyr, in his First and Second Apologies (written mid-2nd century AD) mentions both philosophers many times, as doTertullian and Athenagoras in theirapologies of the same time period.

But why? Why would Christian authors, seeking to defend the Christian faith, look for support from “pagan” Greek philosophers who died half a millennium before?

Certainly Pl...

Who is the Church?

Who or what is the Church? Another way of asking this is, who or what is Israel?

During the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry, the Jewish leaders (scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees) thought that Israel consisted of only those people who were descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This was the Church, so they thought; it was defined by physical descent. The Jewish leaders trusted in their descent from Abraham in order to be saved, to achieve salvation.

And yet, they, and we, begin to get a hi...

Michelangelo’s David

When my family and I were in Italy earlier this year, we had the opportunity to see Michelangelo’s sculptureof David in Florence. He carved it between 1501 and 1504.

Our tour guide encouraged us to look at his face and eyes. Take a look at the picture below:

This is a depiction of David before his battle with the giant Goliath. You can see the concentration in his eyes, and you can perceive that his mind is working. The outcome is yet unknown; Goliath could strike down David with one blow f...

“Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

The title of this post is Peter’s question to Jesus in Matthew 18. Peter wants to know if there is a limit to how much he must forgive another person when they wrong him.

In response, Jesus says, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

Then, Jesus tells a parable about how the “kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.” The king calls a man who owed him a huge sum of money which he could not possible repay. At first the king intends to p...

The Theology of Glory in Action

In my last post about Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, I mentioned the (false) theology of glory.

The theology of glory is basically the incorrect belief that we can determine God’s will and mind by what we observe. Associated with it is the belief that we can explain why things happen in terms of God’s will.

How does this play out in practice?

When bad things happen

“Oh, I’m sorry that happened to you. It was probably for the best, because ….”

I’ve heard this one. Mostof us proba...

Lazarus and the Rich Man

This is a long post, but I wanted to consider Jesus’ parable concerning Lazarus and the rich man, contained in Luke 16:19-31.

It would be easy to take the parable and view it as accusation against rich people; to make it only about that. After all, the rich man is the one who goes to hell and the poor man Lazarus is the one who goes to heaven. In addition to this, Paul in his letter to Timothy says that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (see 1 Timothy 6:6-19). Notice that it...

The Christian Story

I’ve been working on an online “Introduction to Christianity” class and decided to use the concept of “the Christian Story” as a framework for introducing the faith and answering a set of specific questions.

Before I talk about the questions, let me first talk about the idea behind the Christian Story. Also, l want to make it clear that I do not mean to imply that the Bible is fictional or false by my use of the word “story.” Instead, it is simply a helpful way to understand the big picture o...