To start the year, we are studying Peter’s first letter by beginning with I Peter 1:1-2. In each section, we will see how he describes the people of God. In his greeting, Peter calls Christians “elect exiles,” which is a curious expression that mixes something positive (elect, chosen, selected) with something negative (exiles, driven out, rejected). As it turns out, God’s election makes his people exiles in this world, and Peter reminds us that it is our call to live our lives as those who are in the world but not of the world.
At first glance, it looked like Matthew made a big mistake in his genealogy of Jesus by placing him in the line of David,...
In a series of verbal skirmishes with religious leaders, Jesus showed who we are and how we should live as the image of God...
Although the word church appears only three times in all of the gospels, in Matthew 16:13-23 and Matthew 18:15-20. However, the church figured large...