Dr Paul Allen

The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the nations. (Jer. 46:1) I’m persuaded that much of our fear, anxiety, discouragement, and hopelessness is the result of bad theology. At its core, what is the Bible all about? The existence, character, and plan of God. Every other aspect of Scripture flows out of the reality of who God is. A bad or weak theology of God will lead to weakness in other areas of theology, and spiritual weaknesses in daily living.  I had this experience again and again in counselling. I would be working with someone who was struggling to trust God, but, as I listened to him describe who he thought God was, I immediately understood why he had trouble trusting him. I would often think, “If I thought that this was who God is, I would have trouble trusting him too.” One common mistake in our functional theology of God is thinking he is too small.   The God in our minds lacks the awesome, glorious, and incalculable power and authority th...

 At the end of Genesis, Joseph dies. His last request is a testament to his unwavering faith and his awareness of a storyline that is larger than one lifetime: “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Then Joseph makes the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here” (Gen. 50:24–25).  Like Joseph, we can consider our death and go to our graves in the certainty that God will do exactly as he has promised. The worker of God goes into the dust, and the work of God continues without faltering.1 Knowing this with perfect clarity, our Saviour laid down his life willingly. Will we do the same? When we know our days are short, will we be grateful for what we’ve been given or greedy for what we have not?  Yes, you may say, but Jesus knew he would be raised. He knew he could go into the grave and come back out again. Friend, so d...

 

Sinful acts always have their origin in some form of unbelief. Behind every sin is a lie. The root of all our behaviour and emotions is the heart—what it trusts and what it treasures. And people are given over to sinful desires because “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Rom. 1:24–25):  Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. (Eph. 4:17–19)  Humanity’s problem is futile thinking, darkened understanding, and ignorant hearts. We sin because we believe the lie that we are better off without God—that his rule is oppressive, we will be free without him, and sin offers more than God. This is true of every sin.  We can often identify...

A very common definition of sin is “to miss the mark.” This comes from one proposed lexical definition of the Hebrew word חטא. This definition is catchy, but it is partial and can give a misleading impression. After all, the Bible does not use just one or two words to refer to sin. Commentators have actually located around twenty different terms in the Old and New Testaments.1 Each of these terms may have somewhat different lexical domains, and their particular individual meanings must be determined by their context. For most of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the authors assume that their readers already know what sin is. Finding a single comprehensive definition for sin requires more than focusing on the words themselves. It must instead come from the use of the term and the larger concept that emerges across the whole of the Scriptures. One important way to define sin is what might be called a metaphysical perspective. This approach is common in the early church and in the ...

 

Jesus articulates the amazing truth that it will be to the advantage of the disciples for him to leave them, for then the Spirit will be sent in his place. Although Jesus had been of such great importance to them, he now says that someone is coming who can be of even greater benefit (16:7) to them, and they will be active based on his strength. In 14:12–14, Jesus identifies one of the benefits of the arrival of the Spirit. Jesus promises that the works (erga) that he performed will be achieved to a greater degree by those who believe in him. Such works are best identified as miracles and possibly also ethical acts. It may be appropriate to recognize that anything that fulfils the will of God, as exemplified in the life of Jesus, may be identified thus. However, to suggest that believers will be able to perform greater miraculous works than Jesus, in terms of the dramatic impact they cause, is an unlikely interpretation of the text. Nor is Jesus promising that greater power will be avai...

Jesus uses the metaphor of water in association with the Spirit in the context of salvation. It is no coincidence that these words of Jesus were uttered during the seven-day-long Feast of Tabernacles (7:2).  It was popularly referred to as the Feast of Tents due to the fact that the participants camped in homemade shelters, erected on rooftops or in the fields (Lev. 23:34–36). It functioned as a thanksgiving for the harvests and an opportunity to remember how God had guided their forefathers during the forty years in the wilderness. Implicit was an anticipation of the arrival of the kingdom of God, when their ‘exile’ would finally be over and life-giving water would be available in abundance. Little wonder that Josephus described it as the most popular festival held in the temple. It was at this feast that the ritual of drawing water took place on each of the seven days, reflecting the provision of water from the rock by God (Exod. 17:1–6). Water was drawn from the Pool of Siloam a...

The Gospel of Mark is understood by some as having a low Christology . This is understandable, to some extent, in light of the very human aspects of Jesus in the Gospel:  He displays a range of emotions (Mark 1:41; 8:12; 3:5; 6:6);  He doesn’t know everything God the Father knows (Mark 13:32; Edwards 2002, 13);  He is occasionally unable to perform miracles (6:5);  His question to the rich man—“Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mk. 10:18)—could be interpreted as a direct denial of divinity. Mark’s use of the Old Testament, however, reveals a Christology that is “enigmatic and paradoxical” (Strauss 2014, 734), full of the reality of Jesus’ humanity and yet pointing to his divinity. Jesus is the Davidic Messiah , and yet a suffering servant. He is the Danielic Son of Man who, at his lowest point, claims the highest authority (Mark 14:62). More than that, whether by direct quotation or by allusion, Jesus is revealed as the God ...