As someone who has done lots of home improvement projects in the past few years, I have come to realize how valuable proper tools are. But as with most jobs, there isn’t one tool that works on every project. The right tool makes all the difference—as well as understanding how to use it properly! As the old saying goes, “Use the right tool for the right job in the right way.”

The same holds true for understanding biblical Greek words. The right tools in this case include lexicons (or lexica) and dictionaries.

Understanding Greek lexical tools

Before we look at some specific lexicons and dictionaries, let’s consider what they are and what they offer. We’ll also need to have some basic concepts in place to know how to use these powerful tools.

What’s the difference between a lexicon and a dictionary?

A lexicon is a type of dictionary, but it involves two languages, such as Greek and English, whereas a dictionary may deal with one language, such as English. Nonetheless, both lexicon and dictionary are terms commonly used for resources on biblical Greek words.

Both dictionaries and lexicons are used to understand the meaning of a word. Yet, whereas dictionaries often provide shorter, more general translation possibilities of a Greek word, a lexicon provides more detailed information, including examples of usage, a word’s evolution, and possibly even bibliographic entries for further study. The terms lexicon and dictionary are sometimes used interchangeably, but it is important to understand they have different aims.

What’s the difference between a gloss and a definition?

A lexicon often includes both definitions and glosses. A gloss (or translation gloss) is a possible translation for a given word; for example, one translation for the Greek word λόγος (logos) is “word,” although there are many other possible translations, including “statement,” “report,” or “matter.” On the other hand, a definition explains what a word means or how it functions without actually translating the word. Here’s an example definition for λόγος: “a communication whereby the mind finds expression.”¹ Another lexicon defines θεωρέω as follows: “to observe something with continuity and attention, often with the implication that what is observed is something unusual.”² The glosses for θεωρέω are “to observe,” “to be a spectator of,” “to look at.”

There are merits to both definitions and glosses: Definitions avoid confusion when a gloss is unfamiliar or archaic (such as the gloss “snood” for κατακάλυψις, which is a type of head covering). Yet definitions can be cumbersome, whereas glosses are usually easier to understand initially. However, a list of glosses can suggest that any gloss could be used as a possible translation of a Greek word. It is important to recognize that the meaning of a word depends on the context in which that word occurs. As we saw, there are dozens of possible translation glosses for λόγος; only context determines which is the most appropriate for a given clause.

How are lexicons and related resources written?

It is probably best to speak of “compiling” lexicons rather than writing them. It is well-established that many Greek lexicons have simply borrowed from older lexicons without critical appraisal of the accuracy of a given gloss. In some cases (such as understanding the conjunction πλήν as a more colloquial alternative for ἀλλά) inaccurate understandings of Greek words have been perpetuated for decades, even centuries!³ Fortunately, some of these inaccuracies have been addressed in more recent works.

The approach to NT lexicography has evolved over many centuries, beginning with early “glossaries” of Greek words written in Latin. In the nineteenth century, many German lexicographers focused on the etymology (the origin and history of words) of words and how their meaning changed over time. Additionally, they sought to understand what these changes indicated about the culture and times of the biblical authors. As Michael Aubrey notes, these scholars “sought to bring together and articulate the social, cultural, and theological information that is associated with individual lexemes. They recognized that words are not self-contained phonetic vessels, but complex mental representations of human knowledge.”⁴

Part of this approach is helpful since words must be understood in their textual, cultural, and historical context. But some attempts to get into the mind of the biblical author go beyond the lexical data. These issues are more pronounced in theological wordbooks (discussed below). Problems also arise when “significant theological claims” are made about a given lexeme and when those claims are believed to be present every time that lexeme occurs.⁵ For example, λόγος does refer to the Incarnate Son of God, but certainly not every occurrence of λόγος in the NT has this reference. It is also important to understand that a word is not the same thing as a concept. For example, κληρονομία is often translated “inheritance,” but it is frequently associated with “eternal life” in the NT. So if you only searched for instances of κληρονομία in the NT, you would miss much about the concept of inheritance in the NT. Additionally, not every occurrence of κληρονομία in the NT is associated with eternal life.

Biblical Greek lexicons

Having gained a better understanding of some of these basic distinctions and their historical background, we can now survey some of the major lexicons and dictionaries for both the NT and the LXX.

We’ll begin with lexicons on biblical Greek.

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDAG)

Perhaps the best known and most helpful NT lexicon is A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature.

This work was begun in German by Walter Bauer, who added numerous references to extrabiblical sources, especially in the fourth German edition. In 1957, William F. Arndt and F. Wilber Gingrich translated Bauer’s work into English, although they also expanded the volume considerably. The second edition of this English work incorporated additional research from Bauer, which continued to broaden the scope of the extrabiblical references. Frederick W. Danker took over for Arndt after the latter’s death in 1957; this second (1979) edition was commonly referred to as BAGD (Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker). The third edition of this work was published in 2001 (Chicago); it is commonly referred to as BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), reflecting Danker’s increased role in its production as well as the continued dependence upon Bauer’s work.

The third edition offers both definitions and glosses for Greek words. For example, the entry for ἐπίσκοπος begins with a definition followed by one possible gloss (in italics): “one who has the responsibility of safeguarding or seeing to it that something is done in the correct way, guardian.”⁶ The entry continues by noting that this word referred to an “overseer” in the early church and offers extensive references to occurrences in extrabiblical Koine. It concludes with a bibliography for further study. The gloss “bishop” is noted as reflecting later ecclesial realities and thus to be avoided.

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BDAG is the source for the definition of λόγος given earlier. The entry for λόγος (three full pages of double columns with small font!) offers three main definitions (bolded) with multiple subcategories (including additional definitions and glosses) and extensive biblical and extrabiblical references and bibliography. References to the NT are helpfully bolded.

A word of caution, however, is in order about biblical references. The determination of which NT references are examples of given subcategories involves interpretation and exegesis. Thus it may be possible to find the same biblical reference in more than one part of an entry. This should caution users of the lexicon from simply appropriating the gloss assigned for a given biblical word uncritically. In many cases, we will agree with BDAG, but it is helpful to understand that the assignment of these biblical references can be subjective.

Even so, many features contribute to the indispensable value of BDAG. Although this lexicon is about $150, it is worth putting on your Christmas or birthday wish list! A related work is The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, also by Frederick W. Danker (Chicago, 2009). This helpful resource is not a substitution for BDAG, but it is a helpful quick reference. It also offers definitions and glosses, but has more limited references to the Greek NT and extrabiblical sources.

A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (BDAG)

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The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

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Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (Louw and Nida)

Another important tool is the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains, edited by J. P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida.

Rather than an alphabetical listing of Greek words (as is the case for most lexicons, including BDAG), this lexicon classifies Greek words into ninety-three semantic domains (such as “Kinship Terms,” “Reconciliation,” “Forgiveness,” “Agriculture,” “Status,” and so on).

As noted, earlier lexicons and theological wordbooks sought to understand the “mindset” behind biblical Greek words, but as noted, this can lead to reading too much into a given word and importing that meaning into every occurrence of that word. The emerging field of lexical semantics was critical of these older approaches (and rightly so, in some cases). Instead, linguists sought to break words down into their various components (componential analysis) understood in contrast to other words. For example, a “human” could be a man, woman, boy, or girl, but an “adult” could only be a man or a woman.⁷ Such analysis led to the identification of the ninety-three semantic domains, which group related words together into small subdomains.

Looking back at the example of θεωρέω, this word is listed under three semantic domains: Domain 24 (Sensory Events and States; Subdomain A: See); Domain 32 (Understand; Subdomain B: Come to Understand); and Domain 90 (Case; Subdomain M: Experiencer). Our example definition above is listed under 24.14.

In addition to offering a definition and possible glosses, Louw and Nida’s work also offers “contextual notes,” which list scriptural examples or explain idioms. For example, in 90.79, they note that this use of θεωρέω is “normally in negative expressions indicating what one will not experience,” which helps to understand the use of θεωρέω in John 8:51.⁸

This work is helpful for addressing a common mistake that Greek students often make, which is to think that all possible glosses for a given Greek word are equally possible every time that word appears in the NT or the LXX. Instead, Louw and Nida’s work shows how dependent words are on the context in which they appear. This work also makes it easier to consider options that biblical writers had in their lexical choices since we more easily see semantically related words.⁹ Finally, subdomains make it easier to see synonyms (in nearby subdomains) and antonyms (in more distant subdomains) for a given word or group of words.

A benefit of this lexicon, then, is that you can more easily see how individual Greek words are organically connected with other words. This reflects the way that language users actually categorize words, something along lines of “words of a feather flock together.” People simply don’t organize the words that they know alphabetically! Yet people also don’t usually understand what a word is based on how it contrasts with another word (componential analysis). Instead, people often understand what a word means based on their experience with that word. For example, a person knows what a bird is because they’ve experienced one singing in their back yard. They aren’t thinking that a bird has certain components and lacks other ones.

A limitation of this work is that it can be difficult to use since the same Greek word can appear in more than one semantic domain. The work comprises two volumes. The first volume is organized around the ninety-three semantic domains. The second volume lists all NT Greek words alphabetically and then lists the domain(s) and subdomains where the word is discussed. This latter volume also offers a list of English words to access domains and a Scripture index keyed to domains.

Another limitation of Louw and Nida is that it is limited to the Greek of the NT. Even so, Louw and Nida’s work is very helpful for understanding biblical Greek words.

Drawing upon Louw and Nida is Mark Wilson’s Mastering Greek Vocabulary Through Semantic Domains. This compact volume follows the structure of the ninety-three semantic domains from Louw and Nida’s lexicon, but offers brief glosses (sometimes only one). It is a helpful way to visualize how “words of the same semantic domain flock together.”

Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains

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A Greek-English Lexicon (LSJ or LSJM)

A Greek-English Lexicon was originally edited by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, but a later edition (Clarendon, 1996) was updated by Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie. This lexicon spans from the classical era to about AD 600, including vocabulary from the LXX and the NT.

This massive volume is particularly helpful for understanding the semantic development of a given word over a long time period. This can be helpful in some situations, but if we are focused on how first-century language users understood a specific work in a given context, this may not be as helpful. After all, most of us don’t intuitively think through centuries of a word’s historical development when we consider what that word means!

Even so, this work can be helpful in understanding hapax legomena (words that occur only once) or words whose background could still influence NT usage. For example, παρρησία was associated by Athenians with free speech, which is still reflected in some glosses for this word: “outspokenness,” “frankness.”

See also its abridgment, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (LSJI).

Liddell and Scott Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ)

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An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (LSJI)

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Biblical Greek lexicons focusing on the LXX

Several specialized lexicons have been developed for studying the vocabulary of the Septuagint (LXX).

A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (GELS)

The most comprehensive lexicon of the LXX is the one by Takamitsu Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters, 2009), covering the OT canon and the Apocrypha (deuterocanonical books). This work is based on the comprehensive textual work of the Göttingen edition of the LXX. Entries include various forms of words (e.g., various verb tenses forms, participles, passive forms) and definitions as well as glosses, which are illustrated by actual Greek texts (allowing users to see contextual connections) and biblical references. There are also references to cognates and some bibliographical works. Unique to this work is the addition of references to both synonyms and antonyms within the LXX corpus.

A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (LEH)

One of the most accessible lexicons for the LXX is the two-volume A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, edited by Johan Lust, Erik Eynikel, and Katrin Hauspie, now in its third edition (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2016). The work is very concise and yet offers morphological analysis, biblical references (including the OT and Apocrypha), translation glosses (but no definitions) often following LSJM, some references to the Hebrew from which the Greek was translated, and bibliographic references for many entries (including some not found in GELS).

A Greek English Lexicon of the Septuagint, 3rd ed.

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The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon

As the title suggests, this work by Gary Alan Chamberlain (who collaborated on LEH) is not an exhaustive lexicon. It mainly supplements the LXX references in BDAG. Morphological information is offered, especially for less common forms, as well as biblical and extrabiblical references.

The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon

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Theological lexicons and dictionaries

As noted above, in addition to lexicons, there are numerous theological lexicons and dictionaries for the study of biblical Greek words.

The adjective “theological” before “lexicon” or “dictionary” is important. These works reflect the decades of (primarily German) scholarship that sought to understand the historical, cultural, and contextual associations in a given Greek word, often with the aim of understanding how the word could be understood theologically.

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT)

The most extensive theological dictionary is the ten-volume Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and George Bromiley (Eerdmans, 1976). TDNT is the English translation of Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, translated by Bromiley.

This massive work has detailed, extensive entries for more than 2,300 biblical Greek words. The volumes are organized alphabetically, although related words are discussed in single entries. For example, the entry for ἅγιος (“holy”) also includes subentries for ἁγιάζω (“I set apart”), ἁγιασμός (“consecration”), ἁγιότης (“moral purity”), and ἁγιωσύνη (“holiness”). (Numerous other related words are also listed in the opening paragraph.) This twenty-eight-page entry starts with ἅγιος, beginning with a brief discussion of the word in classical Greek and secular Hellenistic sources. This is followed by a seven-page discussion of ἅγιος in the OT (both the MT and LXX) and extrabiblical Jewish writings (e.g., Jewish apocryphal writings, Philo, and Josephus). The next three-page section focuses on rabbinic Judaism. Finally, there is a ten-page discussion of ἅγιος in the NT. Following the entry for ἅγιος is a two-page entry for ἁγιάζω, single-page entries for ἁγιασμός and ἁγιότης, and a half-page entry for ἁγιωσύνη. Such extensive treatment of one significant NT word is representative of other entries, some of which are much longer.

Multiple authors contributed to this massive work. Often, one entry will have multiple authors. This is understandable given the scope of this work, yet there can be an unevenness in the depth and theological perspectives represented in individual entries.

This work represents nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century German scholarship at its height. Yet, as noted above, this theological approach to lexical semantics has been criticized, particularly for the confusion of a word with an associated concept (such as κληρονομία and “eternal life”) and for trying to determine the “mindset” of biblical writers. These criticisms have led some to abandon TDNT. Yet TDNT offers vastly more background information than is found in BDAG or Louw and Nida, so dismissing it completely is a mistake. Instead, we can gain from the cultural and historical background and accompanying reflections while at the same time being cautious of some of the (at times sweeping) theological claims found in entries.

There is also an abridged, one-volume book (Eerdmans, 1985).

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament | TDNT (10 vols.)

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The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (TDNTA)

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New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (NIDNTT)

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology is a three-volume work edited by Colin Brown (Zondervan, 1979). The strength of this work is the breadth of scholars who contributed to it, such as J. I. Packer, F. F. Bruce, and D. A. Carson. Although a bit dated, many entries are worth consulting. Each entry covers classical (CL) usage, OT usage, and NT usage.

The main difficulty with this resource is its organization—entries cover related English words, such as “Abolish, Nullify, Reject.” The Greek verb discussed under this heading is καταργέω. The entry “Baptism, Wash” discusses three Greek verbs: βαπτίζω, λούω, and νίπτω. (This format follows the original design of Theologisches Begriffslexicon zum Neuen Testament, which focused on “theological concepts,” somewhat similar to semantic domains.) Its original publication was very difficult to use; fortunately, indexes were added as a fourth volume in 1986.

New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (4 vols.)

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New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDNTTE)

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis (Zondervan, 2014) is the extensive revision of NIDNTT. This five-volume tool is the work of Moisés Silva, who updated and revised entries so extensively that the names of the original authors are not retained in individual entries.

The biggest revision reorganized entries into alphabetical order while still trying to retain the idea of concepts. Perhaps more importantly, NIDNTTE takes seriously the earlier criticisms of theological wordbooks and tries both to avoid those shortcomings and to incorporate more recent understandings of lexical semantics, such as the role that context plays in understanding a biblical Greek word. Silva describes this in terms of “collocation,” or how a word “combines with other lexical items.”¹⁰ As the title indicates, this work is more focused on exegesis, considering how words function in a given context. This shifts the focus from the word itself to the context in which it appears and how it functions there.

Silva also draws heavily upon the semantic domains established by Louw and Nida, which is reflected in the “List of Concepts” that is found at the beginning of each volume. A dagger indicates which Greek word has the most extensive discussion and often the fullest bibliography. Somewhat following NIDNTT, each entry discusses Greek literature (GL; classical and extrabiblical Koine), Jewish literature (JL; MT, LXX, Philo, Josephus, and some apocryphal works), and the NT. Some basic revisions include corrections of inaccurate material and omissions of outdated discussions.

See also its one-volume abridgment, The Concise New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, edited by Christopher A. Beetham. This work is a valuable tool for quickly understanding the scope of a biblical word. It is more accessible than NIDNTTE and yet entries retain much of the essence of the longer entries in NIDNTTE.

New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, 2nd Edition | NIDNTTE (5 vols.)

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The Concise New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis

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Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (EDNT)

Also sensitive to the criticisms of James Barr is the Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Horst Balz and Gerhard Schneider (Eerdmans, 1990–93).

Unlike TDNT, EDNT covers all the vocabulary of the NT. Moving beyond a lexicon, EDNT offers interpretations of lexemes in selected contexts. The adjective “exegetical” is important since the aim of this dictionary is to understand how a word functions and what it means in a given context and not necessarily to offer the theological conclusions of TDNT.

Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament | EDNT (3 vols.)

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Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (TLNT)

The Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (Editions Universitaires, 1978, 1982) was published by Ceslas Spicq in French, with the English translation appearing in 1994 (Hendrickson).

This three-volume work is less extensive than the TDNT and focuses on contemporary papyri rather than drawing upon the extensive historical development of words from classical, MT, and LXX usage that characterizes TDNT (although Spicq does engage these sources). It is more synchronic, focusing on how words were used and understood in the first-century Koine context of the NT.

Unlike TDNT, this is the work of a single individual, which yields a more unified theological perspective. Although the work is organized basically alphabetically, entries often include related words. Spicq offers a select set of theologically significant NT words with an explicit theological aim that focuses on “the semantics and the religious and moral sense of the language of the New Testament.”¹¹

True to his aims, Spicq offers many theological and exegetical insights into various NT passages, which can be helpful for Bible study and sermon preparation.

Theological Lexicon of the New Testament | TLNT (3 vols.)

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Analytical lexicons

Analytical lexicons are probably better understood as parsing guides.

The Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament (Mounce)

The Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament, by William D. Mounce (Zondervan, 1993), arranges entries alphabetically by morphological form. The lexical form is bolded and is accompanied by limited glosses (and some definitions) and NT references. Each entry includes morphological analysis and principal parts for verbs. For example, the entry ἀποκτανθείς offers a complete parsing, biblical reference, and morphological analysis and indicates that this derives from ἀποκτείνω. The entry for ἀποκτείνω lists this verb’s principal parts, variant spellings, simple glosses, and biblical references with more detailed glosses.

The Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament

The Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament, edited by Timothy Fribourg, Barbara Fribourg, and Niva F. Miller (Baker, 2000), also offers morphological analysis, biblical references, and more extensive definitions and glosses.

Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (ANLEX)

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The Analytical Lexicon of New Testament Greek

The Analytical Lexicon of New Testament Greek, edited by Maurice A. Robinson, and Mark A. House (Hendrickson, 2012), offers more extensive historical background, some references to English translations, the theological significance for some words, and limited NT references. It offers complete parsing and morphological analysis.

Analytical Lexicon of New Testament Greek, rev. ed.

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The Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint: A Complete Parsing Guide

The Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint: A Complete Parsing Guide, by Bernard A. Taylor (Zondervan, 1994), does not include definitions or glosses and only provides complete parsing for Greek words in the LXX, arranged in alphabetical order.

Additional resources

If you have access to a good theological library, the following resources can sometimes be helpful for understanding biblical Greek words.

Zondervan Compact Greek Lexicon

A concise, hybrid volume worth considering is the Zondervan Compact Greek Lexicon, by Paul N. Jackson (Zondervan, 2025). This compact volume (slightly over 200 pages) lists lexemes alphabetically for both the Greek New Testament and the LXX, indicating the frequency of each word, and often providing verse references for less frequent words. Rather than merely listing possible glosses for a given word, glosses are divided into subcategories, sometimes summarizing the extensive entries in NIDNTT in only several lines of text. Relevant Greco-Roman and early church references are cited when necessary to indicate a word’s usage. Difficult, irregular forms are also listed with clear references to the lexical form.

The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament: Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Nonliterary Sources (Moulton and Milligan)

The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament: Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Nonliterary Sources, by James Hope Moulton and George Milligan (Eerdmans, 1980), is not an exhaustive lexicon, but rather a treatment of selective Greek NT words that seeks to incorporate extrabiblical information, particularly from discoveries of papyri and some inscriptions that were recent at the time when the work was compiled.

It is interesting to note that a given word, such as ἀποσπάω (“I pull, draw, lead away”) in Acts 20:30, does not imply violence but a “breach of contract” in some papyri. It is harder to know, however, how these extrabiblical sources illumine what Paul meant by this word. Even so, this resource can helpfully supplement our understanding of some biblical words.

See also the forthcoming revision of this work, Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament (Hendrickson, 2027).

Vocabulary of the Greek Testament

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The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek

The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (Brill, 2015) includes references to Koine. For instance, the entry on λόγος has numerous references to the LXX and NT, including John 1:1 and Revelation 19:13. For frequent words, you are better served with BDAG or Louw-Nida. But for hapax legomena (words that occur only once in the Greek NT or only in the LXX), this dictionary can be helpful.

The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (GE)

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A Patristic Greek Lexicon

A Patristic Greek Lexicon, edited by G. W. H. Lampe (Clarendon, 1961), is helpful for seeing how biblical Greek words evolved in the first centuries of the church. For example, the entry for ἐπίσκοπος discusses how this office differed from πρεσβύτερος (“elder”) and how the terms were understood in the early church.

A Patristic Greek Lexicon

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TL;DR: What’s the best biblical Greek lexicon?

So what’s the best biblical Greek lexicon?

• If I could only have one (gasp!), I would go with BDAG. It is the best single-volume work available.
• It would be great to supplement BDAG with Louw and Nida, if possible.
• If I could only have one theological dictionary, I would go with Beetham’s one-volume NIDNTTE.
• If I could only have one lexicon for the LXX, I’d go with L-E-H.
• Any of the analytical lexicons would be a helpful addition to one’s library.
• Of course, if your budget allows, the five-volume NIDNTTE is a wonderful tool to have around.

This handful of tools are the right tools for the job of understanding biblical Greek words!

Share your thoughts

What are the best Greek lexicons? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Related content

• How to Use Greek Lexicons
• Original Language Research: What to Do, What Not to Do
• Pastor, Are You Making These Common Lexical Mistakes?
• How to Teach the Languages—& Actually Help Students Learn
• What Are the Best Hebrew & Aramaic Lexicons? Your Ultimate Guide

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3. Change your mind? Change your Reading Plans

Life changes. Your kids’ schedule shifts. You get busy and fall behind. Or maybe you decide to increase your reading.

Until now, changing a Reading Plan in Logos meant starting it over, losing every session you’d already read.

Not anymore. Open a Plan Details view and you can now change its dates, frequency, Bible version, and more. Logos keeps everything you’ve already read—or skipped—and recalculates only what’s left. For example:

• Drop the two mornings that no longer fit your schedule. Logos reshapes the remainder of your plan around the days you can.
• Easily switch from a “finish by a date” to “read 30 minutes a session” or to one chapter at a time.
• Move from a strict schedule to no schedule at all, and just read at your own pace.

Plan editing is brand new to mobile and web. Your editing controls match those in the plan creation wizard, so it works the same way everywhere.

Open a Reading Plan today.

Custom reading plan creation and editing is still desktop-only. Featured plans and Read Together plans can’t be edited.

4. All your plans in one place, now on mobile

The new Reading Plan Manager arrived on desktop and web last version. It’s the single hub for every plan you’re following. No more hunting for that book plan you started three months ago.

Now it’s on mobile too.

The Yours tab sorts your plans by where they stand:

• Today for what’s due
• Anytime for self-paced reading
• Later for what’s coming
• Archived for what you’ve set aside.

Each plan has a quick menu (⋮) to view details, share, duplicate, or restart.

The Explore Plans tab is where you can discover your next Reading Plan. Search and browse plans from your groups or start from a book in your library.

You can pull up the Reading Plan Manager from your Dashboard or straight from the navigation menu.

Open the Reading Plan Manager.

5. Simpler plan setup

Finally, we made two changes to the Reading Plan creation wizard, both based on user requests.

Reading plans that go chapter-by-chapter. Want to create a Reading Plan that has you reading one chapter per session (other than the Bible)? Choose “Whole book” on the Select a Portion screen and “One chapter per session” on the What Is Your Goal? screen.

Select from a book’s table of contents. If you only want to read part of a book, you can now view its actual structure and pick only those sections or chapters you want to read, instead of having to figure out and enter exact page numbers.

Start a plan now.

More updates

Some additional things worth knowing:

• Reading plan audio now stops at the end of your daily session instead of rolling past it, Read Later is back and lives in the Study tab, and the option to hide the reading plan margin ribbon is now in the web app as well as desktop.

Want to see all the under-the-hood updates and bug fixes? Take a look at the technical release notes. Reach out to our support team if you need help.

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As a theology professor, summers often allow me to shift my focus away from my classes.

Not this summer.

Like many educators, I’ve known in the back of my mind I need to consider making changes in my assignments because of one thing: AI. If you are in a similar spot, keep reading.

I argued early on in the AI education revolution that AI could help not only educators, but theologians too. While it is right to attend to the important concerns of originality and plagiarism, theological educators must also address a more productive issue: Do our assignments actually assess what is important?

Put more bluntly: AI exposed our overreliance on writing papers as the default proof of learning. For many of us, it is difficult to imagine a theology class that is not heavily reliant on papers. But we must. More importantly, we should. Theology will be better for it. The church will be better for it.

Our current dilemma is a blessing in disguise.

Table of contents

Shift from product to performance

A paper can be a proxy for reading, interpretation, memory, judgment, and synthesis. But AI is now very good at producing that proxy. What is needed now is a shift from an end product, like a research essay, to a shared experience of theological insight and informed wisdom in real time. The answer to AI is not paperless theology education. It is “paper-plus” pedagogy.

Theology is meant to be announced, prayed, preached, sung, debated, embodied, and practiced. John Webster’s insight has helped many budding and experienced theologians understand the necessity of “theological theology”: The nature of theology requires a presuppositional recognition that shapes the process and purpose of the theological task. The time is ripe to extend Webster’s wisdom toward theological pedagogy.¹² The AI revolution is forcing theological education to reattach itself to its proper purpose: forming students who can receive, interpret, confess, teach, pray, and embody Christian truth for the sake of the church and the world.

As I prepare for the fall semester, I am not planning to eliminate writing. I am planning to make writing one part of a broader ecology of assignments. Theological educators must remember that the modern research paper became dominant with the rise of the research university. Before that, theological and humanistic education included recitation, disputation, memorization, commentary, translation, preaching, and public speech.¹³ These are clues to the way back to the future.

5 types of assignments AI can’t do for students

Below are five categories to consider as you create theology assignments AI cannot write.

1. Memory

Have students in theology classes memorize and recite a Bible verse, creed, catechism, or theological paragraph. After this, they explain one phrase and one pastoral implication.

You can calibrate the length of the passage and the expected level of precision as you see fit, although I recommend you neither set the bar too high nor too low. I’ve been a part of groups who unintentionally shamed memorization mistakes; I’ve also seen it happen when the bar is so low that it lost all of its benefit and intent. Since recitation is a public event and it is unlikely that younger people are used to this sort of thing, I’d encourage erring on the side of grace as they get used to it.

AI can generate commentary, but it cannot put the text into the student’s memory. Assignments like this make theological education better because students learn not merely to retrieve Christian truth, but to carry it with them into prayer, teaching, counsel, worship, and witness.

2. Dialogue

These assignments involve students speaking during class. They are not reciting something they memorized (like above) but speaking extemporaneously and responsively.

First, assign a theological question in a disputed form. For example: “Should Christians describe salvation primarily as forgiveness, healing, liberation, union with Christ, or adoption?”

Next, have students prepare a “prep card” prior to class. A prep card is a one-page, or even half-page, set of notes they can use to support their claim, which is essentially a short speech. The card could include: a theological claim, a primary source or biblical text, one supporting reason, one objection, one distinction, one pastoral implication, and one question they still have. Then, during class, assign students one of six roles: a claim-giver, a biblical witness, a historical witness, an objector, a pastoral/practical assessor, and a summarizer.

Each person must speak for one minute. After they are done, the rest of the class can ask questions and add their own information. The professor contributes and concludes the assignment with feedback on the topic. For larger classes, you can break the class into multiple groups and provide different questions. For grading, you can collect students’ prep cards and note general feedback on their participation during class (above average, average, below average).

This isn’t a debate, though that is another option. Nonetheless, this assignment helps students engage a structured theological question piece by piece. You are creating an in-the-moment presentation in which each person has to listen to what the others are saying and weave in the information they have.

AI can draft talking points, but it cannot stand in the student’s place as she listens, responds, clarifies, concedes, distinguishes, and speaks with accountability before her peers. Assignments like this make theological education better by treating theology as a communal practice of attentive listening and truthful speech rather than merely an independently written product.

3. Interpretation

Another option requires no preparation for students; they do the work in class. The point is to make students encounter the text before they search for explanations of the text.

For example, open the class with a reading of Scripture, a creed, a historic confession, or an important passage from a theologian. First let them hear it. Then, hand out a hard copy and give them several minutes to notate it. You could prompt them to consider:

• the central claim,
• words or phrases that need clarification,
• what doctrine is being taught or assumed,
• what tension or question does this text address or raise, and
• what could be misunderstood in this passage.

Next, break them into groups to discuss and form questions and observations to pursue further.

All of this so far has been offline.

Then, give them time to use commentaries, Bible software, library databases, AI, or course materials, but only after they have first made their own observations. AI, then, becomes a conversation partner to evaluate, not a substitute for reading. Bible software, commentaries, and AI tools become more valuable when students first learn to notice what is actually in the text. The goal is not to prevent the use of AI but to put everything in its right place.

Finally, ask each group to report on their interpretation, questions, and analysis. Along the way the teacher can introduce relevant details to help the learning process.

For the last fifteen minutes of class, have each student write a summary of their interpretation and the process of discovery (what they noticed at first, then with their group, then using resources, and their conclusion) on the hard copy you handed out, perhaps on the back side of the paper. Their marked-up page becomes evidence of the interpretive process: notes, questions, revisions, arrows, corrections, and final summary. They then turn this document in for credit.

AI can identify themes, summarize interpretations, and suggest questions, but it cannot perform the student’s first act of attention to the text. Assignments like this make theological education better because students learn to observe before consulting outside resources, evaluate the interpretations they receive, and take responsibility for their own conclusions. AI becomes a tool within the interpretive process rather than a substitute for it.

4. Discernment

For these assignments, the professor gives students a realistic ministry scenario and asks them to respond in stages with theologically informed answers.

For example: “A student in your youth group says, ‘I don’t think God loves me because I keep having panic attacks.’ What do you say in the first two minutes? What do you not say? What theological claim matters most?”

After posing this scenario, have each student write on a piece of paper their initial pastoral response and their theological rationale. Then, have them write about any possible risks or misuses of doctrine related to the scenario. Next, have the student discuss their response with their neighbor. If helpful, combine pairs into larger groups before calling on several groups to share their responses.

Have students take a photo of their initial response before turning it in so they can compare their first instinct with their revised plan. Then, have them turn that in for part of their grade. Finally, tell them to turn in a one-page “plan of action” informed by two to three theological doctrines or sources before the next class. Provide students additional theological resources (perhaps denominational guidance, church care policies, relevant Scripture, assigned theologians, and mental health referral guidelines) to investigate further after class.

In this example, it is possible that the students could engage deeply with the theology of the love of God, creation and embodied creatureliness, human weakness and finitude, the doctrine of sin, and the ministry of the church. The point is not for students to find the perfect answer, but to practice theologically disciplined pastoral judgment: what to say, what not to say, which doctrine applies, and when additional care is needed.

AI can produce a polished pastoral response, but it cannot assume responsibility for discerning what this real-life person needs in this particular situation. Assignments like this make theological education better because students must practice the difficult work of weighing doctrines, anticipating harm, choosing words carefully, and recognizing the limits of their own competence. They are not merely demonstrating what they know; they are learning how to use theological knowledge wisely.

5. Embodiment

Assignments of embodied theology ask students to notice how doctrine takes shape in real communities, practices, prayers, sermons, songs, ministries, habits, websites, etc.

A classic example of this type of assignment will be familiar to many who have taught on ecclesiology: Have students visit a local church, research its beliefs, history, and location within the larger Christian community, meet with one of the pastors, and then write a report and present their findings to the class in a presentation. The basic idea is to look at a specific local example or artifact in the community.

Another way to do this is to conduct an in-class audit of a church’s theology. The professor could model this by passing out a paper copy of a publicly available church mission statement and a statement of faith, preferably a church not represented by students in the room or anonymized. Which doctrines are explicit? Which doctrines are assumed but unnamed? Which doctrines are missing? What biblical support is provided? What pastoral strengths and dangers do you notice? Next, ask students to look up a church they have attended or are familiar with and do the same thing. Hand out a form that they can fill out to do a theological audit and turn in at the end of class. Along the way you could encourage them to talk with a partner or have an open discussion with the entire class.

Another option is to ask students, toward the end of class, to write on a piece of paper a prayer or liturgy related to the doctrine that was presented. This could include a biblical phrase or image or a doctrinal claim. After a lecture on the Trinity, a student might write a prayer that actually prays to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, or otherwise reflects Trinitarian grammar. Have students turn it in for credit.

AI can describe a generic church or write a generic prayer, but it cannot replace the student’s act of observing a real community, discerning the theology embedded in its practices, or producing words to be prayed by actual people. Assignments like this make theological education better by reconnecting doctrine to worship, ministry, and the lived practices of the church.

AI may make us better teachers

None of these assignments are AI-proof in the absolute sense. Students can still misuse AI while preparing for them. But these assignments reduce the value of outsourcing because the central act of learning happens in memory, dialogue, interpretation, discernment, and embodiment.

The purpose of teaching theology is not merely producing papers or providing grades, but forming students who can interpret, pray, teach, listen, discern, and speak truthfully. The best assignments in the age of AI are not merely harder to cheat on; they are closer to the actual work of theology.

Share your thoughts

What are AI-proof theology assignments? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Sean McGever’s recommendations

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As encouraging as our church’s numerical growth has been in recent days, the real growth I long to see is spiritual growth. I long to see my people hunger and thirst more and more for God; I long to see them beholding and becoming more like Jesus; I long to see them intentionally cultivating a close walk with God and for them to “reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:2–3).

The question, then, is how we turn these longings into practices within our local church. How do we take spiritual formation seriously and help our people truly grow?

In this article, I want to share five pastoral practices that can help your church pursue spiritual formation with greater intentionality and depth.

1. Define your ministry by the Great Commission
2. Call people to take responsibility for their growth
3. Emphasize salvation as conformity to Christ
4. Trust God to work through the ordinary means of grace
5. Teach the church to abide in Christ

1. Define your ministry by the Great Commission

When we think of the Great Commission, we often picture missionaries being sent to unreached peoples around the world. As vital as that work is, we must recognize that the Great Commission also gives shape to the everyday mission of our local churches. Jesus calls all of us to participate in the work of making disciples.

Notice he says we’re to make disciples, not mere converts. This means teaching new believers everything Jesus commanded, with the aim that they themselves mature into disciples who make disciples, continuing the cycle of multiplication. The goal of the local church, then, is to make new disciples and to help existing disciples grow toward maturity. In other words, the church is meant to be an instrument of spiritual formation, from the first formation of new birth to the ongoing formation that shapes a believer as they grow up into their salvation.

So pastors, elders, and members, keep the main thing the main thing. Ensure that everything your church does, from the Sunday gathering to children’s ministry, youth ministry, student ministry, and every age and stage, is intentionally driving toward the end of making and maturing disciples. That is the heart of spiritual formation, and it is the heart of the Great Commission.

2. Call people to take responsibility for their growth

It is essential that we help our people understand the difference between justification and sanctification. In justification, God works to save us and we receive it by faith. In sanctification, God works and we work to see this sanctification become a reality in our lives. While God works by himself in justification, in sanctification God works and brings forth in us a willing cooperation with him so we actually do the work that he empowers: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:12–13).

It is important to stress that spiritual formation is always God’s work before it is our work. But we must not be afraid to teach clearly that, for spiritual formation to occur, we have to do something! No one drifts into excellence in anything in life. It is the same in our spiritual lives. If we are going to grow and mature and see the character of Christ spiritually formed in us, it will take intentionality on our part.

So, fellow pastors, we must call our people to take up their responsibility to grow and mature in their Christian lives. We urge them to work diligently toward spiritual maturity, while continually reminding them that their effort is fueled by the life-giving power of the Spirit. We work for our sanctification as though it depends on us, while resting and praying because we know it ultimately depends on God. Paul holds this tension together beautifully in Colossians 1:28–29: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

3. Emphasize salvation as conformity to Christ

In Romans 8:28–29, Paul teaches that God works all things together for good, and then defines that good as our being conformed to the image of Christ. God is restoring his image in us, an image stamped on every human being yet marred by sin. Through the gospel we are born again, and the subsequent journey of spiritual formation is the journey of beholding Jesus more clearly so that we become more like him, seeing his image gradually restored in our actual lives (2 Cor 3:18).

We do not preach a gospel that treats Jesus as nothing more than a golden ticket out of hell, a kind of cosmic fire insurance policy. We proclaim a gospel in which we are reborn and then reshaped by the Spirit into the likeness of the Son. As the Apostle John puts it, “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6 NIV). The Christian life is not merely about believing in Christ but becoming like Christ. Yet, gospel indicatives must lead us naturally into gospel imperatives. We must remind our people that God has already given us “everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Pet 1:3). Christlikeness is both the goal God is working toward and the life we are called to pursue.

As we lead, we must work hard to emphasize the importance of Christlike character in every interaction within the local church. We should not only teach this, but also model it. In elders’ meetings, deacons’ meetings, leadership planning sessions, and church business gatherings, we must continually remind one another that the manner of our conversation is always as important, if not more important, than the matter under discussion.

4. Trust God to work through the ordinary means of grace

In the New Testament, the primary context for spiritual formation is the local church. In Ephesians 4:11–16, Paul teaches that God has given his church gifted ministers of the Word to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ. Specifically, God works in his church through the ordinary means of preaching, prayer, and the practice of the ordinances: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. When these basics are carried out faithfully in community, God brings spiritual growth. Over time, his Word and Spirit bear fruit in the lives of his people.

Of course, we are also to seek God in private by praying, fasting, and enjoying communion with God in the secret place. Yet the goal of even these things is not a privatized, individualized spirituality. All of our spiritual disciplines are meant to strengthen us so that we can enjoy and contribute to the health and maturity of the whole body, our local church.

Consider the implications for our ministries. We do not need novel techniques or flashy gimmicks to see genuine growth in our churches. I often speak of the three P’s of pastoral ministry: preaching, prayer, and pastoral care. If we commit ourselves to these basics and practice them well, spiritual formation will take root and flourish over time.

5. Teach the church to abide in Christ

Jesus promises that those who abide in him will “bear much fruit” (John 15:5)—not might, but will. Spiritual formation is the byproduct of abiding in Christ. Likewise, John teaches that abiding in Christ is the primary way we fight sin (1 John 3:6). Abiding in Christ is not optional; it is the God-ordained pathway to spiritual formation. It will produce fruit in the lives of our people—Jesus himself guarantees it. Thus, if you want to grow, you should focus not on growth but on abiding in Christ.

Since this is the case, how important is it that we teach our people how to abide in Christ? Jesus calls his people to abide in him by feeding on the spiritual significance of his death (John 6:56). He calls his disciples to abide in his Word (John 8:31). He calls us to abide in his love (John 15:9).

So too, we must center our gatherings on Christ, not in a way that neglects the Father and Spirit, but to make clear that, apart from Christ, we have nothing of spiritual worth and can do nothing of spiritual worth. We want to major on union with Christ, that we approach the Father only in Jesus’s name, that Jesus baptizes us in the Holy Spirit who comes to live in us by his indwelling presence. Let’s see our small groups become centers of spiritual formation as we study Scripture, pray together, and discover how all of Scripture points us to Christ. Let’s see our children’s, youth, and adult ministries help people grasp more fully the person and work of Christ. Let’s ensure our expository preaching continually brings people to the astonishing reality of “this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27).

And let’s remind our people again and again that he alone brings about true spiritual formation.

Share your thoughts

How can we foster spiritual formation in the church? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

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Reading and understanding the Bible is something most of us do intuitively. At least, that is, until we encounter someone who has interpreted a passage in a way that seems completely at odds with what it’s plainly saying. Suddenly, we realize how important it is to have some guidelines for interpretation.

The goal of these interpretive guidelines must be to extract the author’s original intent. If we fail to ground our interpretation in the original intent, the Bible becomes putty that we can manipulate to mean whatever we might want. Such ungrounded reading is often harmless and might even seem spiritual (think of the athlete with Philippians 4:13 written on his shoes). But when ungrounded reading leads people to deny or undercut plain biblical truths, we realize interpretation must be grounded. It’s not enough to study our Bibles. We need to study them following sound interpretive principles.

Fortunately, there are many excellent resources to help us learn how to faithfully interpret the Bible,¹⁴ and I’m convinced that anyone can learn faithful methods for Bible study. With that in mind, I want to highlight a few of the most helpful resources, especially accessible books that cover the basics. I will also mention three more academically oriented resources at the end.

Choose a few of these books to study. Ask your pastor or a mentor to discuss them with you. Maybe walk through them with your spouse, roommate, or small group.¹⁵ Let’s all strive to better ground our interpretation in the author’s original intent!

Grasping the Bible’s unified story

Before we look at any specific passage, it’s helpful to have a sense of how the whole Bible fits together. That’s because the Bible tells one unified story.

I recommend two resources to help with this.¹⁶

1. Dave Helm and Gail Schoonmaker, The Big Picture Story Bible

This is my go-to recommendation for pastors and laypeople alike. It’s also an illustrated children’s Bible. That might be why it’s so helpful!

It retells the whole story of the Bible in a way that shows its united theme. There are only a few sentences on each page, making it a quick read.¹⁷ As an added bonus, the illustrations tell their own story. For example, Adam and Jesus are both drawn the same way. Or the picture of Adam and Eve leaving the garden mirrors the picture of Israel going into exile.

Read it with your kids or grandkids, or just read it on your own. Either way, you’ll be learning how the Bible fits together!

2. Vaughan Roberts, God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible

If you’re looking for a grown-up book that explains how the Bible holds together, Vaughan Robert’s 140-page overview is the clearest and simplest.

It focuses on the theme of kingdom. He traces this theme through Eden, the fall, the covenants, the monarchy, the prophets, the coming of Christ, the church, and the final consummation. Roberts traces this basic storyline with accessible prose, clean chapter divisions, and helpful charts.

God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible

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Interpreting individual passages

Once you have a basic grasp of the unified story of the Bible, you’ll want to learn the basics of how to read and interpret a particular passage.

There are hosts of books on this topic, some better than others. I’ll highlight a few of my favorites, mentioning their particular strengths. No need to read them all. Pick one or two that you think might best suit you, and you’ll be in a good place. Then practice!

3. Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

This is not a book about how to read and interpret the Bible. Instead, it’s a classic book aimed at teaching us how to read.

It was written in 1940 by University of Chicago professor Mortimer Adler, who also advocated for the idea of the “Great Books.” Adler aims to help us hear and consider an author’s argument—a skill which is essential for reading Scripture faithfully. As an added bonus, Adler tackles topics like how to use commentaries and how to read canonical books (e.g., the Bible).

It’s on the longer side but generally accessible for those looking to think more holistically about reading with an eye toward authorial intent. How to Read a Book is outstanding, surviving the test of time.

4. Nigel Beynon and Andrew Sach, Dig Deeper: Tools for Understanding God’s Word

In Dig Deeper, Beynon and Sach lay out sixteen essential tools for properly interpreting and applying the Bible. Each tool receives its own chapter.

The chapters are short, clear, and very practical. I like it because it’s a bit more thorough than most other entry-level books, without sacrificing brevity or clarity. The tradeoff is that sixteen steps might be too many to consistently follow in one’s own study, especially since the tools feel a bit isolated in how they are presented.

Taken as a whole, though, there’s no better entry-level book on how to study the Bible.

Dig Deeper: Tools for Understanding God’s Word

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5. Douglas Stuart and Gordon Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

Now in its fourth edition, the brilliance of this book is its focus on genres.

Every genre has slightly different tools for interpretation. When we read an Old Testament narrative, for example, we interpret it differently than we would a letter from Paul. Learning how to read and interpret each respective genre is invaluable for the Christian.

Stuart and Fee’s book covers Epistles, Old Testament narrative, Acts, the Gospels, parables, law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Wisdom books, and Revelation. While not exhaustive, it provides a solid foundation for a genre-based interpretive approach.

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 4th ed.

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6. Jon Nielson, Understanding God’s Word: An Introduction to Interpreting the Bible

This is the newest book on my list, published in 2025 as part of Crossway’s Theology Basics series. It’s simple, accessible, and clear.

Nielson lays out five tools for interpreting the Bible and explains each briefly and helpfully. The best part about this new offering is how hands-on it is. Each tool includes practice exercises, and the book has a compendium workbook to further practice the tools.

Nielson’s approach, influenced by people like Dick Lucas and David Helm, is an easy entrypoint into biblical interpretation.

Understanding God’s Word: An Introduction to Interpreting the Bible (Theology Basics)

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7. David Helm, Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today

David Helm is a pastor and the chairman of the Charles Simeon Trust, an organization that has spent thirty years training people on how to interpret and teach God’s Word.

This book is the preaching contribution to the 9Marks Building Healthy Churches series. But it packs more hermeneutical punch in its first seventy pages than anything else available. Those seventy pages (the first three of the book’s four chapters) are engaging, compelling, and clear. Principles are illustrated with clarifying examples that drive home the concept.

I recommend it to anyone—not just preachers—who wants to grow as an interpreter, particularly if you regularly teach the Bible.

Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today (9Marks Building Healthy Churches Series)

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Studying more in-depth

Perhaps you already have a basic foundation in hermeneutics, and you’re looking for something that can push you to the next level. There are many excellent books to help you grow as an exegete. I will limit my recommendations to three that I think are particularly compelling, each progressively more demanding.

8. Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Kingdom

Graeme Goldsworthy is one of the pioneers of the rediscovered field of biblical theology. His little book Gospel and Kingdom, first written in 1981 but now often sold as part of The Goldsworthy Trilogy, has had disproportionate impact on how evangelicals read their Bibles. It served as the foundation of the Helm and Roberts books mentioned above. At only a hundred pages, it packs a punch. Goldsworthy champions reading the Bible as a cohesive whole centered on Jesus Christ.

While newer books on biblical theology are more accessible, I have found it uniquely helpful to grapple with Goldsworthy’s original thesis. His concern is to reclaim the Old Testament. He doesn’t want it read as a collection of fable-like stories with a concluding moral. He wants it read as the story of God’s kingdom: created, lost, and restored in Jesus. The story of the Bible is the story of the gospel and the kingdom.

The Goldsworthy Trilogy

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9. D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies

This riveting little book exposes the many ways in which Bible interpreters err, and it’s one of the books that first put D. A. Carson on the map as a trusted evangelical scholar. If you read it, you’ll see why.

He offers sixteen examples of word study fallacies, eight examples of grammatical fallacies (three on tenses and five on syntax), eighteen examples of logical fallacies, and seven examples of presuppositional and historical fallacies. It’s a book that cuts in multiple directions. It’s an apologetic, exposing liberal interpretive tricks, and a corrective, taking common evangelical errors to task.

Sit alongside Carson as he trains you in precise and careful exegesis of the Scriptures. You’ll be better for having done so.

Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed.

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10. Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading

This is the only book on my list that’s not written from an evangelical perspective (if you don’t count Mortimer Adler). It’s also the most academically demanding—by a long shot. This tome, coming in at over five hundred pages, is the magnum opus of Meir Sternberg, capturing the collective approach of others also in his school (e.g., Adele Berlin and Robert Alter).

I haven’t read anything as compelling and helpful as it relates to reading Old Testament narrative. In one sense, it’s a blistering takedown of many modern readings of Scripture that chase everything but the author’s aim. In another sense, it’s Sternberg’s thought-provoking commentary on a host of passages that exemplify his principles. At its core, it’s arguably the definitive scholarly work on how to read biblical narrative faithfully.

Sternberg explains the complex interplay between God, the human author, the narrator, the characters, and the reader; how gaps in knowledge between the latter three are used by the author to move forward his aim. He describes the various Hebrew uses of repetition and how the author employs them to his end. He teaches us how authors use plot to maximize suspense, curiosity, or surprise. With these, and many other tools, Sternberg urges us to discover the clear theological aim of biblical narrative.

This seminal work is demanding but rewards those willing to put in the work.

The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading

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Conclusion

I’m thankful God doesn’t wait until we perfect our Bible study before using our Bible study to grow us! Nonetheless, we benefit from taking steps to improve our study of Scripture.

Faithful Bible study isn’t impossible. You don’t need a PhD. It doesn’t require a decoder ring. It just requires becoming a bit more conscious and intentional about the natural rules of reading that most of us intuitively understand.

I’m confident the books I’ve recommended will serve that end. They have helped me. I’m eager for them to help you too!

Share your thoughts

What books would you add to this list? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Related content

• What Is This Thing Called Bible Study?
• 7 Steps: How to Do an Inductive Bible Study
• How to Study the Bible Like an Evangelical: Principles & Practice
• The Best Study Bibles—& How to Choose
• How to Ask Excellent Bible Study Discussion Questions

The doctoral landscape has changed significantly in recent decades. In the past, earning a research doctorate often meant relocating to a Western institution for years of expensive, immersive study. Today, prospective doctoral students have an array of global options with varying formats.

Navigating the world of doctoral degrees in religion can be tricky. When embarking on this journey, the first crucial step is understanding the fundamental divides, academic prerequisites, and program models.

The methodological divide

The most critical distinction in the field pertains to your methodology and institutional home.

1. Critical: a descriptive approach

Typically housed in a secular university’s religious studies department, this track studies religion through a humanistic lens. Using disciplines such as history, sociology, and anthropology, students observe religious practices objectively without having to adhere to any faith commitments.

2. Confessional: a normative approach

This path, found in seminaries or divinity schools, studies religion from within the faith tradition. It asks normative questions about what is theologically true and often requires alignment with specific doctrinal or denominational beliefs.

Different degrees and purposes

Applicants frequently encounter different degree titles that signal distinct academic or professional end goals.

1. Research doctorates (PhD/ThD)

The doctor of philosophy (PhD) and doctor of theology (ThD) are terminal research degrees aimed at university-level teaching and publishing, culminating in a substantial original dissertation. This work is not meant to be your magnum opus. Instead, it’s your ticket to the party. It’s what validates your ability to participate in the conversation.

While the PhD is the academic gold standard, modern accrediting bodies usually treat the ThD as equivalent.

2. Professional doctorates (DMin/EdD)

Designed for active practitioners such as pastors or chaplains, the doctor of ministry (DMin) degree focuses on solving practical issues. While some hybrid DMin programs exist, if your goal is to teach at a major research university, you almost certainly need a PhD.

American vs. European models

Doctoral program designs vary significantly depending on regional educational philosophies.

1. The American model

These programs generally require multiple years of intensive coursework, comprehensive examinations, and the oral defense of a dissertation. Passing your comprehensive exams advances you to “ABD” (all but dissertation) status, proving you have a sufficient grasp of the field to begin original research.

2. The European model

Frequently following a “dissertation only” approach, this model skips coursework and focuses purely on original research from day one. It can be isolating, but it forces students to develop independent critical thought and find their own academic voice.

Emerging global programs often blend these traditions by requiring some coursework alongside research.

Varying delivery formats

Beyond the academic structure, the delivery format plays a major role.

1. Full-time residential

This is the traditional delivery format: You move in close proximity to the school and stay there for the duration of the program. This offers immersive experiences and closer faculty access but comes with considerable costs and transitions.

These programs remain, however, the gold standard. It’s very difficult (and arguably impossible) to replace the experience gained from living in a university community and focusing on your research for an extended period. It’s not possible for all of us, but I don’t know anyone interested in doctoral work who wouldn’t want this kind of experience.

2. Modular and distance learning

Modular and distance programs allow non-resident students to study either by moving the program entirely online or by varying residential requirements into intensives.

While these formats allow you to continue working, they often take much longer. Also, non-resident programs of any kind will be more dependent on your supervisor’s quality than other programs. If you’re looking at these types of programs, test the waters. Send some emails to potential advisors and see how quickly they respond. See how friendly they are. These things will matter more and more as your program continues.

Many schools do not offer online or non-resident options, and distance degrees can still carry a stigma. Distance students must actively close this perceived gap by networking and publishing aggressively.

Additionally, due to the isolating nature of distance education coupled with the isolating nature of specialized research, anyone committing to a distance program should actively seek out a learning community, present at academic conferences, etc. This is not simply padding your CV. It’s giving you the engagement that your program likely lacks.

All that said, distance education is likely the wave of the future, what with ministerial education shifting from credentialing to equipping. Distance learning allows students to stay in their ministry context, so they can apply what they’re learning immediately.

10 tips for discerning the right fit

Choosing the right program requires carefully assessing your goals against the fierce realities of the academic job market.

1. Decide whether or not you should even pursue a doctorate

Can you live a fulfilling life, following the Lord’s calling, without a PhD? If the answer is yes, then by all means do that. Simply put, the cost of pursuing a PhD is not worth it unless it is absolutely necessary for your life and calling.

Part of that cost is monetary, but much of it is emotional and psychological. Depression, anxiety, and profound isolation are highly prevalent among PhD students. You can and should attempt to proactively mitigate this with support. But it is unlikely that you will be able to eliminate it altogether.

Perhaps the most challenging cost is the return on investment. Put frankly, there is probably not a job waiting for you when you finish. You will need to find something else to pay the bills, and you may never be a professor of any kind. If you are, it will probably be as an adjunct. This is the simple, cold reality of the job market in the humanities right now—and it doesn’t look like it will change anytime soon. Simply put, there are already many people with PhDs in your field looking for jobs who already have teaching experience, publications, etc. On top of this, many small colleges are closing. So, competition for the available jobs continues to increase.

The bleak landscape doesn’t mean no one should pursue a PhD. It just means that those who do should carefully count the cost by making absolutely sure it’s the right path for them.

2. Choose the right methodological and professional track

Determine if your career aligns with the secular approach of religious studies or the normative approach of theology. Choose the American model for cross-disciplinary training or the British model for a faster, research-only timeline.

For example, if you want to teach at a Southern Baptist school, you may want to consider a PhD from a Southern Baptist school. Somewhat famously, John Behr had to earn an MA from an Orthodox seminary after completing his doctorate at Oxford because the institution required all its professors to hold a degree from an Orthodox seminary. A DPhil from Oxford (under Bishop Kallistos Ware, no less!) simply wasn’t good enough.

3. Evaluate financial feasibility and scholarship availability

Because doctoral programs require low student-to-faculty ratios and intensive supervision, they are highly expensive to operate.

Take care to avoid massive debt, as academic salaries are often low. Top-tier American schools are generally the most generous with funding. But there are other funding sources available if you look for them.

4. Assess library and electronic resources

Ensure the institution provides access to major electronic resources such as ATLA and EBSCO, and evaluate the speed and cost of its interlibrary loan system for specialized collections.

This is especially important if you are pursuing a distance program. You will need to make regular use of interlibrary loan, but you also probably need a library you can visit in person. If you live in the US, there should be a decent theological library within a day or so of driving, at most.

5. Look for institutional partnerships

If a school has limited resources, partnerships or academic consortia can provide access to larger libraries, specialized courses, and outside faculty supervision. For instance, students at Gordon-Conwell can take classes at Harvard. There are, of course, regulations that limit this, but these kinds of opportunities are incredible.

6. Scrutinize faculty supervisory experience

Investigate your potential mentor. See if you can connect with some of their former students to ask about their experiences. Your adviser can make or break your entire experience. Brilliant scholars do not always make great mentors, and very busy advisers can be exceedingly difficult to reach.

Also, be aware that if your adviser leaves the institution, you may be left scrambling for a replacement.

7. Weigh your timeline and work commitments

The traditional humanities PhD is grueling, and distance students who continue working face significant challenges in completing it. Plan out your time, your money, and your commitments. Look at everything. Remember, saying yes to one thing means saying no to lots of other things. You will have to say no to a lot of things to finish your degree.

8. Factor in institutional prestige

As mentioned above, the academic job market is severely oversaturated. So where you study matters immensely for overcoming this. Consider a program with institutional prestige and strong networking power.

9. Develop your pedagogy with teaching opportunities

Seek out teaching assistantships. Hiring committees prioritize pedagogical ability alongside research output.

Just be prepared to teach subjects outside your specialty, as universities’ specific needs rarely align perfectly with a niche dissertation topic. In fact, don’t expect to get a chance to teach your favorite topics at all. Remember, colleges and seminaries offer the classes required for degrees. You will likely teach far more courses on, say, world religions than on the concept of justification in Romans.

10. Consider professorships outside the domestic market

Think carefully about being a missionary professor. If you truly and deeply feel called to the classroom, there is a wealth of opportunity in the majority world. A seminary professor of mine used to tell students like me that he could guarantee them a job as a professor upon graduation. The catch was that it would be in another country.

Conclusion

Choosing a doctoral program isn’t a single decision but a series of them—methodology versus confession, research versus professional degree, residential versus distance format—each with real tradeoffs in cost, community, and career outcomes. There’s no universally “best” program, only the one that best fits your calling and situation.

Share your thoughts

How should postgraduate students decide among programs? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Ryan Lytton’s recommended resources

Witherington, Ben, III. Is there a Doctor in the House?: An Insider’s Story and Advice on Becoming a Bible Scholar. Zondervan Academic, 2011.

Prepare, Succeed, Advance: A Guidebook for Getting a PhD in Biblical Studies and Beyond, 2nd ed.

Regular price: $17.99

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• Doctor or Doctor? How to Choose Between DMin & PhD
• Should You Get a PhD? 5 Reasons for & Against
• Applying for a Doctoral Program? 7 Essential Tips
• 8 Tips for Finding a Thesis or Dissertation Topic
• Where Is Theological Education Heading? Flexible Faithfulness

In the opening chapters of Acts, Luke offers what is likely the most comprehensive description of a healthy church in the New Testament. Here we learn that as “awe came upon every soul” (Acts 2:43), the Jerusalem Church listened to the apostles’ teachings, broke bread in each other’s homes, and shared their resources generously while the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:42–47; 4:32–37).

By any measure, the Church of Jerusalem was healthy and thriving.

And yet, while it’s easy to think that the Jerusalem Church was nearly perfect, Luke disabuses us of any such notion when he describes a shocking episode of moral failure and instant judgment—God strikes two people dead three hours apart!

Their names were Ananias and Sapphira.

After selling some property, they laid the proceeds from the sale at the apostles’ feet. But what looked like a generous donation was a work of calculated deception. What they claimed was a total donation of the proceeds was actually a partial one. They kept back some of the money for themselves. Thus, they lied about how generous they were being, about the extent of their sacrifice.

The result? Both dropped dead at the apostles’ feet, Ananias first, followed by his wife three hours later (Acts 5:1–11).

Table of contents

An overreaction?
1. Sin isn’t bad simply because it harms others
2. Faithfulness in one area doesn’t justify sin in another
3. God-honoring devotion requires proper motives
Conclusion

An overreaction?

Many read this account and are understandably disturbed by the severity of God’s judgment. Sure, Ananias and Sapphira shouldn’t have lied, but is the death penalty really appropriate? Why didn’t they receive the same divine forbearance that God is famous for showing his rebellious people? After all, they were making a generous (if partial) donation!

To answer these questions, we must first answer another one: Why would God inscripturate this episode in the first place? Why do we need to know about it? Both the event itself and its inclusion in Acts feels like a blemish that is deliberately inserted into the forever-record of a church that is otherwise thriving.

Indeed, the insertion is deliberate. Ananias’s and Sapphira’s deaths serve a pedagogical function for the Jerusalem Church in a crucial stage of its development, and its inclusion in Acts means that the lesson intended for the Jerusalem Church stands as a lesson for every church.

Through this episode of sin and judgment, God made three things very clear.

1. Sin isn’t bad simply because it harms others

It’s significant that God punished so severely sin that seemed to do so little—if any—public damage. The couple didn’t slander or kill anyone. We’re not told that their partial gift caused any suffering. If God hadn’t (somehow) told Peter they were lying, it’s likely that no one would have ever known.

So what’s the big deal?

Peter pinpoints their error: “You have not lied to man but to God” (Acts 5:4; cf. 5:3). The lesson to the burgeoning church was unmistakable: Sin isn’t bad simply because it harms others. Sin is bad because it’s against God regardless of who else it affects. Sin is theological before it’s sociological.

Confusion here is just as common today as it was then. Even the most faithful Christians are tempted to evaluate the severity of their sin by its observable consequences: How much is it hurting myself or my neighbor? What damage is it causing? If I can’t discern any damage to myself or others, is it really that bad? With this logic, it becomes much easier to tolerate or even indulge sin that we deem victimless:

• “My boyfriend and I are both consenting adults.”
• “I lied about why I was late.”
• “I got drunk last night at my house.”

But this social, purely horizontal understanding of sin’s offensiveness is precisely what the Ananias and Sapphira episode warns against! Their partial donation did no perceptible harm to anyone! Their deception was an affront to God. And that is what makes all sin serious, regardless of who else it affects.

In putting Ananias and Sapphira to death, God warned the Jerusalem Church of reducing the wickedness of sin against him to self-adjudicated ethical pragmatism, e.g., “If God is the only one ‘harmed’ by my sin, it’s not that bad.”

Dig deeper into Acts 5:1–11 with Logos’s Factbook.
Jumpstart your Bible study today with a free trial.

2. Faithfulness in one area doesn’t justify sin in another

Peter’s words to Sapphira are particularly illuminating: “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord?” (Acts 5:9). The word “test” here (Greek πειράσαι) indicates that they knew God disapproved of what they were doing and rolled the dice anyway.

Could it be that they thought their generous gift would secure a free pass for their lie? That sacrifice in one area would cause God to overlook sin in another? We can only speculate about their thought process, but God’s swift judgment served as a clear warning to anyone entertaining this sort of presumptive moral accounting.

Imagine how quickly the church’s call to holiness would morph into a carefully managed economy of sin if someone could earn immunity from calculated disobedience with a few good deeds. And yet, when we become aware of sin in our own lives, a quick review of our faithfulness in other areas is often all it takes to soothe our consciences with a reminder that on balance our “obedience portfolio” is in good standing. “God’s not a stickler,” we tell ourselves. He knows no one’s perfect. But God simply isn’t impressed when we minimize known sin—our irritability in the home, our laziness at work—because we feel like our prayer life, service to the church, or generous giving make up for it.

To be sure, we’ll always fight sin on this side of eternity, and no amount of faithfulness will make us right with God. Only Christ’s righteousness received through faith can do that. But having received that righteousness and the indwelling Spirit, the Ananias and Sapphira episode makes it clear that believers are called to execute their sin, not manage it.

3. God-honoring devotion requires proper motives

Perhaps more than anything, the Ananias and Sapphira narrative highlights God’s hatred of religious hypocrisy and superficiality.

True, the Jerusalem Church’s devotion to the Lord and to each other (cf. Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–35) is impressive. But the couple’s execution signaled that it’s possible to engage in outwardly admirable religious activity with worldly motives, and that such religiosity is odious to God.

Ananias and Sapphira lied about how much they gave because they wanted to be seen as more generous than they really were. Perhaps they wanted a reputation like that of Barnabas who donated all the proceeds from the sale of his own property just a few verses earlier (Acts 4:36–37). Either way, their deception revealed that their offering to the Lord was a strategy for purchasing something they valued more than him—the praise of man.

Honest introspection reveals that we’re more like Ananias and Sapphira than we care to admit. Perhaps it’s more subtle, but we’re similarly superficial when:

• We post pictures of carefully marked up and highlighted Bible passages to publicly signal our spiritual depth.
• We pray for someone for two seconds and tell them, “I’ve been praying for you.”
• We turn Christian community into networking by selectively serving those in our church who will advance our interests.
• We condemn career idolization only to make our family/children the center of our lives.

In each case, our outwardly Christian behavior cloaks—and often issues from—a heart that is more gripped by worldly treasure than Christ.

Through the story of Ananias and Sapphira, the Jerusalem believers were reminded that it’s possible to express devotion to God in ways that anger him, viz., devotion that views God as a means to an end. He will not tolerate idolatry cloaked in Jesus’s name.

Conclusion

Why was God’s response to Ananias and Sapphira’s sin so severe? Setting aside the fact that all sin deserves death, it was an object lesson that put the young Church of Jerusalem on notice. A permissive view of sin and false piety was not only an affront to God but would corrupt the church at large, if left unchecked.

Donald Barnhouse once quipped that if God still struck people dead for lying, each church would need a morgue in the basement. While I’m grateful that God’s punishment of Ananias and Sapphira functioned as a unique warning—not a normal pattern—the sin it highlighted is just as serious today as it was then.

Viewed through a twenty-first-century lens, we might assume that two people falling over dead for lying was a bane on the church’s growth. After all, “great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things” (Acts 5:11). But just three verses later, we learn that “more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women” (Acts 5:14).

As it turns out, taking both sin and God’s holiness seriously doesn’t deter church growth, but promotes it.

Share your thoughts

What can we learn from God’s judgment of Ananias and Sapphira? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Chase’s recommended resources for further reflection

Acts (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament | ZECNT)

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The Holiness of God

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Evangelical Pharisees: The Gospel as Cure for the Church’s Hypocrisy

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Sins We Accept

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Many churches are discovering the practice of reading from a lectionary. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican churches have historically used formal lectionaries, but the practice is growing in other Protestant church bodies.

I’d like to help you make the most of the lectionary by understanding what it is, how it works, and how you can use it in your church today, particularly by helping ministers preach the lectionary.

What is a lectionary?

In its essence, a lectionary is an orderly arrangement of readings from Holy Scripture, mainly intended for public worship services. There have been a variety of lectionaries throughout church history. Lectionaries can be a basic consecutive reading plan, or they can be arranged according to theological or liturgical themes. Some are daily lectionaries, while others are based around Sundays and other holidays throughout the year. Many lectionaries today are arranged for a three-year cycle. Older lectionaries were annual. There are even Psalter readings that repeat monthly.

For some Christians, the choice of lectionary is decided at the ecclesiastical level. Others will make the choice individually. In every case, the goal of the lectionary should be to read, understand, and apply the Scriptures in the life of faith.

A brief history of lectionaries

The world in which the Christian church emerged already had some fixed times for corporate prayer (Acts 3:1) and a rudimentary liturgical reading pattern (Acts 13:15; 15:21).¹⁸ While there is no evidence for any precise Christian liturgy in the first century, we do see both services for daily prayers and formal eucharistic celebrations by the fourth.¹⁹ There were seasonal lectionaries by this time.²⁰ Complete annual lectionaries can be dated shortly afterward to around the fifth century.²¹

The Roman lectionary eventually became the standard lectionary for Western Christendom. This held constant until the twentieth century. Today, the lectionary with the widest use is the Revised Common Lectionary, which is itself based upon the Roman Catholic lectionary produced in conjunction with the Second Vatican Council.

While many readers might assume that the lectionary is therefore a Roman Catholic artifact, both the Lutheran and Anglican churches retained the historic lectionary. For example, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer combined the yearly Communion service readings with a new daily lectionary. Mostly the product of Thomas Cranmer, the Book of Common Prayer’s daily lectionary reintroduced consecutive canonical readings along with a psalm-reading cycle that completed the entire Psalter every month.

Those Reformed churches more closely aligned with the Swiss Reformation tended to discard the use of formal lectionaries, opting instead to read through the Bible in a consecutive fashion (lectio continua). The Westminster Directory for Public Worship represents the climax of this movement, recommending the practice of consecutive readings of Scripture as the only acceptable Sunday practice. This expression of the Reformed churches tended to only make recommendations for Sundays, with the practice of daily readings left to the individual reader’s discretion.

Over time, a great deal of diversity arose, even among churches that use lectionaries. Today, it is not uncommon for churches within the same denomination to use different lectionaries or none at all. On the other hand, many of those post-Westminsterian churches are now using lectionaries.

How to understand your lectionary

In order to preach from the lectionary, you should understand how it works on its own terms.

There are daily lectionaries and Communion lectionaries, meant for Sundays and other holidays. While the Sunday (and other holiday) readings can certainly stand on their own, they are, in fact, arranged as components of a larger annual (or triennial) cycle. Even if not laid out in a canonically consecutive series, the readings usually do stand in some relation to the readings from the week before and the week to come. Learning what your lectionary is trying to accomplish throughout the year will help you know how to use it from week to week.

The one-year lectionary

The historic one-year Communion lectionary is characterized by its simplicity. It has two halves, the incarnation cycle, running from Advent until Pentecost, and then Trinitytide, running from Trinity Sunday until the end of the church year. The incarnation “half” is itself split up according to the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter. These various seasons nonetheless relate to one another as they explain the humiliation and exaltation of Christ, teaching about both his person and work. Trinitytide moves to the work of God, the whole Trinity, in the life of his people, the church.

In this lectionary, each Sunday (or other holiday) offers one Epistle and one Gospel reading, held together by the theme of the liturgical season and also the ideals mentioned in the Collect of the Day. (A collect is a short prayer that is intended to bring together various thoughts and petitions.) The Collect of the Day is almost always based upon the theme of the liturgical season, and its major ideas are usually reflected in the Scripture readings which are joined to it. Often the Epistle contains the theological or moral lesson, and the Gospel shows how Christ fulfills the various relevant themes in his person and ministry. While first-time readers may not immediately perceive the unity, the controlling logic can usually be discovered.

For one example, consider the First Sunday after Epiphany. Epiphany is a season focused on the true manifestation of Jesus, his divine nature and full identity. The theme of the First Sunday after Epiphany is “service,” and this is meant in two ways:

1. our worship of God, and
2. our humble love for our neighbor.

Put even more simply, this service is the duty we owe to God and the duty we owe to our fellow man.

We can demonstrate this in the following way. The Collect of the Day, going back well into the Middle Ages, says:

O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people who call upon thee, and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect mentions “the prayers of thy people” and Christian duty, “what things they ought to do.” The readings are from Romans 12:1–5 and Luke 2:41–52. The Epistle reading emphasizes “a living sacrifice” and “reasonable service.” In other words, spiritual worship. The Gospel tells the story of the young Jesus in the temple. Surprising the doctors by his knowledge and his parents by his lingering behind, he declares, “I must be about my Father’s business.” We see, then, an emphasis on service to God.

Additionally, the Epistle reading teaches about humility, that a man must not “think of himself more highly than he ought to think.” The Gospel too has this lesson, as the divine Christ nevertheless returns home and “was subject unto” his earthly parents. A second theme, then, becomes evident. Following our service to God, we must also serve our fellow man, beginning with a humble desire to serve our neighbor and especially to respect those set in authority over us. Both of these themes relate to the season itself. As Epiphany reveals Christ’s glory, Christ also reveals the true worship of God and the ultimate example of humiliation in the exercise of divine love.

Finding the unity might be easier for some weeks than others, but it can almost always be done by starting with the concepts mentioned in the Collect for the Day and then identifying them in the biblical readings. From there, a reflection on the overarching theme of the season will add further detail and clarity.

As a brief summary, the themes of the seasons within the first half of the year are these:

• Advent remembers the first coming of the Messiah and looks forward to his second.
• Christmas commemorates the incarnation of God and the Messiah’s inheritance of the covenantal promises.
• Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of Christ’s full identity as well as the expansion of the kingdom of God to the gentiles.
• Lent is a season of mortification of the flesh in preparation for Easter.
• Easter, which should be understood as including Holy Week, focuses on the death and resurrection of the Messiah, along with his subsequent ascension to heaven and giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, all of which are the completion of his work and the equipment of his people for salvation and victory.

The two major criticisms of the historic one-year lectionary are its lack of Old Testament readings and the fact that a one-year cycle entails that only these texts are read each year. The first criticism can be mitigated by adding the daily office readings to the Sunday observance. In fact, the older Book of Common Prayer did exactly this, assigning Sunday “propers” to match the biblical readings at the Communion service. The Psalter, too, would be read on Sunday, and some major feast days were given proper psalms. Whether a single-year cycle is a strength or weakness is a matter of some debate.

Three-year lectionaries

In the twentieth century, new lectionaries were composed, largely out of a desire to expand the amount of Scripture that would be read in church. The Communion service also absorbed the Old Testament and Psalm readings, which had previously been a part of a separate service. This created one larger service with a greater variety of biblical texts. Typically, these lectionaries have an Old Testament reading, a psalm, a selection from the New Testament Epistles, and a portion from the Gospels. In order to include each of these in a single service, the length of each is shortened. These lectionaries also mostly adopt a three-year model. This means that books read in “Year A” are usually not read in “Year B” or “Year C.” This again allows for a greater variety of Scripture to be read in the public gatherings of the church, but it also creates complexity. Some liturgical books have retained the older collects which would have gone along with the biblical readings, but these no longer match the texts and so should usually not be used as thematic summaries.

While there are a variety of modern three-year lectionaries, the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) is the most widely used. It is often the original template from which other modern lectionaries begin. The RCL was itself based upon the work of the modern Roman Catholic lectionary, and so there is a large amount of continuity across denominational boundaries.

It too has a sort of overall logic which can help ministers make the most of it. The RCL attempts to combine both seasonal emphases and lectio continua throughout the Christian calendar. The major feasts set the parameters. The scriptural texts around these days are thematically united. They highlight the major ideals of the season and usually attempt to complement each other. As the weeks move further away from the particular holiday, the readings tend to become canonically consecutive. This is especially true for those parts of the church year which modern lectionaries call “ordinary time.”

The three-year scheme also has a logic to it.

• Year A calls for the Gospel of Matthew to be read, largely in consecutive order. It also prescribes Old Testament readings from the Pentateuch.
• Year B gives readings from Mark and the Old Testament historical books.
• Year C has Luke and the Prophets.

These readings are interrupted by various holidays, and the Gospel of John is interspersed throughout each year.

The strength of offering a larger span of Scripture brings with it a corresponding weakness. The length of each scriptural selection must be reduced, and even in the “consecutive” portions of the year, there are gaps and omissions. Further, the greater diversity of readings also creates a greater complexity. Attempting to do both a seasonally thematic project and a consecutive canonical survey at the same time can confuse the listeners (and readers) and lose the overarching unity. Laying out a comprehensive plan to address each of the readings for each of the years is no small task. There are 624 readings to choose from over the course of three years (not counting the alternative selections), which creates a truly dizzying number of potential textual combinations to consider.

How to preach from a lectionary

With a more comfortable understanding of the various lectionary options, here are some practical tips on how to use the lectionary in the ministry of the Word, especially in preaching.

1. Consistently

Choose a lectionary and stick with it. Jumping between different lectionaries or regularly making your own substitutions will greatly limit the effectiveness of using a lectionary at all. While intentional breaks can be helpful, you should plan to use the same lectionary for a series of years, if not for the majority of your tenure.²²

Learn how your lectionary is meant to “work,” and then use it in that way. You might find it useful to preach from the Gospels for several weeks in a row, or even for the full year, so that you can demonstrate their logic. You might choose the Epistle readings for the next season or year.

2. Patiently

Lectionaries are designed to work over a longer period of time. You do not have to address everything in a single sermon. The text will come back around again in the future.

Additionally, the reading and hearing of the Word of God is an element of worship in its own right.²³ Even if a portion of text is not preached, the fact that it was read in worship is itself substantial and effective. Strong lectors can share the burden with the preacher, thus allowing the lectionary to do its full work across the service.

3. Diversely

While lectionaries do prescribe the texts to be read in the service, they almost always offer more homiletic options than first assumed. Even with the one-year lectionary, there are two different texts and usually two (or more) major themes. This alone could provide four years’ worth of sermon material. If elements of the Morning Prayer service are added to this, then an additional Old Testament lesson and a set of several psalms further add to the set of options. The preacher is entirely within his rights to preach from any of these texts, even when strictly “bound” to the lectionary.

While consistency was a virtue mentioned above, preachers should cover all of the texts over an appropriate course of time at a church. One could easily go seven years or more without feeling the slightest temptation to repeat a previous sermon. An effective use of the lectionary will continually offer fresh presentations and appropriately contemporary insights.

4. Expositionally

In terms of theological significance, this point should actually be the first in consideration. After all, the very point of the lectionary is to open the Word of God to the people of God. Lectionary preaching should therefore always be grounded in scriptural exegesis. The content of the sermon should come from the biblical text provided. Even in the case of topical sermons, the support from the topic should be derived from the Scriptures, and this should be demonstrated in the sermon itself. Again, the lectionary is an arrangement of texts. These should therefore be the primary material for the sermon. Insofar as a preacher neglects the biblical texts that were read, he is also neglecting the lectionary itself.²⁴

Expository preaching does not exclude symbolic or typological preaching. It does restrain it, however, and properly so. It requires the preacher to rhetorically “show his work” and allow the people to see how the Bible itself shows forth the symbols and arranges the types. A good lectionary does not discourage this work but instead makes it easier and integrates it into a more natural part of the overall service.

This principle also allows for the liberating and perennially appropriate option to “just preach the text.” On any given week, or during certain seasons of time, the minister might not know what to do with all of the various liturgical options. In such cases, he can simply choose one of the texts and preach it directly. If the lectionary has been composed well, then this approach will always “work” with the larger program. Just as a sermon on John 1 at Christmas is always a “Christmas sermon” by its very nature, so too is 1 Peter 4:7–11 an appropriate message for the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost. Meditating on how any given text applies to a certain holiday has frequently deepened my appreciation of the lectionary and my understanding of the Scripture.

What does it mean to preach expositionally—and how do we do it? Tune into Dave Helm’s episode of Logos Live.

5. Intertextually

Even as a preacher strives for simplicity, one of the advantages of the lectionary is the way in which it brings different biblical texts together. This can be done by way of prophecy and fulfillment, by repeating patterns and types, or by illustrative examples, such as heroes and villains or dilemmas and solutions. Different lectionaries go about this project in different ways, and some are more successful than others. Finding the connections between the varying texts can help the pastor in his creation of his sermon. These connections often prompt a basic sermon outline or make the various big ideas easier to identify and demonstrate, as the biblical texts cast light on each other.

A preacher can make use of this intertextuality by choosing one text as primary and then referencing portions of the other texts. Occasionally, he might choose to balance each of the readings as subsets and then bring them together by way of the Collect of the Day.

6. Holistically

Finally, lectionary preaching should join redemptive-historical preaching with practical application. The person and work of Christ will be emphasized, as well as the fruits of his ministry in the life of the Christian. The historic collects usually do a good job of succinctly stating that the moral duties flow from the character of God in Christ. The preacher can use this to arrange his own sermon points.

Certain weeks will have a greater emphasis on one part or the other, but all will be present in some fashion. And again, the confidence in a long-term project will allow the preacher to emphasize some points in greater detail on one occasion, with the understanding that he will have another opportunity to emphasize other points.

Share your thoughts

How can one best preach from a lectionary? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Conclusion

Using the lectionary is a worthy work that can greatly enhance the work and worship of our churches. And I hope that using the lectionary will also enable each of us to, in the words of Thomas Cranmer, hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest all holy Scriptures.

Resources for lectionary preaching

A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series

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Feasting on the Word (12 vols.)

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Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship (9 vols.)

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Lectionary Reflections Collection (3 vols.)

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The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts (3 vols.)

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Twelve Months of Sundays (3 vols.)

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Preaching from the Lectionary: An Exegetical Commentary

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By the late first or early second century AD, the last book of the New Testament had been written. In AD 325, the Council of Nicaea would articulate the doctrine of the Trinity and adapt the church’s rule of faith into an official creed. But what happened in between these two watershed moments of church history?

The second century, in particular, was an existentially defining period for the church. The gospel spread far beyond its origins in Galilee, where it was met by serious challenges. The church would emerge from these with greater clarity about its identity and beliefs.

The major voices of this period were the Apostolic Fathers, so-called because they were the first generation of Christian leaders and teachers after the twelve appointed by Christ. Some of them actually knew apostles or knew someone who knew them.

In this article, I will introduce a few writings of the Apostolic Fathers. I have left out a considerable chunk.²⁵ I have selected those that have special interest for the average New Testament reader. I will organize these works under three major challenges Christians faced in the second century concerning Scripture.

Table of Contents

1. What is the relationship between the Christian faith and the Old Testament?
2. Were the Christians a threat to the Roman state?
3. What are the boundaries of “orthodox” Christianity?
Conclusion

1. What is the relationship between the Christian faith and the Old Testament?

Christianity rose out of the belief that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of Abraham and descendant of David (Matt 1:1). Most (though not all) of the Jewish people had failed to embrace Jesus as the Messiah, and the Jerusalem authorities were culpable for his death. Paul famously laments: “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh” (Rom 9:3). At some point, it was becoming clear that non-Jews were listening and responding to the gospel, while most of Paul’s fellow Jews were not (see Acts 28:17–28).

Additionally, within the NT writings themselves, some very difficult things are said about the Jewish people (or leaders): Jesus accuses them of murdering the prophets (Matt 23:30–36), and Matthew reports that the Jewish people have called down divine wrath upon themselves (Matt 27:25).

Articulating the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, and between the Old Testament and the New Testament, was among the earliest problems facing the young church.

The Epistle of Barnabas (c. 70/135)

One of the earliest and most intriguing attempts to provide a response to the question of how Christians should read the Old Testament and understand their relationship to non-Jews is the spurious Epistle of Barnabas—a text of some popularity and significance to Christians in the East.

Barnabas is striking in that it is thoroughly infused with the OT Scriptures, but it takes a strong stance of discontinuity between the new covenant and the practices and rituals of Israel: “Therefore he [God] has abolished these things, in order that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is free from the yoke of compulsion, might have its offering, not made by man” (Barn. 2:6).²⁶ Barnabas even suggests that the physical practice of circumcision was given to Israel through “an evil angel,” and so it has, appropriately, been entirely abolished (Barn. 9:4).

The text is an important witness of the challenge of articulating how Christians should understand their relationship to the historic people of God. Almost certainly, Barnabas is interested in widening the gap between Christians and non-Christian Jews, as he declares his agenda is to prevent his audience from “shipwrecking ourselves by becoming, as it were, ‘proselytes’ to their law” (Barn. 3:6).

Ignatius of Antioch (d. c. 108)

Ignatius was an early second century bishop of Antioch. He is best known for his martyrdom during the reign of Emperor Trajan (AD 98–117). While being escorted to Rome to be executed, a journey which would have taken three to four months, Ignatius managed to pen seven letters: six to churches (Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Philadelphians, Smyrnaeans, Romans) and one personal letter (To Polycarp). These writings are a rich source for understanding the early pastoral and ecclesial theology of the church.

In these letters, one finds strong concerns to encourage the church and exhort them to reject false teachings. For example, Ignatius repeatedly emphasizes the theme of unity. Jesus is united in his humanity and divinity (Eph. 7:2); the faith is united (Eph. 13:1); and Jesus is united with the Father (Magn. 1:2). But Ignatius is also deeply concerned to distinguish Christians from Jews. He emphasizes that the new is superior to the old (Magn. 10:2), and then makes this claim: “It is utterly absurd to profess Jesus Christ and to proclaim Judaism. For Christianity did not believe in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianity in which ‘every tongue’ believed and was ‘brought together’ to God” (Magn. 10:3). Put bluntly, Ignatius warns one church: “If anyone expounds Judaism to you, do not listen to him” (Phld. 6:1).

Marcion (c. 85–160)

Marcion was a wealthy shipowner who gave a substantial gift to the church in Rome and thereby found some level of influence and status as a result. Marcion was the earliest Christian writer (that we know of) to draft a closed list of canonical books, only his canon included no Old Testament, most of Paul’s letters, and a mutilated version of Luke’s Gospel. According to Marcion, there existed the utmost discontinuity between the God of the Old Testament and the God of Jesus Christ. He argued, in fact, that the God of the Old Testament was an angry and vengeful deity, whereas the God of Jesus is loving, forgiving, and gracious.

Marcion wrote one book, Antitheses, which has not survived in its entirety. Judging from attempts to reconstruct this work from bits and pieces quoted in the works of Church Fathers, the work posits contradictory statements between law/OT and gospel/NT in order to show that the God of Israel and the God of Jesus Christ are, in fact, separate deities entirely.

Tertullian of Carthage (c. 155–c. 220)

While many voices rose against Marcion, the strongest anti-Marcion from the second century belonged to Tertullian of Carthage, the earliest Church Father to write in Latin, and who is thus widely regarded as the Father of Western (i.e., Latin) theology.

The late second-century North African teacher is important for many reasons. He argued for the truth of Christianity and the superiority of its morals over and against its pagan opponents in his Apology. In Against Marcion, Tertullian argues that the God of Israel, as seen in the Hebrew Scriptures, is both good and the same as the God of Jesus Christ. Tertullian contends that playing off “justice” against “love” (or forgiveness and grace) is a simplistic hermeneutical failure. Tertullian further criticizes Marcion for his failure to submit to the orthodox teachings of the church and for his working with a smaller-than-necessary (and mutilated, at that) canon of New Testament Scripture.

The prominence of Marcion’s teachings resulted in numerous church leaders voicing their theological disapproval, the most important of which was Tertullian’s Against Marcion.

2. Were the Christians a threat to the Roman state?

The earliest non-Jewish Christians often offended and appeared as unpatriotic threats to the fabric of society by refusing to worship the pagan gods. Given that certain gods were understood to be the protectors and sponsors of the city, failure to worship them could threaten social health and safety. Some pagans, then, engaged in sporadic and local acts of persecution and harassment of Christians, whereas others labeled Christianity as misanthropic superstition.

Within this context, we find a variety of second-century Christian responses.

The Martyrdom of Polycarp (c. 155/160)

The second century witnessed the rise of stories of the martyrdom of early Christians. The historical accuracy and the theological purpose of these is much disputed. But one of the earliest and most influential of these is also one of the most entertaining. This is the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the first text to use the word “martyr” to mean not just a “witness” (the literal meaning) but an admirable hero of the faith who willingly suffers unto death in imitation of Christ.

Polycarp was an early second century bishop in the city of Smyrna who learned the Christian faith from the apostle John. History has preserved only one letter from Polycarp (The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians), a letter written to the church in Philippi, exhorting them to grow in Christ-like character and especially to encourage them after the fall of one of their leaders, Valens, who has committed some type of financial sin.

It’s obvious that the author has articulated the events of Polycarp’s suffering and death within the highly theological framework of Jesus’s own arrest, trial, and death. Those responsible for arresting Polycarp attempt to persuade him to say “Caesar is Lord” and to make a sacrifice in order to save his life (Mart. Pol. 8.2). At his hearing, he is charged with “atheism” (Mart. Pol. 9.2; cf. 3:2). We might find this accusation odd today: by “atheism,” critics did not mean Christians denied the existence of all divinities, but that they scorned the gods that mattered. Justin Martyr in his First Apology (c. AD 155/157) addressed to the Roman Emperor would own the title: “Thus are we even called atheists. We do proclaim ourselves atheists as regards those whom you call gods, but not with respect to the Most True God.”²⁷

Polycarp takes a different tack. He is commanded: “Swear by the genius of Caesar; repent; say, ‘Away with the atheists!’” In mock obedience, Polycarp faces the auditorium of pagans and declares with a wave of his hand, “Away with the atheists!” (Mart. Pol. 9.2). Thoroughly provoked, they accuse Polycarp of being “the destroyer of our gods, who teaches many not to sacrifice or to worship” (Mart. Pol. 12.2). Polycarp’s martyrdom exemplifies the battle between good and evil. His endurance and fortitude call others to maintain their loyalty to Christ in the face of opposition.

Justin Martyr (AD 105–165)

Justin Martyr penned two apologies (i.e., defenses of the Christian faith), each addressed to a Roman emperor, whereby he attempted to show that the Christians are virtuous and good citizens of the state, despite their refusal to worship the pagan deities. The conversation takes place at a philosophical level, in that Justin honors the emperor by appealing to his wisdom and sense of justice. In fact, Justin compares the persecution of Christians to the persecution of the ancient Athenian philosopher, Socrates, who likewise was accused of atheism and condemned to death for criticizing traditional polytheism. Indeed, he casts Socrates as a sort of proto-Christian who “was accused of the very crimes that are imputed to us.”²⁸ In this manner, Justin Martyr found precedents for Christian behavior in Greco-Roman philosophical tradition.

3. What are the boundaries of “orthodox” Christianity?

We have already seen that Tertullian’s response to Marcion’s understanding of the identity of God in relationship to the Old Testament placed Marcion outside the boundaries of so-called orthodox Christianity, but there were a variety of other challenges Christians needed to clarify, specifically as concerns the person and work of Jesus.

The Gospel of Thomas (c. 135/200)

In the second century, we have evidence that there were a variety of people writing Gospel texts about Jesus. Sometimes, these Gospels are referred to as “apocryphal,” which, taken from the Greek (ἀπόκρυφος), means something like “hidden,” “secret,” or “closed,” and is thus the antonym of “apocalyptic,” meaning “revealed,” “unveiled,” or “open.” The word “apocrypha” is not always used negatively to refer to spurious books or books full of false teachings. For example, Athanasius of Alexandria in his Festal Letter 39 (AD 367) calls certain early Christian writings “apocryphal,” but by this he only meant they weren’t suitable to be read publicly (i.e., “openly”) in church liturgies, despite their antiquity and popularity. One could, however, enjoy them in private.

So the designation “apocryphal” can refer to a mix of books. It could refer to books that are clearly outside the boundaries of creedal Christianity. It could also refer to books that are entirely orthodox in their theology and are likely intended to convey and supplement, rather than critique or replace, the accounts in the canonical Gospels.

By far the most popular of these is The Gospel of Thomas, the earliest non-canonical Gospel. Most agree that Thomas demonstrates literary dependence on the Synoptic Gospels (or traditions) and should be dated no later than the early second century.

What do we find in this Gospel?

First, it is entirely composed of sayings of Jesus and contains no narrative whatsoever. The writing begins: “These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said: He who shall find the interpretation of these words shall not taste death” (Gos. Thom. 1). Readers of Thomas are intended to meditate upon Jesus’s secret words.

So, the entire Gospel is filled with ambiguous and difficult-to-interpret sayings of Jesus. The portrait of Jesus in Thomas is strikingly different from that of the canonical Gospels. In Thomas, Jesus is characterized as a wise but provocative sage whose words enable those who listen to attain knowledge. There is no hint that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah who suffers, dies, and is raised from the dead in order to save humanity. In fact, Jesus’s teachings in Thomas often contradict his teachings from the canonical Gospels. In Thomas, Jesus rejects the prophets of Israel; he overturns the necessity and importance of Torah practices such as circumcision; rejects the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; and denigrates the notion of resurrection from the dead.

Second, the Gospel of Thomas conveys entirely different notions about the person of Jesus and salvation. Instead of a Gospel that centers upon Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, sent by God in the fulfillment of his Scriptures, who calls humanity to follow him through patterning their lives after him, and who dies on the cross to save humanity from their sins, Thomas presents a radically different construal of Jesus and salvation. Instead, Jesus is an obscurantist teacher who attempts to lead people to an inner knowledge and awareness of who they are and from whence they came.

Papias of Hierapolis (AD 60–c. 130)

In the early second century, Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis, wrote five volumes titled Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord (see Papias, Fragments 3.1). Papias’s introduction to his work indicates that he focused on collecting stories and teachings about Jesus from those who were taught by eyewitnesses of Jesus’s ministry. Papias provides evidence that the stories and teachings in the canonical Gospels derive from memory—that is, the remembered and orally transmitted sayings and stories of Jesus. In his prologue to his Expositions of the Logia of the Lord, Papias describes his method in this way:

I shall not hesitate to set down for you, along with my interpretations, everything I carefully learned then from the elders and carefully remembered, guaranteeing their truth. … And if by chance someone who had been a follower of the elders should come my way, I inquired about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter said, or Philip, or Thomas or James, or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living abiding voice.²⁹

Papias indicates that, even after the canonical Gospels had been written, he preferred the oral transmission of the Jesus tradition. His means of obtaining access to the Jesus tradition consists in his inquiring about “the words of the elders.” It is this later group that Papias describes as providing access, by means of their association with the Lord’s disciples, to the Jesus tradition. Papias seems to describe the transmission, then, as running as follows: Jesus → disciples/elders → group who followed the elders → Papias.

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 155–c. 191)

Perhaps the greatest theologian of the second century, Irenaeus of Lyons develops a powerful argument for apostolic tradition and a rule of faith that would help Christians identify both what texts are scriptural as well as what groups and beliefs are outside the boundaries of orthodoxy.

Irenaeus argues that theology must be grounded in the fixed tradition of the apostolic proclamation. Of central importance for Irenaeus here is the Fourfold Gospel. There are, Irenaeus argues, four and only four Gospels that are scripturally authoritative for the worldwide church (Haer. 3.11).

The apostolic proclamation, grounded in the Fourfold Gospel, was of central importance to Irenaeus, among others, in the development of “the rule of faith.” This rule articulated the first-order theological doctrine regarding the identity of God the Father, the person of Christ, and the role of the Spirit. This rule allowed for the existence of a variety of other theological disagreements, but it provided a narrative structure for understanding the identity of God, the work of the incarnate Son of God, and the body of Christ (see Haer. 1.10.1). The rule of faith allowed Irenaeus to articulate a hermeneutical or interpretive guide to reading the Christian Scriptures that enabled the church to ensure its continuity with the original teaching of the apostles against teachings of ‘Gnostic’ Christians.

Conclusion

Two claims can be made with the utmost certainty regarding the second century.

First, early Christianity was highly textual. Just remarkably bookish. We have barely even scratched the surface in terms of describing the vibrant texts that were authored during this time period.

Second, the second century was a time of incredible importance as the church clarified its beliefs and identity with respect to the synagogue, Roman polytheism, and alternative (or “heretical”) forms of Christianity. The church would have to wait for the likes of Cyprian, Athanasius, and Augustine (among many others!) to provide theological clarity on a variety of important matters, but it is certain that they stood on the shoulders of Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Irenaeus.

Share your thoughts

Do you have a favorite work by an Apostolic Father? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Joshua Jipp’s recommended resources

• Bird, Michael E., and Scott Harrower, eds. A Handbook to Second-Century Christianity. Baylor University Press, 2025.
• Fredriksen, Paula. Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years. Princeton University Press, 2024.

The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed.

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Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church

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Church Fathers Definitive Collection (626 Resources)

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“When will I actually use this?”

It’s a fair question asked by many a Greek student. Preachers-in-training spend hours and hours memorizing verb charts and vocabulary; learning participle, infinitive, and genitive uses; and trying to grasp the grammar until, at long last, they can pull from their vast-yet-shaky knowledge of the language to scratch out a few sentences of the New Testament. Unsurprisingly, many are eager to put into practice what they’ve worked so hard to learn.

Yet when they do, the warnings of James Barr and D. A. Carson lurk in the background, haunting seminarians and young preachers. “Avoid the etymological fallacy.” “That’s an illegitimate totality transfer.” “I may be putting too much weight on the aorist here.” We often learn from our Greek professors how not to use our Greek.

But how should it be used? If you’ve put in the time to learn the language but aren’t sure what the payoff is—or should be—here are five ways your Greek can help your sermon prep.

Table of Contents

1. It helps you slow down and read carefully
2. It helps you notice repeated vocabulary and themes
3. It helps you recognize and study important words
4. It helps you answer exegetical questions
5. It helps you discern a passage’s structure
Closing advice: Use it, but don’t show it

1. It helps you slow down and read carefully

One of the major benefits of studying Greek and then using it in preaching and teaching is that it forces you to read the text much more carefully. You will find yourself going almost painfully slowly, at times laboring over every word in a phrase. Often this will result in things standing out to you that you might have missed had you read at a normal rate in your first language. It’s much harder for your brain to go into autopilot when you must translate every phrase you come across.

I can remember translating through 1 Corinthians 11 for Greek homework and coming upon the little phrase διὰ τοὺς ἀγγέλους. This seemed pretty straightforward: διὰ with an accusative direct object normally means “because of,” and ἀγγέλους is the plural of “angel.” Thus it would seem to mean, “because of the angels.”

But that didn’t seem right. In the context, Paul had been talking about head coverings, and he had just said, “for this cause a woman should have authority on her head.” How were angels a reason for a woman to wear a head covering? It had been several chapters since Paul had last mentioned angels (cf. 1 Cor 6:3), and I had no idea what role they could play in this already challenging chapter. I stared at the phrase for a bit, but I couldn’t figure out what I was missing. I finally shrugged, wrote down “because of the angels,” and hoped that the phrase wouldn’t show up on the translation quiz the next day.

When we got to class, I waited for my brilliant Greek teacher to show me what I had missed. Instead, I was surprised to learn that, in fact, I hadn’t missed anything. Paul had indeed said that women should have authority (or a symbol of authority) on their head “because of the angels.” What did that mean? Well, that’s been debated and will probably continue to be debated. It’s an odd phrase, as any notable commentary on 1 Corinthians will show.

Yet although I had read 1 Corinthians many times before, I had never previously noticed this phrase. How had I missed such a strange expression? Because before, I hadn’t been reading slowly and carefully.

Obviously, this is not a sufficient reason of its own to study Greek. But the practice of slowing down and reading carefully is a benefit that shouldn’t be dismissed too quickly.

2. It helps you notice repeated vocabulary and themes

English translations do not translate the same word the same way every time. This is because most words will have multiple senses or meanings, and the senses of words don’t line up perfectly from language to language. For example, the Greek verb that most students learn immediately is λύω, which means “to loose” or “to destroy.” This means that when translating, the translator must pick between “loose” or “destroy,” because in English those are very different ideas.

The Bible’s authors will often use a Greek word repeatedly to make a point or build a theme. But, because of the above, this repetition might not show up in an English translation.

Probably the clearest example of this is the book of Romans. In Romans, the Greek root δικη shows up seventy-seven times in the Nestle-Aland text.

• BDAG glosses δίκη as “punishment, penalty, justice.”
• One major verb that comes from δικη is δικαιόω, which means “justify” or “declare righteous.”
• δικη is also the root of several related nouns like δικαιοσύνη, δικαίωσις, and δικαίωμα, which are translated as “righteousness” or “justification.”
• Finally, δίκαιος is the adjective form that is translated as “just” or “righteous.”

All of this matters, because righteousness and justification are key themes of Romans. Realizing that what in English are two word families (“just, justification, justify,” as opposed to “righteous, righteousness, declare righteous”) are really one word family in the Greek will help the preacher better understand what Paul is doing with these ideas.

A similar thing happens with the Greek root αγιος, which means “holy.” The noun form is ἁγιασμός, which means “holiness” or “sanctification,” and the verb form is ἁγιάζω, which means “sanctify” or “make holy.” Many English speakers don’t realize that the word “saint” comes from the same root as “holy,” but to someone reading the Greek “saint” looks like “the holy one.” Or again the Greek root πειρα stands behind the words for “trial, try” or “tempt, temptation.” The interplay of these different but related senses is important for understanding passages of Scripture like James 1.

Seeing these and other connections throughout Scripture can help the careful student have a better grasp of God’s Word.

3. It helps you recognize and study important words

Studying words rightly is an important part of any sermon prep. Yet if there is one element of a preacher’s use of Greek that is likely to come under fire, it’s often the odd way we talk about Greek words. Some of this criticism is earned. Preachers can be guilty of making too much of the use of one synonym over another or emphasizing words in unhelpful or illegitimate ways. Some preachers love to use their Greek so much that they might end up saying something useless like, “The Greek word for ‘bread’ here is ἄρτος, which literally means ‘bread’.”

But while preachers should beware of reading too much into common, ordinary Greek words, sometimes a biblical author will use an unusual or rare word. Often by paying attention to these rare words, the preacher can find helpful exegetical nuggets.

For example, Philippians 3:20 uses the word πολίτευμα, a word that occurs only here in the New Testament (a hapax legomenon). This word is glossed by BDAG as “commonwealth” or “state.” It’s a word that would have been especially important for the city of Philippi. As a Roman colony, Philippi was viewed as equal to the Roman cities in Italy. It would have made perfect sense, then, for Paul to tell the Philippians that their πολίτευμα “is in heaven.” Just as Philippi was a slice of Rome for those living in Greece, so the church is supposed to be a slice of heaven living in the world.

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Later in Philippians 4:11, Paul will use the rare word αὐτάρκης (“content”), this time borrowing from the world of philosophy. Stoics and Cynics used this term for self-sufficiency, a total lack of need of anything outside of oneself. In an ironic twist, Paul transforms this self-sufficiency into a Christ-sufficiency in Philippians. He goes from “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I find myself” (Phil 4:11) to “I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13). Whereas the philosophers of Paul’s day sought to weather the storms of life through their own power, Paul looked to Christ for the strength to find contentment.

These two quick examples show how word studies, especially of words that are relatively rare in the New Testament, can unlock helpful truth for preaching and study.

4. It helps you answer exegetical questions

As you read about a passage, scholars and commentators will present arguments about what it means. You might not be an expert, but knowing enough of the language can help you better listen in as the specialists go back and forth.

There are parts of the New Testament that are confusing, even for people who study Greek for a living. This doesn’t mean that, having two years of Greek under your belt, you’ll be able to definitively settle the correct interpretation on these challenging passages. But it does mean that you’ll be better equipped to have some idea of what everyone else is talking about.

1. Why do translations show the variety they do in the way they translate the second half of John 14:1?
2. Is it legitimate to translate James 2:14 as “can that kind of faith save him”?
3. Is Ephesians 4:22–24 saying that we have “put off … been renewed … put on” or that this is something we must do?

These and many other questions can only be answered by a working knowledge of the Greek language.

Sometimes, knowledge of Greek can keep you from making common mistakes, especially if you are using a good commentary.

For example, preachers sometimes point out that the phrase “Go and make disciples” from Matthew 28:18 uses a participle for the word “go.” This is true. But then they go on to argue that it should be translated, “Going, make disciples.” In other words, whatever you are doing in your life, you should also be making disciples.

Now, this may sound really good—but there are problems with it. Grammatically, it is true that the word translated “go” is a participle, but it’s functioning as an “attendant circumstance.” An attendant circumstance is a participle joined so closely to the main verb that it adopts the mood of the main verb. These participles express actions that coordinate with and accompany the main action. So, we should rightly translate this verse, “Go and make disciples,” as we find in every major modern translation. This isn’t a call to casually disciple along the pathway of life; it’s a call to put forth effort and intentionality in accomplishing the task our Lord has left us.

5. It helps you discern a passage’s structure

Finally, studying Greek can help you see the underlying structure of the passage a little more clearly.

Languages use lots of little words to connect clauses, phrases, and ideas. We call these conjunctions. Yet, once again, translators don’t always use a word-for-word equivalence when translating conjunctions. Reading in the original Greek can make the natural divisions of thought clearer because it helps you see first-hand what connecting words the author used.

Take Ephesians 4–6. This section has often been summarized as the walk of the believer. On five separate occasions, Paul tells believers how they should walk (Eph 4:1, 17; 5:2, 8, 15). But a careful look at the Greek text will show that, not only does Paul use “walk” five times, but it is always in connection with the Greek conjunction οὖν (“therefore”) (Eph 4:1, 17; 5:1, 7, 15).³⁰

If we include Paul’s final οὖν (Eph 6:14), which combines with the verb “stand” (Eph 6:11, 13, 14) instead of “walk,” we have a rough outline for the second half of Ephesians that looks something like this:

• Walk worthily (4:1–16)
• Walk differently (4:17–32)
• Walk in love (5:1–6)
• Walk in light (5:7–14)
• Walk in wisdom (5:15–6:9)
• Stand strong (6:10–20)

Figuring out where one idea ends and another idea begins is one of the most frustrating, profitable, and overlooked parts of sermon prep. Figuring out how the author’s ideas go together does a lot to help the preacher think through what the ideas themselves are. You can do much of this work with a good English translation, but you can do it better if you know how to work with the Greek language.

Closing advice: Use it, but don’t show it

In closing, I would like to give one final piece of advice, something I try to follow but don’t always succeed at.

Often the best uses of Greek in sermon prep never show up in the sermon itself. Use your Greek as much as you can in your study, but be careful about mentioning it too much from the pulpit. The more times you say “Greek” in a sermon, the more you may subtly communicate to your audience that they can’t really know what the New Testament is saying unless they know Greek.

I remember being a sophomore in a Christian university and hearing one of my professors preach a message that was a Greek word study on παρακαλέω. He explained that the word meant “encourage,” which is a pretty good single word gloss that covers ideas like exhorting and comforting, as does the original Greek. He then took us to several different passages and showed us how the word was used, eventually making application to our lives from those passages. It was a good, technically careful, and responsible Greek word study.

But what really stuck out to me was that he never once in the message used the word “Greek” or the word παρακαλέω. He did say “the original word,” but that was it. He could have told us what the Greek word was, but he didn’t. He could have said, “now this Greek word” repeatedly throughout his message, but he didn’t. Most people who walked out of chapel didn’t realize they had just been given a Greek word study.

Our goal shouldn’t be to say the word “Greek” as many times as possible when preaching. Our goal should be to take the tools and training that we have been given and use them to be a blessing to God’s people. This happens as we use our Greek to carefully consider every word, observe repetition we might have missed in English, study important words, answer exegetical questions, and discern structure.

Learning Greek is a lot of work, and using it responsibly is also quite a bit of work. But all the work is worth it, if it means that one day we are privileged to hear, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

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Resources for making the most of Greek in your sermons

The Preacher’s Greek Companion series (Hendrickson)

Using New Testament Greek in Ministry: A Practical Guide for Students and Pastors

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New Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors

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Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed.

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SIL Exegetical Summary Series | SILES (34 vols.)

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Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament | EGGNT (15 vols.)

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Baylor Handbook Series (13 vols.)

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A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (BDAG)

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Greek Grammar beyond the Basics

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• How to Use Greek Lexicons

Sacrifices in the Old Testament can seem strange, even repulsive: animal death, blood splashed on altars, covenant salt, ritual uncleanliness. Yet the sacrificial language of Leviticus matters, and not only for Israel’s worship. These offerings underlie the biblical logic of Christ’s atoning death, and Christians have long discussed exactly how they do so.

My goal in this article is to lay out the structure of sacrifice and offering in Leviticus 1–5 to help readers understand the underlying theology of sacrifice. Along the way, I will also reference the Passover and Yom Kippur. While these two rites stand outside Leviticus 1–5, the New Testament draws on these texts to show how Jesus fulfills these sacrifices.

What are sacrifices?

Sacrifice lies near the center of Israelite worship. While God ultimately desires obedience and faithfulness (e.g., 1 Sam 15:22; Hos 6:6), ritual sacrifices offered an important pathway to know and enjoy God. As Andrew Hill and John Walton explain, “The ritual sacrifice was but one way the Hebrew people could gain access to their God YHWH, the Holy One of Israel.”³¹ Indeed, sacrifice predates the law of Moses. According to Genesis 4, Cain and Abel sacrificed to God.

Although sacrifice was normal in the ancient world, Hill and Walton point out that “the Hebrew sacrificial system was distinctive in that it was divinely revealed and was directed toward the goal of personal and community holiness necessary for relationship with God.”³² In other words, God instituted Israel’s sacrificial system in order to facilitate a relationship between himself and his people.

What are Levitical sacrifices?

Leviticus 1–5 describes five kinds of offerings: burnt, grain, peace, sin, and guilt offerings. They represent a sort of baseline for understanding Levitical sacrifices, all of which are given by the mouth of God at the entrance of the newly created tabernacle (Exod 40; Lev 1:1). 

Sometimes scholars designate these different offerings using different terms. For example, Tremper Longman III and Raymond Dillard call the sin offering a purification offering.³³ They also speak of the peace offering as a fellowship offering and the meal offering as a grain offering.³⁴ These disparities mostly amount to disagreements on which English terms are best to translate or describe the underlying Hebrew words.

Use Logos’s Bible Sense Lexicon to explore the different terms designating types of sacrifices. Try it for free!

The text does not tell us why just these five sacrifices are given in Leviticus 1–5. We can assume they represent important ritual acts of worship that allowed both individuals and groups to draw near to God. One answer given by Jacob Milgrom underscores how each of these sacrifices responds to a deep religious need: “Their common denominator is that they arise in answer to an unpredictable religious or emotional need, and are thereby set off from the sacrifices of the public feasts and fasts that are fixed by the calendar (chaps. 9, 16, 23; cf. Num 28–29).”³⁵ If so, then God gave these sacrifices to help his people to draw near to him and to each other, as a way to love God and neighbor, since, as the below will show, these sacrifices involved worshiping God and/or fellowshipping with other worshipers.

According to the Jewish historian Josephus, these sacrifices split into two groups: sacrifices for private persons and sacrifices for the people in general.³⁶ He further subdivides sacrifices into those where “what is slain” is burnt and those where what is offered becomes a feast; in other words, the latter is a thank offering which “is designed for feasting [with] those that sacrifice.”³⁷ Ancient rabbis would also distinguish between voluntary (Lev 1–3) and mandatory sacrifices (Lev 4–5).

These categories help us to get a handle on the sacrificial system of ancient Israel. In the following, I will explain each of the five sacrifices in Leviticus 1–5 in simplified ways.

1. Burnt offering

The burnt offering in Hebrew is called עֹלָה, which means “to go up.” In this personal sacrifice, an offerer will bring an animal for sacrifice, and the priests will spread its blood upon the altar (Lev 1:5). The name עֹלָה implies that smoke from the burnt offering will ascend upwards. Josephus corroborates this point when he comments, “what is slain is burnt, as a whole burnt offering, whence that name is given to it.”³⁸

The burnt offering requires a person to lay his hands on the animal’s head in a ritual of atonement: “He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him” (Lev 1:4; also Lev 3:2, 8, 13; 4:4, 15, 24, 29, 33). This act implies some relation between the offerer and the thing sacrificed. Only Leviticus 1:4 ties this ritual to making atonement in explicit terms, although atonement might be implied in the ritual for both peace and sin offerings. If so, the logic of substitution could be implied by the act, as it seems to be in Leviticus 16:21–22. 

The Hebrew word “if” (אִם) in Leviticus 1:3 begins this section, and, according to Milgrom, this implies the voluntary nature of the offering.³⁹ Presumably, God desires a willing or cheerful gift, which may underlie both the importance of the burnt offering (it makes atonement) and its voluntary nature. The Prophet Hosea might be alluding to the burnt offerings when he records God saying: “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos 6:6). In other words, God is not desiring the offering per se, but rather the steadfast love behind the offering.

2. Grain offering

Leviticus 2:1 and 3 simply call the food or grain offering “an offering” (קָרְבָּן) or “gift” (מִנְחָה), but we infer that it is a food offering because of how the text describes: “his offering shall be of fine flour” (Lev 2:1). While some of the food is burned on the altar, the rest is eaten by the Levites (Lev 2:9–10).

Importantly, Leviticus 2:13 says, “You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt” (cf. Num 18:19). The language of salt implies a long duration because salt was (and is) a preservative. So Philo comments, “By which injunction, as I have said before, he figuratively implies a duration for ever; for salt is calculated to preserve bodies.”⁴⁰

The food offering is voluntary, not mandatory. It is described as a gift, perhaps given for the sake of the priests. And lastly, one reason for the food offering may be that it allowed poor Israelites to offer out of their thankfulness to God, rather than an expensive animal, such as in the burnt offering. In other words, God does not place financial barriers on worship and enjoying communion with him.

3. Peace offering

Leviticus 3:1 describes the peace offering as a “sacrifice of peace” (זֶבַח שְׁלָמִים). Milgrom points out that the word “sacrifice” signals an animal sacrifice, while the word “peace” or “well-being” signifies the motivation for the one offering.⁴¹ In other words, this offering seems to be a form of thanksgiving for experiencing peace or well-being. It is thus voluntary, like the food offering.

4. Sin offering

Leviticus 4:1, like Leviticus 1:1, indicates the beginning of a new section of text by saying, “And the Lord spoke to Moses.” Ancient rabbis noticed a transition in topics, pointing out that the sacrifices in Leviticus 1–3 concerned voluntary sacrifices, whereas the offerings in Leviticus 4–5 concerned mandatory ones.⁴² The major grammatical Hebrew which suggests that the sin offering is mandatory (beyond the contextual cues) is that the major section begins with the Hebrew particle כִּי, not אִם, even though אִם appears throughout Leviticus 4.⁴³

The sin offering refers to unintentional wrongdoing (שְׁגָגָה) and implies a contrast with high-handed sins done with intent (Num 15:30–31). No sacrifice in Leviticus 1–5 forgives high-handed sins, which is why the Day of Atonement plays such an important role in Israelite worship, a topic that I discuss below. But here, individuals or the community could receive forgiveness for sins, either done without knowing it or done on purpose but without knowing that it transgressed the law.⁴⁴

Leviticus 5:1–13 adds further discussions on offerings that relate to sin (חטא), although it does not speak of unintentional wrongdoing. So it may be another set of sacrifices. The main point here, however, is that the text offers more affordable alternatives for the poor in Israel to offering mandatory sacrifices (Lev 5:7, 11).

5. Guilt offering

Leviticus 5:14 once again signals a new section like 1:1 and 4:1 by saying, “The Lord spoke to Moses.” Here, God names the last offering on this list: the guilt offering (אָשָׁם). The noun “guilt” refers to restitution.⁴⁵ However, in the context of Leviticus 4–5, the verb “be guilty” appears frequently (אשׁם), signaling personal realization of guilt (e.g., Lev 4:22, 27; 5:2). So there appears to be a relation between realizing one’s guilt and making restitution. The guilt offering then eliminates guilt.

Are sacrifices always for sin? Is uncleanness sin?

Only Leviticus 5:2 and 3 speak about becoming unclean, and here it relates to sin (Lev 5:5). In this case, however, sin approximates unintentional wrongdoing rather than high-handed sin (Lev 5:3). Further, the Pentateuch does not always tie uncleanness to sin. Moses commands that Israelites should bury dead criminals (Deut 21:22–23), yet doing so makes one unclean (Num 19:11–13). Sometimes, then, obeying the command of God requires becoming unclean! After all, childbirth made women unclean (Lev 12:1–8), something that the Torah commends as not only good but part of our creative purpose (Gen 1:28).

We should therefore be careful in our judgments about the need for sacrifice when one becomes unclean. Hill and Walton explain, “Uncleanness could be caused by disease, contamination, infection, or sin; it could be cleansed only by ritual washing and sacrifice, hence the importance of the instructions regarding sacrifices in Leviticus.”⁴⁶

Additionally, being common and holy can both be states of moral goodness. While God commands all of his people to be holy (Lev 19:2), God dedicates certain people (e.g., priests) to holy status (e.g., Lev 20:8; 21:8). So a person can be common, not holy, yet sinless and obedient. In short, Levitical sacrifices do not necessarily make one holy, and sometimes sin offerings are needed to move someone from an unclean state to a common state. 

Logos’s Factbook, where you can jump start your study on the Bible’s sacrifices and offerings.

How do sacrifices achieve atonement or restitution?

While the burnt, peace, and sin offerings imply a relation between the offered animal and the one who offers, because the latter lays his hand on the former before the priest makes atonement (Lev 1:4; 3:2, 8, 13; 4:4, 15, 24, 29, 33), other sacrifices imply only a satisfaction or expiation. For example, the guilt offering speaks of sacrifices as restitution (e.g., Lev 5:16). Such a restitution would satisfy the demand of either damaged property or damaged relations with others through sinful acts.

How or if these sacrifices primarily propitiate, satisfy, or purify is unclear. The hand-laying ritual in Leviticus 1:4 may imply substitution and perhaps then propitiation, since it could be seen to avert divine wrath. But that is not explicitly stated in the context. The more obvious implication is that the various ritual sacrifices made a way to enjoy communion with God (nos. 1–3) and forgave unintentional wrongdoing and/or guilt (nos. 4–5), the latter including satisfaction (restitution). Interestingly, the notion that the first three sacrifices purify does not seem obvious in the context, and only the sin offering in two cases implies restoration from uncleanliness (Lev 5:2, 3).

The sacrifices listed above raise many important questions, but they do not give us all the answers we desire.

What is the Day of Atonement in the Bible?

The most important question that remains unanswered is: How can someone be forgiven of an intentional or high-handed sin? That is where the Day of Atonement comes in.

The Day of Atonement describes an annual rite whereby the high priest enters into the Most Holy Place to make atonement for his sin and the sins of the people. One purpose of this day, Yom Kippur, is to forgive presumptuous sins. So Milgrom insightfully argues that the Day of Atonement atones for presumptuous sins. He comments, “This is precisely the reason that such sinners are represented by the high priest: they themselves are barred from the sanctuary.”⁴⁷ In other words, presumptuous sins bar one from the sanctuary, and thus the high priest must make atonement for the people.

While the details of the Day of Atonement would require a full article to lay out, here I only want to draw attention to two important ones.

1. The high priest casts lots to decide which of two goats will be sacrificed as a sin offering and which will be sent to Azazel (Lev 16:8–10). Likely, Azazel refers to a goat demon, given the context of Leviticus 17:7.
2. The high priest kills the goat of the sin offering to make atonement for the place and the people:

Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. Thus he shall make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins. And so he shall do for the tent of meeting, which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses. (Lev 16:15–16)

At this point, the high priest lays the sin on the goat destined for Azazel and releases it into the wilderness:

And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness. (Lev 16:21–22)

In summary, one goat goes to Azazel. This goat carries the iniquities of the people into the wilderness (i.e., the “scapegoat”), while the other goat makes atonement for the place and people in the Most Holy Place. The logic here implies both substitution and purification. It may also imply propitiation since it is evident that the scapegoat carries away sin into the wilderness, sin that would otherwise incur the wrath of God.

What is the Passover in the Bible?

During the Passover, Israelites sacrificed a lamb and spread its blood “on the two doorposts and the lintel” (Exod 12:7). This act prevented the “Destroyer” from slaying a family’s firstborn son (Exod 12:23).

To oversimplify matters, Israelites could look back to this event, along with the exodus, as a major salvation event. It precedes and is assumed by all the Levitical sacrifices. We might say that the Passover constitutes Israel’s salvation event, while the Levitical sacrifices show how they maintained their relationship with God and each other.

We must leave fuller explanation of the Passover for another article. However, it is important to recognize, as I will discuss below, that the New Testament draws on the Passover as one of the key sacrifices that Jesus fulfills. Thus, it fills out the picture of how Christians have approached Old Testament sacrifices.

How does Jesus fulfill the Bible’s sacrifices?

Jesus fulfills the Levitical sacrifices by way of accomplishing what they do, but in a better and more permanent way since he is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, not Levi. Secondly, Christ becomes the sacrificial animal, that is, the Passover lamb who takes away not just the sins of the people, but the sins of the world.

A superior priesthood

Hebrews claims that when there is a change in priesthood, there is also a change in law (Heb 7:12). And Christ brings a new priesthood and law as a Melchizedekian priest (Gen 14). Christ’s priesthood thus precedes the Levitical; and the Levites, through Abraham, honored his priesthood (Heb 7:1–10). 

While the Levites ministered under a copy of the heavenly tabernacle, the tabernacle remained a copy (Heb 8:5). By contrast, Christ ministers in the real thing (Heb 8:2; 9:11). His blood purifies the real holy place, a better Yom Kippur (Heb 9:11–14, 23–26). Specifically, it is better because Christ’s sacrifice is once for all, eternal, and thereby unlike the repeated Levitical offerings (Heb 7:27; 9:12). 

Further, Jesus himself is the true tabernacle, since his flesh is torn like the curtain to make a new and living way to God (Heb 10:19–20).

The spatial logic of Yom Kippur also finds its fulfillment in Christ’s atonement: Just as the bodies of the Day of Atonement animals were burned outside the camp, so Jesus suffered outside the city gate (Heb 13:11–13; Lev 16:27).

Related to this new priesthood and eternal sacrifice, Christ’s death also inaugurates a new covenant, echoing the blood of the covenant in Exodus 24:8 (Heb 9:15–22).

The sacrifices articulated in Leviticus remain good but temporary. Israel’s sacrifices kept them in communion with God. Then Christ came to inaugurate a new and better covenant as the new high priest. His once-and-for-all sacrifice atones for sins forever. It is permanent and thus builds a new and living way through the flesh of Christ to commune with our Father by the Holy Spirit.

The ultimate paschal lamb

As Jesus’s priesthood precedes and is superior to the Levitical priesthood, so also his sacrifice (himself) precedes and is superior to the Levitical sacrifices. One reason why his sacrifice is superior is that it finds its roots in the Passover of Exodus 12, an event that prefigures his later large-scale salvific sacrifice on the cross.

But in fact, Christians would also think of the Passover in similar ways in their celebration of the Pascha, with Christ being our Passover lamb. 

Therefore, as both the sacrificer and the sacrificed, Christ fulfills, improves, and betters the old covenant priestly sacrificial system because he, as our high priest of the new covenant, serves in the true tent, makes atonement once and forever, and is the paschal lamb who takes away the sins not just of the people of Israel, but of the whole world.

From the earliest records we have, second-century Christians (and likely first-century Christians too) celebrated Pascha (i.e., Passover) as a celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection. While English-speaking countries call it Easter, most other languages still call it some variation of Pascha, in line with early Christian practice. 

Because of Christ, Christians now offer up a sacrifice of thanksgiving (Heb 13:15–16; cf. Rom 12:1; 1 Pet 2:5; Phil 2:17; 4:18; 2 Tim 4:6; Rev 5:8; 8:3–4), not of bulls or goats. We are permanently forgiven. Christ’s offering is so complete, there is nothing left for us to offer but thanks.

Conclusion

The logic of sacrifice in the Old Testament explains how we can approach and have fellowship with God and his people.

While we might wish to have more details about the Levitical sacrifices, we know enough to understand their basic function from Leviticus. The Day of Atonement uniquely points out how one might be forgiven for high-handed sins, demonstrating a wide scope of grace within the covenant. The whole system of rites presupposes the Passover, where God rescued his people from Egypt to bring them into the promised land.

Christians saw Jesus as fulfilling all these sacrifices, particularly as a mediator and high priest of a better covenant, whose sacrifice would put an end to sin forever and bring us near to God in fellowship with one another.

Share your thoughts

What is the meaning of the Bible’s sacrifices? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Wyatt Graham’s recommended resources

Leviticus 1–16 (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentary | AYBC)

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On Pascha: With the Fragments of Melito and Other Material Related to the Quartodecimans: Translation (Popular Patristics Series)

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Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus (New Studies in Biblical Theology, vol. 37 | NSBT)

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• The Ark of the Covenant: Its Construction, Purpose & Disappearance
• Why Worship Is Better Under the New Covenant (Heb 10:19–22)

Most Christians who have grown up attending a gospel-preaching church can recount the famous stories from the Bible. They know about Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, the animals on Noah’s ark, Moses parting the Red Sea, David defeating Goliath with his sling and a stone, Daniel surviving the lions’ den, not to mention Jesus’s miracles and, of course, his crucifixion and resurrection.

However, it’s one thing to know the Bible’s stories, another to know the Bible’s story.

If we read Scripture only as a collection of isolated episodes, moral examples, or doctrinal proof texts, we can miss its essential unity around the one overarching story that God is working out in history. The Bible is an anthology of sixty-six books, but it is not a random collection of religious texts telling different stories. Like scenes in a larger epic plot, the individual stories all contribute to the one larger drama.

That story of the Bible is the story of redemption. God is working out his eternal plan of redemption in history, and the Bible details its story. It begins with creation, turns on humanity’s fall into sin, centers on God’s redeeming work in Christ, and ends in the restoration of all things.

This is what many Christians mean by redemptive history or salvation history, namely, the unfolding account of God’s saving acts and promises across time, centered in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Table of contents

How does salvation history relate to biblical theology?

The category of redemptive history is closely connected to the discipline of biblical theology.

Biblical theology asks how God’s revelation unfolds across the canon and through the stages of history. Rather than beginning with a doctrinal topic and collecting all the relevant verses, biblical theology tracks themes in their movement across the storyline of Scripture. It pays attention to promise and fulfillment, type and antitype, covenantal progression, kingdom development, and the way later revelation builds on and deepens earlier revelation. This is why biblical theology is especially concerned with the Bible’s own categories and sequence.

Redemptive history is the drama itself, whereas biblical theology is the discipline that traces and interprets that drama. The two are not identical, but they belong together. Redemptive history describes the reality of God’s saving action through time, and biblical theology studies the meaning and coherence of that unfolding action in Scripture.

These definitions also help distinguish biblical theology from systematic theology. Systematic theology asks, “What does the whole Bible teach about God, sin, Christ, salvation, the church, and last things?” Biblical theology asks, “How does Scripture unfold these truths across the historical and literary movement of the canon?”

The two approaches are not in competition but should work together. D. A. Carson correctly argues that biblical theology is a “bridge discipline” between exegesis and systematic theology that actually should produce doctrinal formulations that are better grounded on responsible exegesis.³⁸ Biblical theology helps systematic theology remain attentive to the Bible’s storyline and categories, while systematic theology helps biblical theology synthesize the Bible’s teaching into a coherent doctrinal form. The healthiest theological work utilizes both disciplines.

In the twentieth century, discussions of biblical theology often placed fresh emphasis on the historical unfolding of revelation and the unity of Scripture as a drama of God’s saving acts. Without rehearsing that complex history in detail, it is enough to say that many theologians and biblical scholars increasingly came to recognize that Christian interpretation requires attention, not only to dogmatic formulations of doctrine, but also to the Bible’s own grand narrative movement.⁴³

What is the Bible’s grand narrative of redemption?

A common shorthand for the Bible’s metanarrative breaks it down into five parts:

1. creation,
2. fall,
3. promise,
4. redemption, and
5. restoration.

That summary is not meant to flatten the Bible’s complexities, but it does provide a helpful structural framework for the story of redemption.

1. Creation: the beginning of the story

The story of redemption begins with creation, because redemption is not an afterthought but God’s plan from before creation (Eph 1:4–5, 9–11; 2 Tim 1:9–10; Titus 1:2).

The opening chapters of Genesis establish the basic categories of the larger story that will unfold. God is the Creator–King who has made humanity in his image to live under his rule and to mediate that rule to creation (Gen 1:26–28).

Creation was made good (Gen 1:31) but not glorified. Adam was sinless yet able to sin. God placed Adam in the garden of Eden, where he enjoyed perfect fellowship with his Creator. But God also gave Adam the prohibition not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:16–17). The potential for evil was present, as well as the threat of punishment for disobedience. Conversely, God also placed the tree of life in the garden, which symbolized the promised reward that God held out for Adam’s obedience (Gen 2:9; 3:22–24; cf. Rev 2:7; 22:14). The original creation was perfect in that it was free from sin, yet it was also a probationary arrangement in that God was testing Adam.

Genesis 1–2 also shapes the rest of Scripture in crucial ways. Here, humanity’s identity as image bearers is established, and work, marriage, fruitfulness, place, and divine presence appear as original goods. Creation is shown to have purpose and order, and the salvation that will play out on the pages of Scripture in history does not abandon this creation but will finally lead to its restoration and renewal. The Bible ends, not with an ethereal existence apart from the world, but with a new heaven and a new earth where God dwells with his people (Rev 21–22).

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2. Fall: the problem that the story resolves

If Genesis 1–2 gives us the world as God intended it, Genesis 3 gives us the crisis that explains the rest of the Bible’s conflict.

Humanity rebels against God, distrusting his word and grasping for autonomy. The catastrophic results of Adam’s sin are alienation from God, guilt, shame, fractured human relationships, pain, curse, death, and exile from Eden.

Every major problem in the biblical narrative is, in one way or another, downstream from this rebellion. This is why Genesis 3 is pivotal in redemptive history. It explains why the world is not as it should be, why humanity cannot fix the problem we introduced, and why the rest of Scripture must tell the story of divine rescue.

Yet even here judgment is not God’s last word. In the midst of administering curses on his rebellious creation, God also offers a redemptive promise. The seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head (Gen 3:15). Christians have often seen that verse as the Bible’s first announcement of coming victory over evil and labeled it the protoevangelium. In this “first gospel” promise, God not only gives the hope of redemption but also cryptically describes the means by which it will come. The rest of Scripture unfolds this saving solution to the problem introduced during the original fall into sin.

3. Promise: the hope that drives the story

From Genesis 3 onward, the Old Testament advances the redemptive story through a series of divine acts and covenants.

After the flood, God preserves the world through Noah, ensuring that judgment will not bring history to an abrupt end (Gen 6–9).

With Abraham, the story takes a more focused shape as God promises offspring, land, and blessing (Gen 12:1–3). This blessing will come through Abraham’s seed, but the saving purposes extend to all the families of the earth. The land promised to Abraham and his offspring is also typological of the whole world (Rom 4:13).

The exodus becomes the Old Testament’s defining pattern of redemption. God hears the cries of his enslaved people, judges their oppressors, redeems them by mighty acts, and brings them into covenant fellowship with himself to be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6). When God’s people are later exiled from this land as a consequence of their repeated idolatry, Israel’s prophets described the future, even greater redemption to come in terms reminiscent of the exodus (Isa 11:15–16; 43:16–19; Jer 16:14–15; Ezek 20:33–38; Hos 2:14–15).

The covenants between God and his people move this story forward and provide the contours to promised redemption.

• The Noahic covenant secures the stability of the created order to bring about the promised redemption (Gen 9:8–17).
• The Abrahamic covenant narrows the contours of the redemptive promise, clarifying that it will come about through one of Abraham’s offspring (Gen 15, 17, 22).
• The Mosaic covenant forms Israel as a redeemed people under God’s law, providing the pattern of obedience that the Messiah must fulfill to accomplish our redemption (Exod 19–24).
• The Davidic covenant focuses hope on a coming eternal royal son from David’s line who will perfectly rule God’s redemptive kingdom and bring all prior covenant promises to their intended goal (2 Sam 7:7–16; Ps 89).
• The prophets then interpret Israel’s history through this covenantal framework. They promise that final redemption will come through a new covenant which will create a new people with a new heart in a new relationship with God living in a new creation (Jer 31:31–34; Ezek 36:26–28; Isa 65:17–25).

The Old Testament story concludes while still anticipating the realization of this redemptive hope from a coming Messiah.

4. Redemption: the fulfillment of the story

The New Testament announces that Jesus is not only the fulfillment of Israel’s redemptive hopes, but also the Savior of the whole world (John 1:29).

Jesus is the ultimate offspring of Abraham (Gal 3:16), the true Israel who succeeds where the nation failed (Matt 2:15; Isa 49:3–6), David’s greater son who inherits the eternal kingdom (Luke 1:32–33; Rom 1:3–4), the true Image of God (Col 1:15; 2 Cor 4:4), and the obedient human that Adam failed to be (Rom 5:18–19; 1 Cor 15:45–49). He exercises God’s reign in his teaching, miracles, and exorcisms (Matt 4:23–24; Luke 4:18–21) and demonstrates that his ministry is the climax of redemptive history (Heb 1:1–3; 2 Cor 1:20).

This fulfillment of the Old Testament promises is why the cross stands at the center of the Bible’s metanarrative. At the cross, Jesus bears our sin (Isa 53:4–6; 1 Pet 2:24), satisfies divine justice (Rom 3:25–26), defeats the powers of evil (Col 2:14–15; Heb 2:14–15), and secures the forgiveness of sins (Col 1:13–14). The cross is not one saving event among many but the decisive turning point of the ages (Gal 4:4–5; Heb 9:26).

Yet the cross is inseparable from the resurrection and ascension because, in rising from the dead, Jesus inaugurates the new creation (1 Cor 15:20–28; 2 Cor 5:17). And in ascending and pouring out the Spirit, Jesus inaugurates the church’s participation in the life of the age to come (Acts 2:32–39; Eph 1:20–23).

The Bible’s story reaches its center in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ because there God does what no human hero, no law code, and no political kingdom could ever accomplish. The long-awaited Messiah actually redeems sinners (Mark 10:45; Titus 2:14) and begins the renewal of all things (Rom 8:19–23; Rev 21:1–5).

5. Restoration: the completion of the story

Still, the story is not finished. Christ has come (Gal 4:4–5), sin has been decisively dealt with (Heb 9:26), death has been defeated in principle (1 Cor 15:20–26), and the Spirit has been given (Acts 2:33). Yet creation still groans (Rom 8:22–23), believers still struggle against sin (Gal 5:16–17), and the nations still rage against God’s reign (Ps 2:1–3). This is what theologians mean by the already–not yet. God’s kingdom has already been inaugurated in Christ, but it has not yet been fully consummated.

The book of Revelation completes the story of redemption with final judgment (Rev 20:11–15), the defeat of evil (Rev 19:20; 20:10), the resurrection of the dead (Rev 20:4–6, 12–13), and the arrival of the new heaven and new earth (Rev 21:1–5). The story of redemption ends where it begins, but greater. The paradise that was lost is now restored as a garden–city (Rev 21:10–27; 22:1–5), complete with full-circle edenic references to the river of life (Rev 22:1), the tree of life (Rev 22:2, 14), the presence of God dwelling with his people (Rev 21:3, 22–23), and humanity reigning under God (Rev 22:5).

Redemption restores what sin ruined (Rom 5:12–21), but it does so through Christ in a way that surpasses the original state (Heb 8:6; Eph 1:9–10). The goal of salvation history is not a return to Eden only, but the consummated kingdom of God in a renewed creation (Matt 19:28; Acts 3:21; Rev 21:1–5).

Conclusion

The Bible is one unified story of God’s redeeming work. It begins with creation, passes through the catastrophe of the fall, advances through promise and covenant, reaches its center in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and ends in the restoration of all things. That is the story of redemption.

To read Scripture well requires learning this larger story of the Bible and not merely focusing on the individual stories contained in the Bible. When Christians learn to read the Bible in this way, we know how all of the individual pieces contribute to the larger whole.

This understanding of the Bible also clarifies our individual life stories by explaining our role in the grand narrative of history. We are the objects of this redeeming work, planned before the creation of the world (Rev 13:8), redeemed by Christ’s death on the cross (Eph 1:7), and dwelling with God forever in the restored garden–city of the new creation. It’s this message of redemption that we experience and that we proclaim (Luke 24:44–47)!

Share your thoughts

How would you describe the grand story of Scripture? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Richard Lucas’s suggested reading

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I went to ten years of seminary and skipped out on fast food to buy Logos books because I wanted to know as best a human could how to interpret the Bible well. I had teachers and mentors—and especially one pastor—who clearly had the tools I lacked for pursuing a careful and confident understanding of Scripture.

My desire impelled me into the world of scriptural exegesis—and away from its doppelganger, eisegesis. I want to submit to the text, not make the text submit to me. But how can I make sure to exegete and not eisegete? Ultimately, the direction of your heart—toward the Lord or toward some other God—will determine whether you truly listen to his speech in Scripture. But if your heart is for the Lord but your mind needs some assistance gaining listening skills, I’ll try in this article to provide you some categories and tips that will help you engage in exegesis.

Understanding the basic concepts

Let me introduce exegesis to you, at least in the way I think about it.

What is exegesis?

“Exegesis” is the word that careful interpreters of Scripture use to describe their interpretation.

People who know and use this word tend to know enough Greek to recognize its etymological source: exegesis is “drawing out of” (ἐξηγέομαι/exegeomai) the text what’s in there. In the Greek of New Testament times—though the word is not used in the New Testament—exegesis (ἐξήγησις) came to mean description, explanation, or interpretation.⁴⁴

Exegesis in English today is the technical term for careful, methodical scriptural interpretation.

Someone who performs exegesis is an “exegete.”

An approach to Scripture such a person takes is called “exegetical.”

What is eisegesis?

“Eisegesis” is a back-formation, a word invented to distinguish exegesis from its evil twin. Eisegesis is interpretation that goes the wrong direction: it “draws into” (Greek εἰς/eis) the text a meaning that the interpreter puts there, even if unintentionally.

Contrary to what some articles on the internet say, the word eisegesis does not derive from the Greek word εἰσηγέομαι/eisegeomai. That word had a distinct meaning in ancient Greek, and it had nothing to do with interpretation.⁴⁷ The word eisegesis is actually a kind of obscure pun for nerds. It was invented only in the late 1800s.⁴⁸

Like most evil twins, eisegesis can deceive the unwary for a good while. It is a technical term for bad Bible interpretation, especially the kind that obviously imports meaning from elsewhere—from one’s denominational tradition or preferred worldview, for example.

A real-life example of eisegesis

I heard someone on YouTube recently insist, at length and with some initially credible detail, that Bible translations the world over are hiding the truth by refusing to translate a certain Greek word correctly. That word was μέλλω, which is usually translated “about to.” Sure enough, this someone showed eight passages in which μέλλω was (allegedly) mistranslated as a mere future, not as conveying imminence. For example, most often μέλλω is translated as it is in Luke 19:4: “He was about to pass that way.” But in many eschatological passages, translations include no idea of imminence, translating μέλλω as a simple future: “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Luke 3:7).

I’m naturally suspicious when someone says that a given word always means the same thing. Language just doesn’t work that way. Human language is not math. This is my intuitive hermeneutics guiding my exegesis.

I also had categories ready for this question. I had software tools. Two years after leaving Logos’s employ, I still feel the urge to say: I turned to Logos not out of contractual obligation but because it is genuinely the best tool for the job. The Bible Word Study is something I could not live without.

The first category I reached for was “semantic range.” What senses are among the range of meanings that the word μέλλω can convey? Instantly—thanks to Logos and the tools in it—I had a large stack of verses using μέλλω to examine for contextual clues. And I was awash in literary and grammatical labels like “periphrasis” and “futurity.” I could understand these because others in the tradition of exegesis had slowly established them and then taught them to me.

Try Logos’s Bible Word Study on μέλλω for yourself. Start a free trial!

I had other tools to turn to as well—tools with their own labels, such as “lexicon,” and their own set of conceptual tools and literary labels, such as “sense 1” and “extrabiblical citation.” Ultimately, through the BDAG lexicon, I confirmed what I had seen on my own in the Logos Bible Word Study: Native speakers and writers of Koine Greek simply did not use μέλλω to communicate imminence (something “about to” happen) in every last instance; it sometimes conveys merely that something will happen, or that someone intends for it to, at an undetermined point in the future.

I performed an act of “exegesis,” because I refined my interpretive intuitions about human communication with carefully formed concepts, useful labels, and trusted tools.

Eisegesis is what, I soon discovered, this YouTuber was doing. This YouTuber brought a preconceived notion to the text, a theological view called “preterism,” in which end-time promises in the New Testament are viewed as already having been fulfilled. I cannot, on the basis of the word μέλλω, say that preterism is all wrong. But I can say that the preterists I found online discussing μέλλω read “into” that word a meaning that—because of my exegetical tools—I know to be incorrect.

Eisegesis is more than just misreading. We all do that sometimes. Eisegesis is importing meaning into the text that you want to find there and then yelling, “Eureka!”

How to do exegesis instead of eisegesis

Now here’s what everyone immediately wants to know: How do I know I’m doing exegesis and not eisegesis? What is the golden key, the silver bullet, the holy algorithm, that will reliably produce the former and not the latter?

Is exegesis even possible?

It’s obvious: Exegesis is what I do with the Bible; eisegesis is what other people do with it. Right?

Wrong. If exegesis were always easy to distinguish from eisegesis, presumably we would have fewer theological disagreements in the Christian church. And there would be only one commentary for each book of the Bible. (And Logos would be much cheaper, though far less enjoyable.)

In real life with fallen and finite people such as ourselves, the line between exegesis and eisegesis is not always clear. These twins are (oh, forgive me, reader) conjoined. To use another image: The wheat of good Bible interpretation and the tares of bad will grow together till the end of the age.

But even if doctors have not yet gained the ability to perfectly separate these twins, there are two distinct heartbeats. For if there is finally no difference at all between reading out of the Bible and reading into it, we are of all men most to be pitied. In such cases, God would be stuck behind the bars of the limits of language and of human nature. Every group that thinks it hears him would be hearing only its own echo.

This is more or less what certain skeptics say about evangelical Bible reading. And I will briefly dig into this objection in a follow-up to this piece on hermeneutics. Just you wait.

Exegesis as careful labeling

To “draw out” of a text what is there, you must begin by seeing with clarity what is in fact there.

So exegesis necessarily entails the careful use of conceptual tools. These could be as simple as:

• grammatical labels such as “noun” and “verb,”
• literary genre labels such as “narrative” and “poetry,” and
• literary device labels such as “parallelism” and “hyperbole.”

These could be as complex as:

• discourse markers,
• text-critical dilemmas, and
• elaborate chiasms.⁴⁹

Exegesis pays attention to:

• the meaning of individual words,
• the literary context of any sentence,
• the historical-cultural context of the audience and author,
• the intertextuality (quotations, allusions, and echoes of previous scriptural—and other—texts), and
• syntax (the relationships between words and phrases).

You can do exegesis without technical labels, but you can’t do it without the concepts those labels point to. And the most efficient way to share those concepts with others is to use commonly recognized labels. In other words, other exegetes will recognize your Bible interpretation as “exegesis” when you are able to slow down and give names—names drawn from the tradition of Christian literary and theological analysis of Scripture—to the textual features you see.

To exegete is to learn to put agreed-upon labels on features of ancient human communication using intuitions formed, unavoidably, by your contemporary human communication. It is to understand a text better than you used to because you used labels to slow yourself down and unpack the passage.

Finding help for your exegesis

Presuming that the would-be exegete is a regenerated Christian believer who is praying for illumination, obeying Christ in daily life, and (therefore) attending and serving in a properly constituted local church—presuming all that, I can offer some practical resources for doing exegesis over eisegesis.

1. Find good models

My most important pastoral mentor often said that good interpretation is caught as much as taught.⁵⁰ If exegesis is the careful use of technical tools that refine and put labels on readerly intuition, then it’s something like an art (intuition) being helped by a science (technical tools). And the way to learn exegesis, as with any combination of art and science, is through explicit instruction from models. (When is that not the answer?)

2. Books and resources

But if you’ve already had good instruction from good models, then I think the most practical thing you can do is to grab good exegetical tools and start using them.

I really love The Hermeneutical Spiral, by Grant Osborne. It contains countless practical pieces of advice for exegesis. So does Interpreting the Pauline Epistles, by Tom Schreiner. Logos carries many other books on hermeneutics that have much to say about exegesis.

Such books will often give you step-by-step processes to follow, questions to ask, things to look for, and—all-importantly—labels to use when you find those things.

3. Step-by-step instructions

I remember the days when “exegesis” began with me reading the passage and asking myself, “Now what?” I had no idea what to do next.

If you have had literally no idea what to do in biblical exegesis, Logos Workflows can help. They are step-by-step guides (a few of which I wrote, such as English Word Study) with questions to answer and blanks to fill in. These scaffolds are meant to fall away after a time. But they can be immensely helpful to the beginning or intermediate student.

Another important set of exegetical tools you may want to use on a regular basis comes in the Logos Exegetical Guide. Give the guide a Bible reference—Matthew 5:22, say—and it will organize information from your Logos library according to certain important steps in the exegetical process.

The Exegetical Guide will give you:

• Notes, highlights, sermons, and other material you have created on the given passage
• Important textual variants in your passage and how to study them in greater depth
• A list of the most important words in your text with links to study them further
• A list of grammatical constructions found in your passage with links to grammars that discuss them in greater detail
• Links to commentaries and resources that discuss key words in your text—even commentaries that aren’t on the book you’re studying
• Important cross references
• Links to ancient literature, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls or the apocrypha, that reference your passage
• Links to commentaries and journals on your particular passage

A library-powered assistant for your study

Let me offer just one more tip: I’m getting more and more excited about the Logos Study Assistant, a powerful tool that searches my Logos library for answers to my questions.

I have asked it a few exegetical questions in recent weeks, and each time I have been happy with the results. I asked it about the Greek word μέλλω, for example, and this is what it came up with:

Claude and Gemini and other tools do, in my testing, offer valuable responses to questions like these. But they don’t link me to further discussions in my Logos library, and they don’t rely on vetted resources the way Study Assistant does (because, by definition, I have vetted the resources that go into my Logos library, but only the great AI spirit knows what books it has consumed on its way to giving me an answer). Also, because Study Assistant usually just paraphrases relevant material from my books, it doesn’t hallucinate—and it can (other users tell me they notice this) speak with a little more humility instead of the false confidence that other AI tools sometimes have.

Exegetical questions are often conceptual questions, things I never thought a computer could answer. I think I’m ready to say that the Logos Study Assistant—when paired with a good Logos library—is a useful substitute for an exegetical mentor if you lack such a person in your life. And if you do have more advanced exegetical skills, it is a phenomenal his girl Friday. I have a video coming out on AI tools in Bible study on my own channel soon, and Logos fares well.

Conclusion

Scriptural exegesis is valuable because God’s word is valuable, because living a life pleasing to him is incredibly valuable. If you consistently perform eisegesis rather than exegesis, you are your own God. How can you say you love someone but then refuse to listen to him? There are infinite riches to discover in God and, therefore, in his word. Let us pray that the Lord would not permit us to replace his words with our own.

Share your thoughts

What’s the difference between exegesis and eisegesis? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Mark Ward’s suggested reading

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Which social media platforms should we use? What is a catchy name? Where do we stand on audio/visual equipment? Where’s a good location to meet? Who can we get to help out? How many people do we hope will show up?

These are very good questions that my friends who run youth basketball clubs ask. Unfortunately, these same questions tend to be ones that my friends who start youth ministries begin with too.

It might sound blunt and obvious, but it must be stated explicitly: There must be differences between starting a secular and a sacred group.

Starting a youth ministry is less like launching an event and more like laying a foundation. Clarity early on can prevent confusion later. To start a youth ministry, you must:

• begin with Jesus Christ,
• understand youth and discern your context,
• clarify your specific ministerial context, and
• start in a strategic way.

Understanding youth ministry

Before we do that, we must answer two basic questions:

What is youth ministry?

Youth ministry has three components.

First, it’s Christian. The word “ministry” can be used broadly. It is derived from Latin ministrare, which means “to serve” or “attend.” In certain parts of the world, you can have a Ministry of Finance or a Prime Minister. But, and as we will see below, the type of youth work we have in mind for youth ministry is Christian youth ministry, that is, ministry through and for Jesus Christ (Col 1:16).

Second, it focuses on young people. This shouldn’t be rushed over too quickly, as we will see below.

Third, it’s the church’s work carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit. Youth ministry, like all ministry, is a work of the church—a visible, communal manifestation of the Holy Spirit, formed and animated by the Spirit’s presence and power (Acts 2:1–4, 42–47).

Put together, youth ministry is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit through the church which is attentive to the distinctives of young people made through and for Jesus Christ. Pretty quickly, this doesn’t sound like a basketball league.

Why start a youth ministry?

You don’t need to start a youth ministry. But it might be a good idea.

The Lord has always been faithful to people of all ages. There is no need to look back at the book of Acts or a medieval church in search for a precedent for a Wednesday-night teenage pizza party and Bible study. Meanwhile, there is no need to blindly scrutinize what youth groups do today just because these outward ministry practices are relatively recent and continue to change.

Why, then, start a youth ministry? After considering the advice below, prayerful and thoughtful Christians should consider starting a youth ministry today because society and culture have segmented our families and communities—and this is not going to change overnight.⁵¹ No church or family must embrace youth ministry—the most natural place for youth ministry is the Sunday worship service and the home—yet youth ministry serves a purpose in our era. Youth ministry as we know it could, and perhaps should, fade away. But for now, it fills a need in our disordered environment.

Starting a youth ministry

Let’s consider four essential steps to starting a youth ministry.

1. Begin with Christ, not activities

Before you build a calendar, build a theology. And this theology, like all theology, must be centered on Jesus Christ.

The cultural forces pulling youth ministry away from its proper center, Jesus Christ, are persistent and astonishingly strong. Many such cultural forces begin with younger people. Meanwhile, younger people are often the least able to resist these forces and, to exacerbate this dynamic, many of the leaders within youth ministry are young themselves.

All ministries must be centered in Christ. Given these forces, it may be necessary to remind youth ministry of this more than any other ministry. Youth ministry must constantly ask: How does each component of our youth ministry relate to the fact that all things are from and for Jesus Christ (Col 1:16)? If you don’t ask this question frequently, your youth ministry will quietly drift away from being Christ-centered.

One thing that is incredibly freeing about this is that two youth ministries may look completely different externally while sharing the same mission. What matters is if the components are prayerfully and wisely developed to point to Jesus Christ.

2. Understand youth before trying to reach them

Once we understand this purpose of ministry, we need to understand the people being ministered to.

Young people in the age range of youth ministry are experiencing some of the most significant changes they will undergo in their entire lives. Wise youth ministry will educate and adjust to these realities.

When the Word became flesh, the Son took on humanity. An implication of this truth is often overlooked by youth ministry: Our Lord was just as much a teenager as any teenager we’ve ever met. Luke helps us understand that, “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52). This means that Jesus, like all humans, grew in at least four ways: biologically, intellectually, relationally, and spiritually. Youth ministries must be attuned to all four aspects of our humanity.

Biological

Teenagers naturally undergo physical development, energy shifts, and changes in their need for sleep amid new levels of stress and excitement in school, family, friends, and activities. Youth ministries that treat students like ten-year-olds or thirty-year-olds aren’t comprehending who is actually in front of them.

Intellectual

Naturally connected to the biological development teenagers experience is the neurological and intellectual. Questions become deeper. Students challenge assumptions. Meanwhile, what to do with these newfound curiosities and choices is fogged by the delayed “control” capacity as the prefrontal cortex lags behind other emerging capacities. This makes for a wild ride, like a race car with a very loose steering wheel.

Relational

Relationships and friendships take on new meanings. Belonging and identity become more central. Some teenagers find a deeper connection with the church and the ministries and people within them, while others do the opposite. This can be an extremely challenging time for Christian families who want their child to have friends in the church—but this simply cannot be forced, whether a strong youth group exists or not.

Spiritual

During this time, faith becomes increasingly personal. In earlier years, the norms of the family likely dictated the spiritual life of the young person. During the teenage years, a natural progression and cycle of moral and spiritual development occurs.

Each of these four realities about young people are not problems to be solved. They are realities to be embraced. Remember that Jesus was fully human and, as such, grew in each of these four ways. Teenage Jesus needed sleep, asked tough questions, added new friends, and grew in favor with God. Create a youth ministry where Jesus would have fit in.

3. Clarify your ministerial context

I’m a fast walker. So every time I’m at the airport, I have a decision to make when I encounter a long hallway that has a moving walkway (in the UK, they call it a travelator or a people mover, which is more fun to say). Do I get on it—accepting some delays might occur due to people obstructing my path—or just walk alongside, since I’m a fast walker? I’ve come to realize that the moving walkway is better.

When you sit down to form a youth ministry, you too have a choice. You and your team are likely gifted and capable, so you set off doing what you know best. What you may be missing is that alongside you is an externally-powered people-mover already in motion. But we are blind to see it because we have not stopped to pray and listen to the Holy Spirit and the people God has surrounded us with.

Prayer

An extended time of prayer and listening may seem to slow things down. The goal is not merely to stop and ask God to bless our plans, but to ask what God may already be doing among the young people in our church and community.

To form a youth ministry, pray.

Plan

You also ought to stop and survey what plan your church already has in place. Youth ministry should grow out of the church rather than beside it. Get answers to the following questions:

• What values already shape the church?
• What expectations and vision already exist?
• How does leadership define success?

Many youth ministry conflicts are not a result of theological disagreements but of misalignments resulting from unspoken expectations. Healthy youth ministries reflect the broader life of the church. They should not function as isolated subcultures.

To form a youth ministry, examine the church’s existing plan.

Praxis

Every youth ministry already has assumptions, whether acknowledged or not. This typically comes when youth ministry leaders recall with nostalgia their favorite ministry memories or when they have an impulse to adapt or mimic the latest youth ministry paradigm. These models might include attractional aspects (entertainment, production value, crowd-building), discipleship assumptions (small groups, mentorship, theological formation), or family ministry dynamics (strong parental integration or minimal parental involvement).

None of these are automatically right or wrong. But wise leaders identify ministry assumptions before unconsciously reproducing them. This is the praxis, the actual shape and ministry logic that governs how a youth ministry operates.

To form a youth ministry, define its praxis.

4. Start strategically

As we step onto the travelator to pray, evaluate plans, and consider the praxis, the final question becomes practical: Where do you actually begin?

Begin small by building relationships

Many people imagine that youth ministry begins with a large launch event, a polished room, and a crowded gathering. However, most lasting ministries begin much smaller than that, and youth ministries are no exception. The median in-person church attendance in America is seventy people. This might include zero to ten teenagers, maybe five. A difficult motto to adapt in youth ministry is “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

One of the benefits of this scale is that anyone starting a youth group can begin to pray for young people consistently by name. Youth ministries rarely begin with crowds, but they should always begin with focused name-based prayer. And prayerful engagement leads to relational and pastoral engagement. The main purpose is not “to get you to our meeting.” The main purpose of youth ministry is to minister to youth.

Consider a church that desires to start a youth ministry. It dedicates its first six months not to launching a meeting, but to praying for teenagers by name and getting to know them. Rather than asking students to come to them, they go to the students: attending games, performances, and school events, sharing meals, offering encouragement, and listening well.

Programs may attract students temporarily, but relationships often determine whether they stay connected.

Establish natural rhythms

While starting small and building relationships, you will see what type of form your youth ministry should take. It might look quite different from the one down the street.

This is where the timeless practices of the church—Scripture, prayer, meals, and worship—can be woven into the specific circumstances of your people and community, resulting in ministry rhythms synchronized with their reality, a reality you noticed and acquired prayerfully and personally.

Conclusion

There are more steps you can take, including recruiting and training youth ministry leaders as well as planning events. These are important, but what is more important is laying the proper foundation.

Share your thoughts?

What principles or practices would you add? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Resources for further help

Giving up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry from an Entertainment Culture

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Keeping Kids Christian: Recovering a Biblical Vision for Lifelong Discipleship

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Alongside: Loving Teenagers with the Gospel

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Biblical Theology Of Youth Ministry: Teenagers In The Life Of The Church

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Even the youngest Christians are usually aware that Jesus was born a baby to save us, lived a holy life, died on the cross for our sins, and rose again from the dead. However, if you ask many Christians to explain why it is that Jesus’s birth, death, and resurrection save us, they may struggle to offer a clear response.

The doctrine of the atonement articulates such an explanation for the purposes of evangelism, apologetics, and instruction in the faith.

Table of contents

Introducing atonement and its theories
1. Incarnation and transformational aspects of atonement
2. Crucifixion and the transactional aspects of atonement
3. Resurrection and triumphant aspects of atonement
4. Jesus’s ministry and tutorial aspects of Christ’s work
The atonement and systematic theology
The atonement and pastoral theology
Conclusion

Introducing atonement and its theories

The English word “atonement” was coined by combining “at” and “one-ment.” This second word was an older way of signifying reconciliation or reunification.⁵² The theology of atonement thus explores how it is that “God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ” (2 Cor 5:19).

Typically, the theology of the atonement explores different “models” or “theories” for explaining what Christ’s death on the cross accomplishes—and how. Though denominational statements of faith sometimes favor particular accounts of the atonement, no ecumenical council determined an official explanation for the church universal. Thus, modern theology commonly speaks of atonement “models,” either as competing or complementary theories of how Christ secures salvation.

However, a model’s approach may wrongly imply that there is no established orthodoxy and little consensus concerning what counts as a “model” or even how many models there are.⁵³ It is better to admit that the many ways of thinking about Christ’s work arise from variety within the biblical text. This variety expresses the many dimensions of sin that Christ must overcome and the multiple means he did so.

This article will explore four aspects of Christ’s work while deflating the concepts of theories and models. In so doing, we will address questions like:

• Why did Jesus have to die in each theory of the atonement?
• What problem does this theory of atonement solve?
• What are the biblical and theological arguments for and against each atonement theory?

Finally we will move to consider systematic and pastoral implications of Christ’s work.

In the end, we will see that many theories contribute to an accurate picture, but we must properly balance the various aspects involved to have a strong theology.

1. Incarnation and transformational aspects of atonement

Some aspects of Christ’s work are transformational, meaning that they enable Christians to be “born again” (John 3:3) as a “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17) so that we may “share in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4).

Theologians have offered a variety of explanations for how the work of Christ enables such transformation.

Recapitulation

The New Testament is full of what is commonly called “Second Adam Christology.” For example, Paul describes Adam as a “type of the Coming One” (Rom 5:14). Adam brought sin, condemnation, and the reign of death to all (Rom 5:12, 15, 17–18), but Jesus brought the gift of grace, life, and justification (Rom 5:15–17). Paul writes, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:49). While these are the two most explicit examples of Jesus being depicted as a new Adam, more subtle imagery is found across the New Testament canon.⁵⁴

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–202) has been called “the first to work out comprehensive theories both of original sin and of redemption.”⁵⁵ He famously developed his concept of recapitulation, a word drawn from Ephesians 1:10 (ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι). The term recapitulation taken literally refers to establishing a new head of humanity (e.g., Eph 1:22–23; Col 1:18). For Irenaeus, the term includes a wide range of concepts, including repetition, perfection, redemption, victory, and a change in human nature.⁵⁶ In his book Against Heresies, Irenaeus identifies the following dimensions of recapitulation:⁵⁷

• The incarnation establishes a new manner of humanity in the restored image of God after that image was lost by Adam (Adv. Haer. III.18.1).
• The incarnate Son, who bears the Spirit, imparted this Spirit to us that we might be united to God (Adv. Haer. V.1.1; V.12.2–4).
• Christ’s obedient life reverses the disobedience of Adam (Adv. Haer. III.18.6).
• Jesus “passed through every stage of life, restoring all to communion with God” (Adv. Haer. III.18.7).

Irenaeus’s most famous saying is this:

The Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving adoption, might become the Son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be turned into incorruptibility and immortality unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that we might receive the adoption of sons? (Adv. Haer. III.19.1)

“Physical” theories

Irenaeus’s basic perspective continued across the patristic period, which tended to emphasize the significance of the incarnation for the Son’s saving work, downplaying some of Irenaeus’s emphasis on the life of Christ. For example, Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373) uses words similar to Irenaeus: “He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God.”⁵⁸ Theories that emphasize how the incarnation enables this exchange are sometimes called “physical” theories because of the exchange between natures (Greek φύσις, physis).

Sometimes, physical theories are presented metaphorically. Athanasius uses various metaphors in his On the Incarnation:⁵⁹

• The Son’s taking on flesh honors all humanity similarly to the way a king brings honor to the entire city by entering it (De Inc. §9).
• Just as a king who founds a city enters it to protect it from robbers, so Christ entered humanity to save it from death (De Inc. §10).
• When a portrait is damaged, the artist invites the subject of the portrait to sit again and repaints the portrait. So, too, the incarnation restores in us the image of God (De Inc. §14).

Perhaps because some “physicalist” perspectives are expressed metaphorically, they can be accused of being overly mechanistic. However, closer readings of many key figures reveal an emphasis both on Christ’s incarnation and atoning death, such that the incarnation does not automatically save all.

Evaluating transformational models

While there is a case to be made for a strict usage of “atonement” that excludes the incarnation and life of Jesus, there is also reason to consider the incarnation as part of the atonement. Ivor Davidson explains that doing so connects the atonement with the doctrine of God through the incarnation, helping avoid imbalances in atonement theology.⁶⁰

There is a clear biblical basis for Irenaeus’s theology of recapitulation, but the approach does have limits. For example, it does not fully explain why Jesus had to die by the brutality of the cross (e.g., Luke 9:22).⁶¹ Furthermore, recapitulation does not sufficiently address the guilt associated with our actual sins. For such reasons, even Irenaeus himself allowed space for a propitiatory dimension of the atonement.⁶²

Granting these limitations to recapitulation, it is important to note that recapitulation serves as a necessary foundation for the transactional aspects of atonement considered in the next section. As Joshua McNall explains, “If all of humanity is somehow bound up in and with the Son, then the cross … involves the judgment of sin of the entire human race in the body of the one person who really does (somehow) contain us all.”⁶³

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2. Crucifixion and the transactional aspects of atonement

I classify as transactional those aspects of Christ’s atoning work that depend on some exchange between Jesus Christ and God. This may involve the Spirit-filled Son accepting some punishment from his Father or the Son offering something to the Father in the Spirit.

This section will briefly survey the transactional aspects of Christ’s saving work.

Atonement and sacrifices

How does Jesus’s atonement relate to the Old Testament sacrificial system? This is a complicated question worthy of a full article of its own. However, several basic features can be named here:⁶⁴

1. Like the Passover lamb in Exodus 12, Jesus our Passover lamb (Isa 53:7; John 1:29; 1 Cor 5:7; 1 Pet 1:19; Rev 5:12) died that we might escape the judgment of God.
2. Evoking the bloodiness of Old Testament sacrifices, the blood of Christ is itself essential to our reconciliation with God (Acts 20:28; Col 1:19–20; Heb 9:22).
3. The Day of Atonement features the sin offering and the scapegoat (Lev 16:11–28). Each of these animals has some similarity with Christ, who was both an offering and the one who bore our iniquities (Isa 53:6, 10; perhaps also 1 Pet 2:24).
4. The death of Christ serves to restore our relationship with God, both through expiation (the removal of guilt) and propitiation (the restoration of good relationship with the Father). Detailed accounts of this process must navigate debates about the meaning of the ἱλασμός word-group (e.g., 1 John 2:2; 4:10).

Sacrificial models are those that especially center accounts of how the work of Christ relates to the Old Testament sacrificial system. Many of these discussions are concentrated in biblical studies. Systematic theology draws on sacrificial concepts while focusing more on corresponding ideas of God, sin, and justice to explain Christ’s death.

Ransom theory

Ransom theory emerges from biblical texts in which Jesus speaks of being a ransom (λύτρον) (e.g., Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45).

Yet we must wonder to whom Christ paid a ransom. One answer from the early church was that a ransom was paid to Satan, who had tricked us into sinning (Gen 3), such that we were now his property. Through Christ’s death, a ransom was paid and Christians were freed.

One version of this theory, seen in Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394), considers the incarnation a means of deceiving the devil. Satan had no right to claim the Son and kill him, so when he did so, his rightful claim on sinful human beings was forfeited and we were free.

It is unusual to see a defense of ransom atonement today, and it often serves as a foil for other transactional theories.

Satisfaction theory

Perhaps the most famous transactional theory is satisfaction theory, which emerges from the famous text Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man)⁶⁵ by Anselm of Canterbury (1033/34–1109). Note that this approach is also incorporated in Protestant theology. For example, satisfaction features in the theology of Reformed figures like Zacharias Ursinus (1534–83) and Francis Turretin (1623–87).⁶⁶

Anselm’s satisfaction theory centers the ways in which human sin dishonors God, and dishonoring God requires that we not only stop sinning but offer something in restitution or recompense (Cur Deus Homo I.11). The problem is that we cannot give our Creator anything that he has not already given us (Luke 17:7–10; Rom 11:35–36), and it would be unjust for the eternal Judge and King to not require the fulfillment of justice (Cur Deus Homo I.12).

In response, the Son was incarnate, so that he could represent fallen humanity, who are obligated to repay (Cur Deus Homo II.6). The Son also voluntarily accepts death (John 10:17–18), becoming incarnate and refusing to use his power to protect himself from crucifixion (Matt 26:53). Because “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23), and Christ has not sinned (1 John 3:5), Christ did not have to die. Jesus was killed for speaking truthfully about God and for fulfilling his will. In voluntarily doing so, he offered something to God of supreme value (Cur Deus Homo II.14, 18)—the life of the God–man. Christ’s voluntary death is therefore a gift to God, honoring God. This is how Anselm implicitly interprets biblical language of Christians being “bought at a price” (1 Cor 6:20) and “purchased” (Acts 20:28) since Jesus “erased the certificate of debt” through the cross (Col 2:14).

The principle of justice applies again here. Christ’s gift of his life is so significant that it not only pays our debts but also earns a reward. Since Jesus already has everything the Father has, being a member of the Trinity, he grants his reward to the humans he represents (Cur Deus Homo II.19), which is the grounds of our justification through the imputed righteousness of Christ.

Penal substitutionary atonement

Penal substitutionary atonement emphasizes retributive justice, which claims sin requires punishment. The New Testament frequently describes Jesus as dying “for the people” (John 11:50), “for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3), “for the ungodly” (Rom 5:6), and “for us” (Rom 5:8). Penal substitutionary atonement interprets this substitution in terms of Jesus bearing the punishment for sin that fallen humans deserve. Since Christ bore our punishment, we can be freed of the eternal consequences of sin.

Penal substitution is often especially linked with John Calvin (1509–64). Calvin draws on Scripture’s language of Jesus becoming sin (2 Cor 5:21), of sin “condemned in the flesh” (Rom 8:3), and the language of Jesus being “cursed” on a tree (Gal 3:13–14) to argue that Jesus is specifically our substitute in bearing our punishment for sins. Our sins were “transferred to him by imputation” such that he bore its curse, “that by enduring it, he repressed, broke, annihilated all its force.”⁶⁷

Evaluating transactional atonement theories

The transactional theories of the atonement are often criticized for “divinely sanctioned violence,”⁶⁸ under the concern that such violence promotes further violence, perhaps as the people of God model criminal justice systems after the cross.⁶⁹ This is an important concern, though space only permits a brief response. Within Scripture, God has reserved vengeance for himself (Deut 32:35). Substitutionary atonement suggests that violence culminates in the cross, a once-and-for-all event that we should not expect to be repeated (Heb 10:10). Perhaps the cross is best seen as God redirecting violence toward himself as a means of resolving and ending creaturely violence.

Satisfaction theory faces several additional objections. Some object that it is unreasonable to suggest that God could not forgive without satisfaction, but this objection pits God’s infinite goodness against his infinite justice. Better to accept a transactional theory that accounts for both. Others reject Anselm’s theory of justice as overly feudal, but concepts of honor and shame have predominated throughout history and continue to do so today, especially in the Eastern Hemisphere.⁷⁰

Penal substitutionary atonement has been criticized on the grounds that Old Testament sacrifice includes many themes beyond punishment. Defenders of penal substitution tend to grant this claim.⁷¹ The better question is whether there is any aspect of biblical teaching that suggests some punitive consequence for sin, which is resolved through the cross. The answer here is a clear yes.⁷²

There are also pastoral concerns with the violence of transactional theories. These will be addressed below.

3. Resurrection and triumphant aspects of atonement

Thus far, we have considered how Christ’s atoning work transforms humanity and serves as an offering to the Father, resolving our guilt before the perfect, sinless God. Yet, humans also need saving from the power of Satan and from the physical, spiritual, and eternal death to which we are captive. Therefore, no account of Christ’s saving work is complete without attending to Christ’s triumph through his resurrection, ascension, and second coming in glory.

While many theological explorations of Christ’s saving work include some dimension of triumph, in this section I will center one theory that especially highlights this view: christus victor atonement.

Christus victor

Perhaps the most famous discussion of atonement as triumphant victory is found in the work of twentieth-century Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulén, whose book Christus Victor explored what Aulén called the “classic idea” of the atonement. This classic idea emphasized Christ’s victory over evil powers to which humans are captive (Eph 6:12), including death (1 Cor 15:26), sin (Rom 7:23), and the devil (2 Tim 2:26).

Aulén emphasized that the classic idea was a “continuous” theory, where God wrought salvation from beginning to end. In Aulén’s view, transactional models like satisfaction or penal substitution were “discontinuous” theories that downplayed divine action to focus on “an offering made to God by Christ as man and on man’s behalf.”⁷³ In many cases, Aulén fails to attend to how transactional theories include divine agency from start to finish.

In christus victor atonement, Jesus is triumphant over sin by not succumbing to temptation (Matt 4:1–11). He is triumphant over death through the resurrection, which also defeats the devil who has the power of death (Heb 2:14). When we are united with Christ, we participate in his victory.

Evaluating christus victor atonement

Christus victor atonement captures an essential dynamic of Christ’s work. Christus victor explores how Christ’s work includes spiritual warfare and incorporates the resurrection in ways other models often do not.

Yet, we must be careful not to reduce atonement to christus victor. To do so would be to ignore the personal and corporate guilt that human beings have which must be resolved for our salvation.

4. Jesus’s ministry and tutorial aspects of Christ’s work

A final aspect of Jesus’s work is tutorial. Christ is called “teacher” (Luke 18:18), “prophet” (Mark 6:4, 14–15; John 4:19), and he regularly interprets the law. These teaching elements technically lie outside of atonement, strictly speaking. Yet, they are worth naming insofar as Jesus’s ministry is necessary for atonement because:

• Jesus’s obedience to and fulfillment of the law (Matt 5:17) is necessary for his being a sinless offering (1 Pet 1:19).
• Jesus’s ministry included predictions of his death that help us understand its purpose (e.g., Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34).
• Jesus’s death was brought about through the particular details of the historical life he led that prompted opposition from those in power.

Furthermore, the cross itself serves some tutorial purpose, revealing truths about God’s loving character (1 John 3:16), for example.

No account of atonement that is reduced to these elements does justice to Scripture, but arguably an account that ignores these elements misses important secondary aspects of Christ’s work on the cross.

Moral influence and moral exemplar

A moral influence view rightly understands the cross to reveal the depths of God’s love (1 John 3:16). When this love is revealed, sinful humans are moved to repentance. However, we cannot do so without the empowering work of the Holy Spirit, so moral influence theory requires the transformational aspects of atonement.

A moral exemplar approach emphasizes the need we have for a moral role model to follow. In a world where all have sinned (Rom 3:23), no one can serve as a pattern except the sinless Son of God, who is our moral example.

Here again, since we are saved by grace, not works, other dimensions of atonement are more central.

Governmental

Governmental theory, particularly associated with Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), understood the cross to be preserving God’s moral governing of the universe. It objectively revealed the gravity of sin, an important teaching aspect of the cross.

Yet, where Grotius treated Jesus’s death as merely a token offering revealing the justice of God, he wrongly rejected transactional dimensions of the cross.

The atonement and systematic theology

While theological discussions of atonement tend to focus on the various aspects and theories of the atonement, it is also important to connect these theories with the full scope of systematic theology. Numerous points of contact are worth naming:

• Doctrine of God: Our understanding of divine attributes like justice, mercy, and immutability will shape our understanding of atonement. For example, classical theists who say God is immutable must be careful when discussing whether or how Jesus could be a propitiation toward God.
• Trinity: Modern accounts of penal substitutionary atonement often depict a rupture between the Father and Son that is not compatible with the Trinitarianism of the Council of Nicaea. We must be more careful not to break the Trinity in our discussion of how Jesus is forsaken or bears the wrath of God on the cross.
• Hamartiology: The dimensions of Christ’s atoning work call us to a holistic doctrine of sin that understands sin to be individual acts, original sin inherited from Adam, a social phenomenon, and a spiritual power to which we are captive.
• Covenant theology: The question of how Christ’s work relates to the law, covenants, and eternal plan of God has prompted detailed discussion of the framework we use to think about God’s covenants with humanity.

The atonement and pastoral theology

Our understanding of the atonement also has important implications for pastoral theology.

This section will consider two further pastoral applications of the atonement, focusing on preaching and ministry in the context of abuse.

Atonement and preaching

Preaching the good news immediately raises the question of atonement because we must ask what work of Christ we are to proclaim. Carefully thinking through atonement is therefore a prerequisite of evangelistic preaching.

The contextual nature of preaching is also worth noting.⁷⁴ What dimension of sin is especially relevant for the audience, and which aspect of Jesus’s work best targets this dimension? For example, those suffering under addiction or grieving death might benefit from focus on the transactional or triumphant dimensions of Jesus’s work. Meanwhile, those aware of (or needing to be prompted on) their guilt can receive Jesus’s transactional work as the good news of grace.

Our preaching can never be merely determined by the sermon’s audience, though. The relative emphases of passages selected for expository sermons, as well as the balance of the canon’s overall treatment of atonement, will necessarily center some aspects of Christ’s work over others in our preaching.

Atonement and abuse

If we are not careful, our teaching on atonement theories can increase abuse.⁷⁵ Christ as moral exemplar means that the cross is consistently a pattern for Christian life (Matt 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23; Phil 2:5–8). This may encourage those suffering abuse to feel their only option is to bear it. Similarly, penal substitutionary atonement may seem to vindicate violence as a good thing, a risk noted above.

In light of these concerns, those who teach the atonement would do well to consider how to teach the atonement in a manner that protects the abused. Some preliminary thoughts include:

• The fact that Jesus offers a one-time redemption for the world suggests important differences between his suffering and ours.
• For example, while Jesus is omnipotent God (John 1:1) who voluntarily accepted the violence of the cross (John 10:17–18), abuse victims are neither.
• Even though Jesus accepted the violence of the cross, there were other times when he refused to let violent crowds harm him (Luke 4:28–30; John 10:31–39). Understanding Christ as a moral exemplar can include rejecting harm from others.
• The New Testament appeals to Christ as a pattern for the strong to sacrifice for the weak (Mark 9:35; Eph 5:25). Using the cross to justify the strong’s abuse of the weak harmfully reverses that pattern.
• The governmental theory shows us the severe gravity of sin. Abuse would be one such sin worthy of condemnation.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, a robust doctrine of the atonement will refuse to reduce the richness of Christ’s saving work to just one dimension. Rather, the atonement is transformational, restoring humanity’s union with God through the incarnation; transactional, resolving the guilt and punishment owed for sin through the cross; triumphant, defeating sin, death, and the devil through the resurrection; and tutorial, teaching and forming us through Christ’s life and example. Rather than treating the different theories as competing explanations, we do better to recognize each as highlighting a different aspect of humanity’s need and a different dimension of what Christ accomplished.

This more comprehensive picture matters. It shapes how we preach the gospel to people in different circumstances, how we understand God’s own character and the life of the Trinity, and how we minister carefully and truthfully to those who have suffered abuse.

Share your thoughts

How would you explain the atonement? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Glenn Butner’s suggested readings

Deification through the Cross: An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation

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What is the mission of the church in the world today? In this episode of Logos Live, Kirk E. Miller sits down with author and missiologist Dr. Ed Stetzer to trace the mission of God from Genesis to the Great Commission.

Whether you are navigating between evangelism and social justice or seeking to avoid “mission drift” in your local congregation, this conversation provides a biblical-theological framework for understanding our purpose in God’s grand purposes.

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Episode guest: Ed Stetzer

Ed Stetzer, PhD, is the Dean at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. He also serves as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Wycliffe Hall at Oxford University. Stetzer has planted, revitalized, and pastored churches; trained pastors and church planters on six continents; earned two master’s degrees and two doctorates; and he has written hundreds of articles and a dozen books. He is Editor-in-Chief of Outreach Magazine, and regularly writes for news outlets such as USA Today and CNN. His national radio show airs on Moody Radio and affiliates. Stetzer also serves as Teaching Pastor at Mariners Church.

Episode synopsis

Where does mission originate?

Many begin considering mission with the Great Commission (Matt 28:18–20). But mission is not a task God assigns partway through the Bible’s story. Mission has roots in the Old Testament and even finds its origin in God himself, who is a “missionary God.”

This changes how we read the Bible. Rather than treating mission as a novel New Testament addition, Scripture’s entire storyline showcases God’s consistent purpose to restore creation and redeem a people for himself. As early as the protoevangelium (Gen 3:15), God promises a human offspring who would undo the effects of the fall. In Genesis 12, God calls Abram. Through his offspring, God will bless the nations. Then in the Exodus, God rescues Abraham’s offspring, the nation of Israel, and appoints them a priestly people for his mission to represent God to the nations and draw them to God (Exod 19:5–6).⁷⁶

Ed Stetzer summarizes, “There’s never been a time when God hasn’t been a missionary God.”⁷⁷

Creation and covenants as the seedbed of mission

In Genesis 1:26–28, God commissions humanity to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion” (Gen 1:28). Scholars identify the garden of Eden as a proto-temple whose borders humanity was meant to extend, bringing order to the chaos beyond.⁷⁸ As God’s image-bearers, humanity represented God as king and was tasked with extending his rule and presence across creation.⁷⁹

This Creation Mandate then resurfaces in God’s covenant with Abraham, which drives the rest of Scripture’s storyline. Genesis 12’s promise of blessing, offspring, and land echo the language and themes of Genesis 1–3, aiming to recover them post-fall.

The Great Commission, then, is the redemptive recovery of that original Creation Mandate. The call to fill the earth with God’s image-bearers (Gen 1:26–28) is fulfilled in the multiplication of disciples conformed to Christ, the perfect image of God (e.g., Rom 8:29; 1 Cor 15:49; 2 Cor 3:18; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10).

Exodus and the shape of God’s mission

As “the gospel before the gospel,” the exodus event is incredibly important for shaping how we think about God’s mission. Even as the prophets treat the exodus as a template for God’s future work of redemption, the exodus shows us the intent and scope of God’s mission.

First, according to the book of Exodus, mission is what God does, never primarily what Israel does. God hears the cry of the oppressed, reveals his name, and acts in history; Israel’s role is responsive, not initiating.

Further, Israel’s redemption occurs, not merely to rescue Israel, but to make God known. In Exodus 9:16, God tells Pharaoh, “For this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” Israel’s priestly vocation (Exod 19:5–6) confirms the same point: God sets his people apart as a priestly nation, to mediate knowledge of God to the nations. As Ed explains, “God’s mission creates a people, and God’s people exist for God’s mission.”

Finally, Exodus highlights the ethical dimension of God’s mission (e.g., “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt”; Exod 22:21).

In sum, the exodus teaches us that God reveals himself through redemptive action, that redemptive action forms a people who are to reflect God’s character, and that that people is called to ethics and compassion.

From “come and see” to “go and tell”

As Ed explains, in the Old Testament, the mission of God’s people has a centripetal movement. Israel’s task was to draw the nations toward Jerusalem to worship the one true God. However, Jesus reverses this direction. He tells his apostles that they “will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Instead of the nations coming to Jerusalem—a centripetal or “come and see” mission—the apostles are to go out from Jerusalem to those nations—a centrifugal or “go and tell” mission.

Pentecost (Acts 2) pictures what should have happened had Israel actually brought the nations to God: a multilingual praise of God and his salvation (cf. Rev 7). Instead, that anticipated in-gathering of the nations transforms into the church’s outward sending. As Jesus acquires authority over all nations (cf. Dan 7), so Jesus deputizes his people to make disciples from among all of those nations (Matt 28:18–20).

What is the ultimate goal of God’s mission?

People at times debate whether the ultimate goal of God’s mission is the salvation of sinners (soteriology) or God’s glorification among the nations (doxology).

According to Ed, God has always been on a mission to glorify himself by making himself known (Exod 9:16; Isa 11:9; Hab 2:14). That mission will complete when God is rightly glorified among his people (see Ps 96; Rev 19:1–6; cf. 5:9–14; 7:9–12). This is the goal of God’s mission—a goal that defines everything God is doing in the world, and a mission he invites his people to join.

Missions—cross-cultural, missionary work—is a subcategory of that mission. Historically, Christians have emphasized different motivations for missions, which, according to Ed, should not be pitted against one another. We can pursue missions

• to rescue the perishing from hell and a Christless eternity
• to gather the elect from among the nations for God’s glory⁸⁰
• to see God’s shalom realized across creation

What is the mission of the church?

Moving from the mission of God to the mission of the church, Ed appeals to John 20:21. According to Ed, the mission of the church is to join Jesus on his mission. And when we look at Jesus’s ministry, we see that his mission involved two things: serving the marginalized and hurting (Luke 4:18–19) and saving the lost (Luke 19:10). Thus, for Ed, the church’s mission is also twofold: gospel demonstration and gospel proclamation. We declare the gospel with our mouths and then we display it with our deeds.⁸¹ So we observe the early church in Acts doing both of these things.⁸²

Evangelicals have often debated the mission of the church, particularly whether that mission centers on evangelism and discipleship or if, and to what extent, it also involves things like caring for the vulnerable and pursuing justice in society.⁸³ Ed raises the concern that gospel proclamation often gets lost when the church “rediscovers” gospel demonstration. Yet, based on Scripture’s teaching, he does not want to jettison gospel demonstration as a major part of the church’s mission. After all, as Kirk observes, even if one locates their definition of mission in the Great Commission, that commission calls us not merely to make disciples but to teach these disciples to observe all that Jesus commanded, which is quite expansive (Matt 28:18–20).

Nonetheless, Kirk introduces a distinction between the church’s mission as an institution (or the church as organization) from the broader responsibilities and activities of individual Christians who make up the church (the church organic). Even if Christians are called to do a breadth of things, observing “all that [Jesus] has commanded [us]” (Matt 28:20), does that mean the church—as a collective organization or institution—should subsume all of those things into its mission? As many point out, if everything is mission, then nothing is mission.

How gospel and kingdom define mission

Often one’s conception of the gospel—its nature, concerns, and scope—as well as the kingdom have a direct correlation to one’s theology of mission. Debates about the church’s mission usually trace back to debates about how the gospel itself is defined.⁸⁴

For instance, some define the gospel more narrowly as focused on Christ’s atonement and the salvation of sinners. Others include within the gospel broader concerns of societal renewal and cosmic restoration. For his part, Ed believes the gospel concerns both aspects: personal salvation and broader transformation. He defines the gospel as

the good news that God, who is more holy than we can imagine, looked upon people with compassion, who are more sinful than we’d possibly admit, and sent Jesus into history to establish his kingdom and reconcile people and the world to himself.

Regarding our theology of the kingdom, Ed avoids saying Christians “build” the kingdom, preferring instead to say that Jesus grows his kingdom, and that the kingdom, having come, produced the church, which then joins Jesus’s kingdom-mission in the world. The church is not identical with the kingdom, but the two are inseparably connected.

The mission in practice

Practically, what does it look like for churches—and Christians—to be mission-oriented?

As Ed explains, it’s not that your church needs to find a mission, but that God’s already-existing mission ought to define your church’s. We get to be caught up in a mission bigger than ourselves.

Every believer, then, is called to say yes to participating in that mission, even as that will take different forms for different people. Whether it means becoming a cross-cultural missionary, serving our neighbors, or teaching the Bible to children, we respond like Isaiah, “Here I am, send me” (Isa 6:8).

Share your thoughts

What is the mission of the church? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Ed Stetzer’s resource recommendations on mission

• Craig Ott, ed. The Mission of the Church: Five Views in Conversation. Contributions by Stephen Bevans, Darrell Guder, Ruth Padilla DeBorst, Edward Romman, and Ed Stetzer.
• Stetzer, Ed. Review of What Is the Mission of the Church? Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission, by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert. Themelios 36, no. 3 (2011). https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/review/what-is-the-mission-of-the-church-making-sense-of-social-justice-shalom-and/.
• “Responding to the Lausanne Seoul Statement: We Need a Greater Focus on Evangelism’s Place in the Holistic Mission.” ChurchLeaders, September 25, 2024. https://churchleaders.com/voices/exchange/lausanne/497595-ed-stetzer-my-appeal-to-lausanne-dts.html.
• “Declaring, Displaying, and the Future of Lausanne.” ChurchLeaders, September 27, 2024. https://churchleaders.com/voices/exchange/lausanne/497753-lausannes-integral-mission-the-role-of-evangelism-in-the-lausanne-movement-explained.html.

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Wesleyanism is a vibrant movement of Christianity that traces its roots to the eighteenth-century ministry of two brothers, John and Charles Wesley. Emerging initially as a renewal movement within the Church of England, it sought to restore what its founder, John Wesley, called primitive Christianity: the purity, passion, and zeal of the early church. Today, it encompasses a diverse global family of denominations and traditions.

At its core, Wesleyanism would simply define itself as “scriptural Christianity.” It is characterized by an optimism of grace, the theological conviction that God’s power is not only sufficient to forgive sin but also to radically transform the human heart in this life. While sharing fundamental Protestant tenets like justification by faith, the Wesleyan tradition places a distinct emphasis on sanctification: the process of being made holy through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

A brief history of the Wesleyan movement

The story of the Wesleyan movement is grounded in the history of a small group of Christians. At the center were the Wesley brothers. John and Charles were raised in a devout Anglican household where intellectual rigor and fervent faith went hand in hand. Their mother, Susanna, gave birth to nineteen children and nurtured her offspring in Scripture and prayer. Their father, Samuel, served as a parish priest. This combination of disciplined devotion and passionate faith became a hallmark of the movement they would later inspire.

While John Wesley became the movement’s chief organizer and evangelist, Charles Wesley made an equally enduring contribution through hymnody. A gifted poet and hymn writer, Charles authored more than six thousand hymns, many of which are still widely sung today, including “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” His hymns gave voice to the movement’s theology, helping to shape Wesleyan spirituality for generations of believers.

John Wesley famously traced the Wesleyan–Methodist movement by referring to the three “rises” of Methodism indicated by their locations: Oxford, Georgia, and London.

1. The first rise: Oxford

While students at Oxford University, John and Charles Wesley formed a small group beginning in 1729 that focused on mutual accountability, sacramental devotion, and rigorous discipline. Critics labeled them the “Holy Club” and mockingly called them “Methodists,” referring to the strict, methodical way they approached the practice of faith. The name stuck and was eventually embraced by the group, as they did believe that Christians should be methodical in their approach to daily prayer, Bible study, reception of Communion, and acts of piety such as visiting the sick and imprisoned. This period provided the movement with its vision for holiness marked by a step-by-step approach to walking with Christ.

2. The second rise: Georgia

John and Charles Wesley traveled to the Georgia Colony in 1735 as missionaries, driven by an idealistic desire to plant Christianity among native peoples in the New World. Though the mission was largely a failure, it was pivotal because John Wesley encountered a group of Moravians during his travels. Their calm faith during a terrifying storm at sea struck him deeply. Wesley panicked as the Moravian pietists sat calmly singing hymns, and he realized he lacked and longed for the internal assurance of faith they possessed.

3. The third rise: London

Returning to London, John Wesley experienced his famous Aldersgate encounter on May 24, 1738. While listening to a reading of Luther’s preface to the epistle to the Romans, he felt his heart “strangely warmed.” He wrote, “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: and an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine.”⁸⁵ This profound experience of assurance marked a turning point, not only in his own faith, but in a vision for the movement that would emerge.

Following these events, the movement gained momentum in England. When blocked from preaching in Anglican pulpits, John Wesley took to field preaching, reaching the poor and marginalized where they lived and worked rather than waiting for them to enter the doors of the established church. He famously declared, “I look upon all the world as my parish.”⁸⁶

A Wesleyan reading of Scripture

For Wesleyans, Scripture is the primary and authoritative guide for faith and practice. John Wesley described himself as a “man of one book,” even though he read widely.⁸⁷

A Wesleyan reading of Scripture begins with the goal of holiness. The Bible is seen as a means of grace through which the Holy Spirit continually assists and inspires the reader. Wesleyans see Scripture as an overarching narrative of God’s work of redemption from Genesis to Revelation.

The human condition and Wesleyan free will

The Wesleyan understanding of salvation starts with the understanding that humans are made in the Image of God (imago dei). While God created humans to live in right relationship with him, with one another, and with the whole creation, sin damaged this image, though it did not entirely eradicate it.

Original sin and total depravity

Wesleyans hold a serious view of original sin. They affirm that in our natural state since the fall, human hearts are turned inward and utterly corrupted by sin. Apart from grace, we lack the power to choose God.

Prevenient grace and “freed will”

The Wesleyan doctrine of prevenient grace (or “preceding” grace) holds that God comes to us before we can ever come to God. This is the divine love that surrounds all humanity and precedes any conscious human impulse toward God. Prevenient grace makes possible what humans by their own efforts cannot do: turn to Christ and receive salvation. This is often called “freed will” rather than “free will.”

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The Wesleyan “way of salvation” (via salutis)

Wesleyans view salvation as an ongoing process of God’s grace—a journey of growing in holiness in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Prevenient grace: the grace that goes before

The journey begins with prevenient grace, the divine work of God to draw us to himself before we are even aware of it. This grace acts as the “bridge” between human depravity and the exercise of the will, enabling us to respond to the gospel. It is a universal benefit that everyone receives, prompting a conviction of sin and a desire to please God.

Justifying grace: what God does for us

As a person responds to grace through repentance, they encounter justifying grace. Justification is the work that God does for us; it is the divine declaration that our sins are pardoned for the sake of Christ. It restores our relationship with God through faith alone. This addresses the guilt of sin, changing our status from alienated enemies to accepted friends of God.

Sanctifying grace: what God does in us

While justification is what God does for us, the New Birth (regeneration) is the initial work of sanctifying grace that God does in us. This marks a qualitative change where the Holy Spirit begins to transform our nature from a life of sin to one of initial holiness. If justification deals with the guilt of sin, the New Birth deals with the power and dominion of sin.

Following the New Birth, the believer enters a journey of “growth in grace,” becoming increasingly conformed to the likeness of Christ. Wesley described this as a rich synergy between God’s power and human agency. This experience is received in the lives of those who are surrendered and responsive to Christ’s ongoing work of sanctifying grace.

Entire sanctification: perfection in love

The distinctive emphasis of Wesleyanism is the doctrine of entire sanctification, also known as Christian perfection. This is a work of grace where the believer is freed from the being of sin, the inward carnal nature. Wesley rejected “sinless perfection,” noting that humans remain subject to “infirmities” like mistakes and physical frailty. Instead, it refers to purity of heart and perfect love, where the heart is so habitually filled with the love of God that there is no room for the desire to sin.

Entire sanctification is the distinctively Wesleyan teaching that God fully consecrates believers to himself and perfects them in love. It is not freedom from human limitations or mistakes. Rather, it is a profound work of grace in which the Holy Spirit cleanses the heart from sinful dispositions and fills it with love for God and neighbor. John Wesley described this experience as being “made perfect in love,” a life no longer ruled by self-centeredness but increasingly shaped by wholehearted devotion to God.

Assurance: the witness of the Spirit

Wesleyans believe it is the privilege of every believer to experience the reality that they are indeed children of God. The Holy Spirit “bears witness with our spirit” (Rom 8:16) that our sins are forgiven. This gift removes the fear of condemnation and offers believers the gift of a state of rest in the personal love of God.

Glorifying grace: the fullness of the image

The final movement is glorifying grace. Glorifying grace reminds us that salvation is not complete in this life. This is God’s final and completing work of salvation through which believers are fully conformed to the image of Christ, raised to new life in the new creation, and welcomed into the fullness of God’s eternal kingdom.

Social holiness: the communal pursuit of faith

Wesleyans believe that holiness cannot be attained in solitude. John Wesley famously stated, “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.”⁸⁸ In the Wesleyan tradition, “social holiness” refers specifically to the communal nature of the faith.

This communal pursuit of holiness took shape through a distinctive system of small groups:

• Societies: Larger gatherings for preaching and worship
• Classes: Groups of about twelve people who met weekly for mutual support and spiritual accountability
• Bands: Smaller, intimate groups of three to five people where members transparently confessed their sins to one another and prayed for healing

Within these groups, Wesleyans practiced the means of grace such as prayer, Scripture, and the Lord’s Supper, viewing them as channels through which God conveys transforming power. Social holiness is the shared rhythm of the Christian life where believers sharpen one another and corporately pursue the image of Christ.

What denominations are considered Wesleyan today?

Wesleyanism remains a vibrant global movement today.

Those who count themselves among the heirs of the Wesleys are found in Methodist denominations such as the Global Methodist Church, the United Methodist Church, and the Methodist Church in Great Britain, among others.

Several Black Methodist denominations emerged in nineteenth-century America and remain to this day, including the African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, and Christian Methodist Episcopal churches.

Other Wesleyan denominations that are counted in the historic Holiness tradition include the Wesleyan Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Free Methodist Church, the Church of God in Christ, and the Church of God, Cleveland, as well as the Salvation Army.

Conclusion

At its heart, Wesleyanism is a movement of grace. Rooted in Scripture, nourished by the wisdom of the historic church, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, it proclaims a God who not only forgives sinners but transforms them into the likeness of Christ.

From its beginnings in the eighteenth century to its global expression today, the Wesleyan tradition continues to call people to holy love, vibrant discipleship, and participation in God’s renewing work in the world. The Wesleyan message remains the same as those iconically contained in John Wesley’s last words breathed on earth: “The best of all is, God is with us.”⁸⁹

Share your thoughts

What is Wesleyanism’s most distinctive belief? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Jessica LaGrone’s suggested reading

• Wesley, John. Sermon XLIII: The Scripture Way of Salvation. In The Work of John Wesley, vol. 6. Third edition. London: Wesleyan Methodist Book Room, 1872.
• Watson, Kevin. The Class Meeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience. Seedbed, 2014.
• Danker, Ryan, ed. To Spread Scriptural Holiness: Theological, Social, and Missional Foundations for the Wesleyan Movement. Seedbed, 2026.

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For nearly two thousand years, devotion to the God of Israel has unfolded along two largely diverging paths that we now recognize as the religions of Judaism and Christianity. Yet this separation too easily obscures the historical reality that the earliest followers of Jesus the Jew were themselves Jews. The first believers worshiped the God of Israel, read the Hebrew Scriptures, and proclaimed that the long-awaited Jewish Messiah had come. The notion that allegiance to this Messiah would eventually produce a new religion estranged from the very people and covenant that nurtured it would have seemed almost unthinkable to them.

The unfolding history tells a complicated story. From the earliest disputes within the synagogue (Acts 15) to the destruction of the temple (AD 70), the dispersion of the Jewish people, the rise of imperial Christianity, and centuries of theological polemics and institutional divisions, Jewish presence and allegiance to Jesus gradually disconnected. Over time, the relationship between Jewish identity and faith in Jesus came to be portrayed as mutually exclusive, as though Jewishness and “Jesus-faith” could not co-exist.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Messianic Judaism stands as a witness to the remarkable modern re-emergence of Jewish presence within the community of Jesus followers—as Jews. It represents the contemporary resurgence of a Jewish expression of faith in Yeshua, originally present in the earliest Jesus movement, later marginalized through centuries of separation, and now reappearing as a distinct yet interdependent testimony within the one Jew–gentile Body of Christ.

Messianic Judaism’s ancient roots

The modern re-emergence of Messianic Judaism did not occur in a historical vacuum. Its roots reach back into the Bible’s story itself and into the earliest generations of the Jesus movement, where Jewish identity and allegiance to Yeshua were not seen as contradictions but as deeply interconnected realities within God’s covenant purposes. From almost the beginning, the biblical narrative unfolds as a story of both Jews and gentiles: Israel is called into covenant intimacy with the God of Israel, and the nations are gradually drawn into that covenant blessing through Israel’s Messiah.

To understand the significance of Messianic Judaism today, it is necessary to trace the larger biblical and historical arc that shaped the relationship between Israel, the nations, and the Jewish Messiah.

A cardinal point of exegesis: ישראל

Before following that story, one clarification is essential for comprehending the biblical case for Messianic Judaism, a case which hinges on a single word: Israel. The word Israel can refer to various things in Scripture or theology. Depending on the context, it may refer to the patriarch Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel; Gen 32:28), the covenant people descended from him (e.g., Gen 48:20), the land promised to that people (e.g., Josh 11:21), or the modern nation-state established in 1948. These related but distinct referents are not always carefully distinguished. Modern readers often instinctively default to the last of these—the modern nation-state—whereas Messianic Judaism calls for careful discernment of how it is being used.

A simple biblical example illustrates why the distinction matters and requires interpretive discernment. In Genesis 35:10, we are reminded of God renaming Jacob as Israel, establishing the term’s most basic referent. Later biblical usage shifts referents as well, even by the same writer. For example, in Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph is told to “go to the land of Israel” (Matt 2:20). Here, Israel refers to a place, while Jesus later describes his mission to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24), where the referent is the people of Israel. The same word, the same author, two different referents within a few chapters.

Not every occurrence comes with such explicit markers, however. Often the referent must be discerned from the surrounding context rather than assumed in advance, reminding readers to let Scripture itself determine what “Israel” denotes in a given passage.

Messianic Judaism does not settle these questions. But its modern re-emergence ensures they can no longer be ignored, inviting renewed biblical, historical, and theological reflection on the relationship between Israel and the church.

Particular calling, universal blessing

Genesis 12 marks a decisive turning point in the biblical story of revelation and redemption. Through Abram, God chose one family as a beachhead for covenantal intimacy and restoration through which his blessing would ultimately reach all the families of the earth (Gen 12:3). What begins as a promise to a single household unfolds across generations as Abraham’s descendants multiply into a people and eventually a nation.

That nation is forged in the crucible of Egypt. Over centuries of suffering and enslavement, Abraham’s family grows into a vast multitude. When God delivers Israel through the Exodus, he does more than liberate a people from oppression. He establishes a covenant nation with a unique calling in the world. Israel becomes, in effect, God’s national foothold: a particular people in a particular land through whom he intends to reveal his character and accomplish (or fulfill) his redemptive purposes in the world.

The covenant sealed in blood at Sinai (“the blood of the covenant,” Exod 24:8; cf. Luke 22:20; Heb 9:20) establishes a profound relationship between the God of Israel and the people of Israel. From the beginning, this covenant carried forward the promise given to Abraham that, through his offspring, all the families of the earth would be blessed (Gen 12:1–3).

In God’s economy, the election of Israel was never about narrowing the scope of his love but extending it. God’s choosing of the Jewish people established a unique covenant relationship with Israel even as it served a broader universal purpose. Through Israel would come the Scriptures, the prophets, and ultimately the king of the Jews, the Messiah, who would open wide the gates of relational access and covenant communion with the One True God.

Seen in this light, Israel’s chosen-ness does not diminish God’s love for the nations but reveals it. God chose the Jewish people not because he loved the gentiles less but because his redemptive purposes always included every nation. The particular calling of Israel serves a universal mission, not to narrow God’s love to one people but to extend his blessing to all peoples.

The blessing extends to the nations

While it may be easy for modern readers to recognize the universal dimension of God’s redemptive purposes, that vision was not always obvious as the biblical story unfolded. The Old Testament contains many hints that God’s blessing was intended to reach beyond Israel, yet the primary focus of the biblical narrative remains on God’s covenant relationship with the people and land of Israel.

Even when Jesus appeared on the scene, his earthly ministry was directed primarily toward the Jewish people. With only a few notable exceptions, he limited his public mission to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24). At first glance, this focus might appear to reinforce the idea that God’s redemptive activity was restricted to one nation.

Yet the deeper biblical pattern reveals something else. Throughout Scripture, God consistently works through the particular in order to accomplish the universal. The God of Israel engages a specific people in a specific place so that his salvation might ultimately reach every nation and his purposes might extend to all creation.

This pattern becomes unmistakably clear in the earliest decades of the Jesus movement. As gentiles began to respond to the message of Yeshua, the community of Jewish believers faced a pressing question: Must gentiles first become Jews in order to belong to the people of God? The events surrounding Cornelius (Acts 10) and the deliberations of the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) revealed something remarkable: Gentiles could enter covenant life through allegiance to Yeshua without becoming Jews or abandoning their own ethnic identity.

The door had been opened wide. The blessing promised to Abraham was beginning to flow to the nations. This development did not mean that Israel’s calling had come to an end, however. Rather, as the Apostle Paul later explained, gentile believers were being graciously grafted into Israel’s covenant story like wild branches into a cultivated olive tree (Rom 11:17–24). The inclusion of the nations did not replace Israel but joined them to the promises first given to the Jewish people.

It is precisely this biblical pattern that the modern Messianic Jewish movement seeks to embody. It affirms God’s ongoing covenant purposes for the Jewish people and his irrevocable calling upon them, while recognizing that both Jews and gentiles inherit God’s promises through Israel’s Messiah. At the same time, it maintains that Jewish people who come to faith in Yeshua need not relinquish their Jewish identity but are called to continue living faithfully as Jews within the one Body of Christ. The movement’s theological streams differ in how that calling is expressed in relation to Torah observance and Jewish communal life, but the enduring significance of Jewish identity remains a shared conviction.

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How Jewish and Christian identity split

The earliest generations of the Jesus movement embodied a remarkable and unprecedented reality: Jews and gentiles worshiping the God of Israel together through allegiance to the Jewish Messiah. The apostolic witness in Acts and the letters of Paul reflects the effort to hold this new unity together while preserving real distinctions between Jewish and gentile identity. The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) affirmed that gentiles could belong to the people of God through faith in Yeshua without first becoming Jews, while Jewish believers continued living faithfully within the rhythms of their Jewish covenant life.

Yet this fragile unity did not remain stable. Over the next several centuries, a gradual process of separation began to unfold. As increasing numbers of gentiles joined the Jesus movement, Jewish believers became a smaller minority within their own community. At the same time, tensions between emerging rabbinic Judaism and Jewish followers of Yeshua sharpened as both groups sought to define their communal boundaries in the aftermath of the temple’s destruction in AD 70.

Social and political pressures also contributed to the widening divide. Periodic Roman contempt toward Jewish communities created incentives for gentile believers to distance themselves from Jewish identity and practice.

Over time, theological polemics and ecclesiastical decisions reinforced this distancing. By the fourth century, as Christianity became increasingly intertwined with imperial structures, the separation between Jewish and gentile expressions of the faith hardened. Jewish practices were often discouraged or prohibited within the church, and Jewish identity itself came to be viewed with suspicion.

The result was a profound historical shift. What had begun as a Jewish movement that welcomed gentiles gradually became a predominantly gentile religion in which visible Jewish presence largely disappeared. Over time, the categories of “Jewish” and “Christian” came to be understood not merely as different communities but as mutually exclusive identities.

For many centuries, the possibility of openly living as both Jewish and devoted to Yeshua seemed all but unimaginable.

Messianic Judaism’s modern revival

For many centuries, Jewish presence within the community of Jesus followers remained rare and largely invisible. Jewish individuals who came to faith in Jesus typically assimilated into existing Christian structures where expressions of Jewish identity were seldom encouraged and, in some times and places, explicitly discouraged or prohibited. The possibility of a visible Jewish expression of allegiance to Jesus seemed, for most of history, to have disappeared.

Yet the modern period began to reopen that possibility.

The emergence of Messianic Judaism

In the nineteenth century, Jewish believers in Jesus began forming what came to be known as Hebrew Christian associations. These communities provided fellowship for Jewish believers while largely remaining within Protestant ecclesiastical frameworks. Their emphasis centered primarily on evangelism and mission, and while Jewish identity was acknowledged, it was not typically expressed through distinct congregational forms or communal rhythms. Even then, some Jewish believers were already wrestling with how to remain faithfully Jewish while following Jesus.

A more significant shift began to take shape in the mid-twentieth century, which accelerated in the decades following the 1960s and 1970s. During this period of spiritual renewal, often associated with the Jesus movement, growing numbers of Jewish people came to faith in Yeshua. Unlike earlier generations, many of these believers sought to maintain and express their Jewish identity openly while following Jesus. New congregations began to emerge in which the worship of Yeshua was combined with elements of Jewish liturgy, biblical festivals, and communal life.

This development marked an important transition. What had previously been understood primarily as a “Hebrew Christian” presence within existing churches increasingly began to take shape as a distinct Jewish expression of faith in Yeshua. As Messianic Jewish theologian Mark Kinzer has observed, the movement began shifting from being perceived as a “Jewish version of Christianity” toward something closer to a “Yeshua-version of Judaism.”⁹⁰

In this way, Jewish presence within the Body of Messiah began to reappear in a visible and organized form. Messianic Judaism emerged not as a new religion, nor even as a cohesive denomination, but as a renewed attempt to hold together two realities that history had long separated: Jewish identity and allegiance to Jesus.

The movement’s modern re-emergence also revives one of Christianity’s oldest theological questions: What is the relationship between the church and Israel? Messianic Judaism does not offer a single answer, nor does this article attempt to resolve the question. But its very existence gives this longstanding question renewed urgency, inviting fresh biblical, historical, and theological reflection.

The diverse world of Messianic Judaism

As Jewish expressions of faith in Yeshua began to reappear in the modern era, a variety of congregations, networks, and alliances gradually developed to support this growing movement. Like the wider Body of Christ, Messianic Judaism is not a single institution but a diverse collection of communities that share a common allegiance to Jesus while expressing that faith in different ways.

Some of the earliest organizational structures emerged from the Hebrew Christian movement. The Hebrew Christian Alliance of Great Britain was established in the nineteenth century, followed by The Hebrew Christian Alliance of America in the early twentieth century. The American alliance eventually became what is now known as the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA). Alongside the broader International Messianic Jewish Alliance (IMJA), these organizations have historically focused on mission, mobilization, and connecting Messianic congregations and leaders.

Other networks place greater emphasis on cultivating distinctly Messianic Jewish communal life. The Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC), for example, has focused on developing congregational expressions of faith that consciously incorporate Jewish liturgy, biblical festivals, and rhythms of communal life shaped by Jewish tradition.

Educational ministries have also played an important role in shaping the theological and biblical conversation within the movement. One influential example is First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ), a Messianic Jewish teaching organization dedicated to helping disciples of Jesus recover the Jewish context of their faith and the historical world of the early Jesus movement. Through books, online resources, and global Torah study communities, FFOZ has helped introduce both Jewish and gentile believers to a Messianic Jewish reading of Scripture that engages the roots of the gospel and the enduring role of the Jewish people in God’s redemptive plan.

Still other networks function primarily as relational or leadership-oriented movements. Organizations such as Tikkun Global emphasize global partnerships, leadership alignment, and collaborative ministry across Messianic Jewish and broader Christian communities.

Despite their different histories and emphases, these networks share a common center: allegiance to Yeshua as Messiah, a belief in the ongoing significance of Jewish identity, and fidelity to the Scriptures. Their diversity also corrects a common misconception that belief in God’s continuing purposes for the Jewish people necessarily requires a dispensationalist framework. Dispensationalism gave that conviction an important home and vocabulary during much of the modern era, well before the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948. But belief in God’s continuing purposes for the Jewish people never belonged to dispensationalism alone.

In recent years, the maturation of the Messianic Jewish movement has also given rise to new efforts to foster deeper unity across these diverse expressions. One notable example is Yachad BeYeshua, an international fellowship that brings together Jewish disciples of Jesus from a wide range of ecclesial contexts, including Messianic congregations as well as Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and independent churches. Rather than replacing existing institutions, this fellowship seeks to cultivate relationships, prayer, study, and mutual encouragement among Jewish believers in Jesus while helping them develop a shared global identity and witness.

In this way, the collaboration represented by Yachad BeYeshua reflects a growing recognition that Jewish disciples of Yeshua are called to live not only within particular communities and ecclesial traditions, but also together as a visible Jewish expression of the people of God within the wider Body of Messiah. Such efforts embody the apostolic vision of believers who are “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3), bearing witness to the Jewish Messiah within the one community of Jews and gentiles who belong to him.

Interested in more on Christian traditions?
See our full series on denominations.

Messianic Judaism’s major theologians

The following figures represent several of the major historical, theological, pastoral, and scholarly streams that have shaped the modern Messianic Jewish movement. Because Messianic Judaism is diverse in both theology and practice, this list is intentionally representative rather than exhaustive.

• Joseph Rabinowitz (1837–1899)
• Paul Philip Levertoff (1878–1954)
• David H. Stern (1935–2022)
• Arnold Fruchtenbaum (b. 1943)
• Stuart Dauermann (b. 1944)
• Daniel Juster (b. 1947)
• Mark Kinzer (b. 1952)
• David Rudolph (b. 1967)
• Jennifer M. Rosner (b. c. 1970)

Messianic Judaism’s major works

The following works introduce readers to several of the major theological and scholarly streams that have shaped the modern Messianic Jewish movement. Because Messianic Judaism encompasses diverse theological perspectives, this list is not exhaustive. Together, these works provide helpful entry points into the movement, spanning biblical interpretation, systematic theology, ecclesiology, Jewish–Christian relations, and the historical development of the movement.

• Stern, David H. Messianic Judaism: A Modern Movement with an Ancient Past. Messianic Jewish Publishers, 2007. Originally published in 1988.
• Fruchtenbaum, Arnold G. Israelology: The Missing Link in Systematic Theology. Ariel Ministries, 1989.
• Stern, David H. Jewish New Testament Commentary. Jewish New Testament Publications, 1996. Originally published in 1992.
• Kinzer, Mark S. Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People. Brazos Press, 2005.
• Harvey, Richard. Mapping Messianic Jewish Theology: A Constructive Approach. Studies in Messianic Jewish Theology. Paternoster Press, 2009.
• Rudolph, David J., and Joel Willitts, eds. Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations. Zondervan, 2013.
• Rosner, Jennifer M. Healing the Schism: Karl Barth, Franz Rosenzweig, and the New Jewish-Christian Encounter. Lexham Academic, 2021.

Messianic Judaism and the restoration of all things

The development of Messianic Judaism should thus not be understood as the creation of a new religious movement or trend, but as part of the Bible’s larger biblical hope for the restoration of all things.

The prophets envisioned a day when the God of Israel would draw the nations to himself while preserving the calling of Israel among them. The Apostle Paul likewise described a single olive tree into which gentiles are graciously grafted without displacing the natural branches (Rom 11). In this vision, unity does not erase distinction. Rather, the redemption accomplished through Israel’s Messiah brings Jews and gentiles together in covenant communion with the God of Israel, and each other.

This larger hope is echoed in Peter’s proclamation in Acts after the Ascension, where he declares that heaven must receive Jesus “until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago” (Acts 3:21). The modern re-emergence of Messianic Judaism therefore points beyond itself. It serves as a sign that the ancient fracture between Jewish identity and faith in Yeshua need not remain permanent.

More than that, the nurture of a distinct Jewish presence within the one Body of Messiah is not merely permissible: It is integral to God’s redemptive purposes, enriching the church’s witness and demonstrating how God continues to work through the particular for the flourishing of all nations. As Jewish and gentile disciples stand together in faith, they bear witness to God’s unfolding purpose to restore all things through Israel’s Messiah.

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Resources for better understanding Messianic Judaism

Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations

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Israelology: The Missing Link in Systematic Theology

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Jewish New Testament Commentary

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Messianic Judaism: A Modern Movement With an Ancient Past (A Revision of Messianic Jewish Manifesto)

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Messianic Judaism: A Critical Anthology

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The Enduring Paradox: Exploratory Essays in Messianic Judaism

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Voices of Messianic Judaism: Confronting Critical Issues Facing a Maturing Movement

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Master Plan for the Redemption of Israel: A Reformation of Messianic Judaism

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Our Bible Too: A New Soteriology of Messianic Judaism

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At the Foot of the Mountain: Two Views on Torah and the Spirit

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Jewish Roots: Understanding Your Jewish Faith (Revised Edition)

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Stones the Builders Rejected: The Jewish Jesus, His Jewish Disciples, and the Culmination of History

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No one will deny that every believer has an angel that accompanies him, acting like a kind of pedagogue and shepherd and directing his life, if he calls to mind the saying of the Lord: Do not despise one of these who are least of all, for their angels continually behold the face of my Father in heaven [Matt 18:10].⁹¹

With these words, the great fourth-century theologian Basil of Caesarea affirms what had become by his time a consensus doctrine: Every believer has a guardian angel, as Jesus himself seems to teach in Matthew 18:10.

But is this interpretation correct? Do guardian angels exist?⁹²

What are angels?

Let us begin with the most basic question: What is an angel?

The English word “angel” is a transliteration of the Greek word ἄγγελος (angelos), which simply means “messenger” (the Hebrew equivalent is מַלְאָךְ). In the Bible, these terms could be used to describe human messengers (such as John the Baptist, e.g., Matt 11:10), but they were also used to describe supernatural beings sent by God to deliver messages to humans. So in a narrow sense, an angel is one particular class or function of supernatural beings: those who serve as messengers.

But the word “angel” can also be used more broadly to denote all such spiritual beings, including a longer list of descriptors used in Scripture: cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, watchers, archangels, and more. In Scripture, these spiritual beings fulfill a variety of functions in God’s plan. They not only deliver messages from God, they also worship God, administer God’s plan, and serve and defend God’s people.

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One of the most succinct biblical summaries of the angels’ nature and function is found in Hebrews 1:14, “Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” We learn several things about the angels in this single verse.

1. The angels are spirits. Though they can take physical form in order to be revealed to humans, they are by nature invisible and incorporeal (not embodied). This means, in part, that their powers and abilities far outstrip our own (see 2 Pet 2:11).
2. The angels are ministers of God. The word used for “ministering” here is λειτουργικός (from which we derive our word “liturgical”), and it has to do with religious service devoted to God. The angels’ most fundamental task is to worship and serve their Creator.
3. The angels serve God’s people. They are sent out by God on a mission of service (διακονία, from which we derive our word “deacon”) on behalf of those who are to inherit salvation.

In sum, we might describe the angels as spiritual and liturgical deacons. They are pure spirits who worship God and serve God’s people.

What are guardian angels?

One of the specific ways that the angels serve God’s people is by guarding, guiding, and protecting them.

On this basic point there is no serious disagreement among Christians: Angels guard. But the guardian angels doctrine is saying something a bit more than that. The traditional doctrine states that a single angel is assigned to each believer to guard and protect him or her for life. Hence, they have also been called companion angels. (Sometimes it has also been asserted that a single demon has likewise been assigned by the dark forces to tempt each individual.)

As we have already seen, the most common proof text for the doctrine has been Matthew 18:10, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” Commenting on this verse, the third-century theologian Origen of Alexandria wrote,

Each believer, although the humblest in the Church, is said to be attended by an angel, who is declared by the Saviour always to behold the face of God the Father, and as this angel was certainly one with the object of his guardianship.⁹³

Origen and Basil were hardly alone in this interpretation. Belief in a companion angel was an early and widespread phenomenon throughout the patristic era.

What does the Bible say about guardian angels?

But does the Bible actually teach this doctrine?

Before we examine the disputed texts related to a single companion angel, let us consider some of the biblical material on the guarding function of angels more generally. In Psalm 91:11–12, we read:

For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.

Bible readers will recognize this as one of the passages that Satan misapplied in his temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. While it would be a sin to put this promise to the test, as Jesus tells Satan, that misunderstanding of the text doesn’t take away from the psalm’s true meaning: God commands his angels to guard and protect his people.

A similar truth is taught in Psalm 34:7, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.” The Prophet Elisha and his servant saw an army of angelic beings surrounding the people of Israel as their protectors (2 Kgs 6:16–17). The angel of the Lord appears throughout the biblical narrative as the guardian of God’s people.

The Old Testament also teaches that certain angelic “princes” have charge over the nations. Daniel is especially instructive in this regard. There is a “prince of Persia” and a prince of Israel as well, identified with the Archangel Michael (Dan 10; cf. Rev 12:7–9). Their angelic battles appear to supervene upon the affairs of men and nations.

It is also possible that the “angels” (messengers) of the seven churches in Revelation 2–3 are spiritual beings, in which case each local church has a celestial guardian over its affairs (though perhaps these messengers could be understood as pastors or other human leaders in the churches).

But what about individuals? Angels certainly guarded and guided individuals throughout the Bible’s story. We could mention Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Moses, Jesus himself, Peter, and others. Though Protestants do not accept it as canonical, the book of Tobit witnesses to a common view among Jews in the intertestamental period: An angel attends the lives of God’s chosen people (in this case, Tobias, the son of Tobit).

In the canonical Scriptures, Matthew 18:10 once again appears to be the clearest case of individual angelic guardianship. In this passage, Jesus warns against causing the “little ones” to stumble. While Jesus leverages literal children to make the point, this reference to the “little ones” is likely also a reference to all believers in Christ. The warning takes the form of an implicit threat of judgment: “their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”

The possessive pronoun here is intriguing. In some sense, the little ones have angels who see their plight and plead their case before the heavenly Father. The text does not explicitly say that a single angel is assigned to each believer perpetually throughout their lives. It may be the case that many angels are given charge over the little ones, or that they are deputed only in cases of dire need. But it is not difficult to see how many patristic interpreters took Matthew 18:10 to corroborate the guardian angels doctrine.

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Another interesting case concerns a story from the book of Acts. After Peter was miraculously released from prison by an angel of the Lord, he came and knocked at the gate where the church was gathered for prayer. The servant girl Rhoda heard Peter’s voice and ran to tell the others, who thought she was “out of [her] mind” (Acts 12:15). They speculated that the appearance of Peter was perhaps “his angel.”

Here again we encounter a possessive pronoun: his angel. To be sure, this account is not likely intended to teach the doctrine of guardian angels (the church was, after all, mistaken about the identity of the person at the gate), but it at least reports that such an interpretation was viable for these early Jewish Christians. At most, this passage could serve as corroborating evidence that such a belief was taken for granted on the basis of other biblical teaching.

In sum, the Bible does not definitively teach the doctrine of guardian angels: that a single angel is perpetually assigned to each believer. We can say with certainty that angels guard God’s people, both individually and corporately, throughout both Old and New Testaments. Still, it is possible that the possessive notion (“their angels,” “his angel”) may point in the direction of the traditional doctrine.

What does church history say about guardian angels?

As we have seen, support for the guardian angels doctrine was early and expansive. A version of the doctrine can be found as far back as the Epistle of Barnabas, a late first-century or early second-century Christian document. Other early witnesses to the doctrine include the Shepherd of Hermas, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, and Augustine of Hippo. In terms of patristic angelology, the guardian angel was a consensus doctrine.⁹⁴

Medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure received and standardized the doctrine as well. Until the time of the Reformation, the basic core of the doctrine was virtually unchallenged.

Interestingly, Martin Luther himself largely retained the received doctrine of guardian angels. The Lutheran tradition continued to observe the traditional liturgical calendar as it had developed from the patristic era and throughout the medieval era. So Luther frequently preached sermons about the angels on the feast of St. Michael. For example, in a Michaelmas sermon in 1534, Luther states,

Also, we are to know for a certainty that every human being has his own appointed angel who looks after and watches over him. We are familiar with the common proverb that expresses people’s customary comment when someone is shielded from harm, You had a good angel! or, Your holy angel was with you and protected you. That is well said and, in fact, nicely reminds us of the benefaction God bestows on us through his beloved angels.⁹⁵

In another Michaelmas sermon, Luther appears to expand the number of angels beyond just a single companion: “What we should learn today is that our Lord God has so ordained that each Christian should have not only one but many angels protecting him, just as each also has his own particular devils who slink after him.”⁹⁶ Here, Luther also picks up on the ancient theme that each believer has both angels and demons who attend his spiritual journey.

John Calvin is more circumspect about the textual basis for the doctrine. In his treatment of Matthew 18:10, Calvin writes, “But whether individual angels have been assigned to individual believers for their protection, I dare not affirm with confidence.” He also states simply, “I do not know.”⁹⁷ This reticence is in keeping with Calvin’s overall deference to the explicit teaching of Scripture. He was less willing than some others to speculate beyond what the Scriptures clearly demanded. Still, Calvin seems to leave open the possibility. And like Luther, he wonders whether it is not simply one but many angels who are sent to guard individual believers in their hour of need.

Should we believe in guardian angels today?

In light of the biblical teaching on the angels and their guardianship of God’s people and with due deference to the history of Christian interpretation on this point, what should evangelical Protestants today believe about the guardian angels?

The diversity of thought among the Reformers themselves is an interesting data point. Many Protestants today seem to think that the guardian angels doctrine is simply a Roman Catholic accretion and that a commitment to sola scriptura decisively rules it out. But as we have seen, the doctrine predates what we know of today as the Roman Catholic Church, with deep roots in the patristic era, both East and West. At times, Luther himself seems to affirm the doctrine on the basis of the standard biblical proof texts. The only real question for the Reformers concerned the number of our angelic guardians, not their reality.

In my estimation, belief in the doctrine of guardian angels is permissible as a kind of sanctified opinion, though perhaps not demanded as a definitive biblical teaching.

In any event, every believer should take comfort in knowing that the holy angels guard and guide us throughout our earthly pilgrimage. The angels are, indeed, our celestial deacons, sent to serve those who are to inherit the salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ, who is himself the Head of all rule and authority (Col 2:10), to whom belongs glory and dominion with the Father and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever. Amen.

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Resources for further study of angels

• Stamps, Luke. Ultimate Guide to Angels and Demons. Holman Reference, 2026.

40 Questions about Angels, Demons, and Spiritual Warfare (40 Questions Series)

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Against the Darkness: The Doctrine of Angels, Satan, and Demons (Foundations of Evangelical Theology)

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Angels: What the Bible Really Says about God’s Heavenly Host

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Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD)

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In Matthew 13:10–17, Jesus seems to say that he used parables to prevent people from perceiving and repenting. Did Jesus speak in parables to conceal the message of the kingdom from his hearers? In this episode of What in the Word?, pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell joins Kirk E. Miller to discuss Jesus’s purpose in using parables. They discuss the growing opposition to Jesus, the parable of the sower, his appeal to Isaiah 6, and the parables as a form of divine revelation and judgment.

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Episode guest: Philip Anthony Mitchell

Philip Anthony Mitchell is a native of Queens, NY. He is the founder and lead pastor of 2819 Church in Atlanta, GA, and the founder of the 2819 Institute. Pastor Philip has been married to his wife, Lena, since August 2004. They make their home in the Atlanta area with their two sons and two daughters.

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Episode synopsis

Doesn’t Jesus want people to understand?

After proclaiming his parable of the sower to the crowds (Matt 13:1–9), the disciples draw near to Jesus to ask him, Why do you teach in parables? (Matt 13:10). Jesus explains that his use of parables fulfills Isaiah 6:9–10. Those who have “ears to hear” (Matt 13:9) will understand, while the rest will fail to understand lest they should turn and find healing (Matt 13:10–17).

But doesn’t Jesus want people to understand, repent, and experience healing?

We often think of Jesus’s parables as teaching aids to help people grasp his message, to maximize understanding. Yet here Jesus seems to suggest he uses parables to conceal, to prevent understanding, with the goal of hindering repentance.

Growing opposition to Jesus in Matthew

To understand this passage, we must grasp its place in Matthew’s larger narrative up until this point.

Earlier chapters show Jesus preaching and performing signs, gathering the attention of the crowds. Yet by this point in his ministry, Jesus has also begun to attract significant opposition, especially from the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes (e.g., Matt 9:3, 11, 34; 12:2, 9–14, 22–32, 38–42). In fact, immediately preceding Jesus’s parable of the sower, the Pharisees accuse him of casting out demons by the power of Satan (Matt 12:24). Some genuinely follow Jesus, others are superficially attracted, and still others fiercely oppose him.

It’s at this point that Jesus begins to teach in parables. No longer does he teach so plainly. This shift, as we’ll see, comes as a strategic response to his mixed reception.

The parables as divine revelation and judgment

As Philip Anthony Mitchell explains, the parables are “encrypted teachings about the kingdom.” They serve as a judicial response. Those who have rejected Jesus’s plain teaching will no longer receive it plainly. Instead, Jesus’s teaching will be encrypted in parabolic form. In other words, for those who have hardened themselves to Jesus, the parables’ opacity functions as a judgment, concealing the message.

At the same time, those with a receptive posture to Jesus, who genuinely desire understanding, will receive further insight by means of the parables. As Jesus explains, “For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matt 13:12). The one who is resistant to Jesus will only be further hardened, losing whatever understanding he may have possessed. But the one who is open to Jesus will receive even more.

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The parable of the sower as a parable on the parables

The parable of the sower itself illustrates this varied reception to Jesus. The message of the kingdom (the seed) has been cast to a wide audience (different types of soil). Only one type of soil yields lasting fruit, while the rest do not.

Yet as the parable indicates, the same seed is used in each case. The Word of God remains the same. The deciding factor is the condition of the soil, the receptivity of those who hear the Word.

Fulfilling Isaiah 6:9–10’s commission of judgment

Does Jesus’s rejection call into question his identity as Messiah?

Jesus quotes Isaiah 6:9–10 (Matt 13:14–15), locating his ministry within a pattern established centuries earlier. God had commissioned Isaiah to preach a message the nation would largely reject, not because his preaching lacked persuasion, but because God intended it as a judicial instrument: God would use Isaiah’s preaching to harden hearts. Nonetheless, God would preserve a remnant, a stump (Isa 6:13), a faithful minority who would hear and believe.

Likewise, Jesus preaches to the nation and the majority rejects him. So too his parables, like Isaiah’s preaching, sift his hearers, separating those who receive the kingdom with God-given understanding from those whose hearts remain closed.

The insider and outsider distinction

Jesus tells his disciples, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given” (Matt 13:11). Here he draws a distinction between “insiders,” like his disciples, who are open to Jesus, and “outsiders” who are resistant.

Jesus uses the word “secrets” (or “mystery”). In Scripture, mysteries do not refer to unsolvable puzzles, esoteric truths, or things incomprehensible. Rather, they refer to truths, often regarding the fulfillment of God’s redemptive purposes, which were previously unknown but which God has now disclosed (e.g., Dan 2:28–29; Rom 16:25–26; Eph 3:1–9; Col 1:26–27). Importantly, though, a “mystery” is divinely revealed. It is not something one can come to know on their own. It must be given by God.

Likewise, Jesus uses a passive construction, “to you it has been given” (emphasis added), implying that God is the one imparting this understanding. Thus, those such as the disciples receive these “mysteries,” not because they discovered them through their own ingenuity, but because God has graciously enabled them to receive the truth of the kingdom’s arrival in Jesus.

What is our posture to Jesus?

Philip Anthony Mitchell summarizes the message of this passage as follows: The posture of your heart will determine the level of truth you can receive.

A person characterized by humility, openness, and genuine desire for understanding is positioned to receive more from God. As Jesus explains, “to the one who has, more will be given” (Matt 13:12). Like a sponge, they are able to absorb what God offers. Conversely, for the person opposed to Jesus, “even what he has will be taken away” (Matt 13:12). That is, the good news of the kingdom will serve as a judgment, hardening them to its saving truth.

Encouragement for preachers and teachers

Philip Anthony Mitchell advises those who teach this passage not to shy away from what it says: Jesus spoke in parables as a form of divine judgment, as a response to resistance, and as a means of hardening hearts.

Secondly, Philip encourages faithful preachers. When our preaching is not received, we might be tempted to believe that the problem is our communication. Yet we should remember that even Jesus’s preaching was rejected. As Philip says, “Sometimes it has less to do with our proclamation and more to do with the hardened hearts of men.” This does not excuse careless or unclear exposition, but it frees us from assuming that rejection necessarily indicates personal failure.

Logos values thoughtful and engaging discussions on important biblical topics. However, the views and interpretations presented in this episode are those of the individuals speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Logos. We recognize that Christians may hold different perspectives on this passage, and we welcome diverse engagement and respectful dialogue.

Let us know what you think

How should we interpret Matthew 13:10–17? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Resources for further study

The Parables of Jesus Topical Bundle

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Mobile Ed: NT252 The Parables of Jesus (6 hour course)

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Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus, 2nd ed.

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Interpreting the Parables (Second Edition)

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Preaching the Parables: From Responsible Interpretation to Powerful Proclamation

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The Challenge of Jesus’ Parables

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The Parables: Jesus’s Friendly Subversive Speech

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The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation

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Related content

• The Parables of Jesus: Revealing the Secrets of God’s Kingdom
• What Is Faith Like a Mustard Seed?
• Beyond Money: What the Parable of the Talents Really Teaches
• How to Read the Gospels: Moving Beyond Individual Stories
• The Kingdom of God: The Great Unfolding Drama of Salvation

In his last letter in the New Testament, St. Paul reminds Timothy that a central part of his ministry as a pastor is to raise up and entrust the gospel message to others who would then, in turn, entrust that message to others still (2 Tim 2:2). In other words, one of the most important tasks of any pastor is to work himself out of a job. Whether it is in leading Bible studies, discipling and caring for others, or the administrative duties of his office, a pastor should always be working to raise up new leaders, and especially new pastors, to take his place.

Even though many pastors would agree with the importance of this task, many also struggle to identify and raise up future pastors. Most pastors are already overworked. If we are brutally honest, we might think that risking the time and investment to raise up future pastors who may not pan out (or worse, go to another church!) isn’t worth it. But our ministry should not be focused on self-preservation or risk management. Our call is to lay down our lives so that others might live. And this includes laying down our time to raise up future leaders—even when they might not stay at our church.

To that end, I would like to suggest seven intentional but brief and doable steps for pastors to identify and raise up future pastors.

Table of contents

1. Be a faithful pastor
2. Watch carefully
3. Invest in emerging leaders
4. Be patient
5. Equip them well
6. Let them fail
7. Send them out

1. Be a faithful pastor

We can start with a simple principle that all pastors should be able to get behind: be a faithful pastor. This is not exactly revolutionary, but we often need a reminder. Near the end of his first letter, Peter tells his fellow pastors to shepherd the flock eagerly and joyfully, not by looking to get something from the sheep, but by giving a faithful example to them that models Jesus, the chief shepherd (1 Pet 5:2–3).

As you faithfully walk with your people, you will have the opportunity to equip them for the work of ministry (Eph 4:11–12). The job of a pastor is not to do all the ministry himself; instead, one of the most important jobs of any pastor is to help people get ready for the ministry to which God is calling them.

2. Watch carefully

As you equip people for ministry, as you pray, disciple, preach, and administer the sacraments, watch your people closely. Watch especially for people who show evidence of the self-controlled, gentle, wise, and humble character that describes a pastor in 1 Timothy 3:1–7.

Most of those qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 are focused not so much on competency but on character. The history of the church, not least the Western church in the last twenty-five years, has been littered with gifted leaders and teachers whose charm and winsomeness masked a lack of wisdom and character. Don’t just watch for those who have leadership gifts (though this matters). Look for people who look to serve, those who reach out to care for the struggling. This will give you a good sense of who genuinely wants to serve Christ’s church and not just find their way into positions of leadership that give them the status and power they’re looking for.

3. Invest in emerging leaders

As you begin to notice who leads in serving and who may be developing the gifts for pastoral ministry, be intentional about investing in them. Take them along with you; invite them to pastoral meetings, as appropriate; pray and read Scripture with them; invest in their spiritual development. This seems to be what Paul was doing when he wanted Timothy to accompany him in Lystra (Acts 16:3). He brought along a young man in an apprenticeship-like model.

To be clear, this will not be efficient. It is almost always easier to do things ourselves. My dad was a genius with his hands, able to build or fix just about anything. But I still have to think “lefty-loosey, righty-tighty” when using a screwdriver because it was always easier for him to do things himself than teach me (but he taught me lots of other good things). Investing in a potential pastor will inevitably slow you down. But our first goal in pastoral ministry is not efficiency, it is transformation.

4. Be patient

This leads to a fourth principle: Be patient. Of course this is true in all pastoral ministry (e.g., 2 Tim 2:24–25 tells us that our disposition as we correct and confront evil should be marked by patience and kindness). Yet we sometimes fail to apply this principle to our discipleship. We need to remember that young disciples grow slowly and inconsistently.

Let’s be honest. If you have a young person who has some experience with public speaking and a minimum amount of Bible knowledge, you can likely get him to the point of delivering a passable sermon relatively quickly. But it is much harder and takes much longer to transform unhealthy patterns in his marriage, ungodly ways of thinking, and unthinking assumptions about how to operate in the marketplace.

These things take time, prayer, and patience. As Paul also reminds us in 1 Timothy 5:22, we cannot be hasty in ordaining pastors. Let’s not make the mistake of rushing a gifted young man into leadership before he has had a chance for the training, formation, and life experience to be able to provide the same kind of patient, prayerful training for others.

5. Equip them well

Let me add a caveat to what I wrote above. It is true that preaching a single adequate sermon does not take years of preparation; however, having a seasoned pastor walk you through sermon preparation once is entirely different from him preparing you for a lifetime of preaching. Add to this all of the other tasks of pastoral ministry from counseling to administration, and we are looking at a need for serious preparation.

This does not mean every pastor has to have an MDiv, but I think that denominations that require the MDiv or its equivalent for ordination are on the right track. They recognize that the call to pastoral ministry is a call to prepare well.

Unfortunately, in the over twenty years since I started in seminary, I’ve seen the emphasis on the need for theological training diminish in many churches. There was once a time when every MDiv degree required Greek and Hebrew, along with substantial theological and pastoral training. Unfortunately, as our general focus in education has moved from formation to vocational skills, this has trickled into the seminary and the church.

I’ll get off my soapbox for now, but pastoral training is not a rushed checking of boxes but instead a patient, prayerful equipping for a lifetime of service. Most often, this requires some kind of formal training program. Encourage young pastors to take the time to get the training and formation they need for a lifetime of ministry.

Give your apprentices the world’s best Bible study tool to ground their ministry formation. Explore Logos for Church.

6. Let them fail

Let’s go back to the example of Paul and Timothy. Just a few months after meeting Timothy in Acts 16, Paul left him and Silas in Berea when he had to flee from persecution (Acts 17:14). He continued to equip and disciple Timothy, but whether from necessity, intentionality, or some combination of the two, he entrusted Timothy with real pastoral and ministry responsibility when he left him in Berea.

As you are raising up and equipping these future pastors, it is crucial to give them opportunities to do real ministry. Yes, there should be a season of shadowing you or other pastors in many areas, but at some point it will be important to give them the wheel, so to speak. This testing period requires trust: both trust in the Lord and trust in the up-and-coming pastor. It also requires us to be willing to let them fail to one degree or another.

To be clear, we should not let anyone fail at the cost of orthodox teaching or a congregant’s spiritual well-being. But many lessons are learned when things don’t go as planned. And in ministry, things rarely go as planned. So it is okay if a pastor in training plans an event that is kind of a flop or preaches a boring sermon. These little failures help them learn and grow.

7. Send them out

As you patiently invest in and equip young leaders over time, by God’s grace some will emerge as qualified pastors.

As you have identified them as called and competent pastors, you should also help them identify the context of their calling. God may be calling them to remain in your congregation and to join your current pastoral team to help shepherd and equip the flock. But you may also face the problem I mentioned earlier. God may call them to a new context, to plant a new church, join another staff, or step into a new role.

When that happens—and it will inevitably happen—you can rejoice in how Jesus is building his kingdom. Help your congregations see that their investment in that young man was not a waste of time or resources, but instead one of the key ways that churches can partner with and support one another.

If your church gets to a place where you are regularly raising up and sending out new pastors, then rejoice in the role that God has given you. Send out those pastors well, trusting that your labor and investment in them will bear fruit beyond what you may ever see in this life but that will echo in the kingdom for eternity.

Share your thoughts

What steps can pastors take to raise up future pastors? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Chris Bruno’s suggested resources

• Croft, Brian, and James Carroll. Practically Trained Pastors: A 52-Week Field Guide for Ministry in the Trenches. Evangelical Press, 2021.

Prepare Them to Shepherd: Test, Train, Affirm, and Send the Next Generation of Pastors

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Lectures to My Students (4 vols.)

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The Shepherd Leader: Achieving Effective Shepherding in Your Church

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Related content

• What Your Church Needs to Train Leaders (You Probably Already Have It)
• Church Leadership Training: 5 Qualities Every Leader Needs
• Want to Build a Pastoral Internship? 4 Steps
• Learning by Doing: How to Train Seminary Students for Ministry
• Where Have the Timothys Gone? 4 Ways to Address the Minister Drought

Baptist colleges, universities, and seminaries prepare students to serve Christ and fulfill his mission in the world.

This guide orients readers to a list of ten major Baptist institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada. If your goal is to prepare for ministry or to be “salt and light” (Matt 5:13–16) in the marketplace, these institutions probably have a program for you.

What is a Baptist university, college, or seminary?

As a distinct group with shared doctrinal convictions, Baptists are relatively young among Protestants, having their start in seventeenth-century England. By the 1700s, Baptists were immigrating to the American colonies and Canada and then around the world. In the 1800s, Baptist churches expanded rapidly in the United States. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Baptists became a major global group with tens of millions of members.

What makes a school “Baptist”? Baptists are Protestant Christians who are doctrinally orthodox when it comes to key Christian teachings like the Trinity, the deity, resurrection, and future return of Christ, the reality of sin, and so on. Emerson and Stamps suggest five distinctive hallmarks of Baptists:

1. liberty of conscience,
2. believer’s baptism,
3. a believers’ congregational church,
4. covenantal communion, and
5. religious liberty.⁹⁸

These hallmarks tend to distinguish Baptists from other sorts of Protestants. Baptists hold a variety of views on a number of doctrines, including eschatology and gifts of the Spirit, as well as differing practices of church structure and worship.

Historically, Baptists have valued a clear separation of church and state and rejected hierarchical ecclesial structures, insisting that individuals and congregations are immediately and personally accountable to Christ. Baptists have tended to be associational: independent churches cooperating with other independent churches, and, at times, forming denominations. Most Baptist groups have also shared a broader evangelical commitment to the Bible as a Christian’s ultimate authority, the centrality of the cross, the necessity of conversion, and the priority of missions.

That said, students do not have to be a Baptist to attend a Baptist school.

What are the major Baptist schools?

The following list of schools includes Baptist universities, colleges, and seminaries.

• What can be confusing is that some universities on this list have seminaries and some seminaries have colleges.
• I have also tried to select Baptist schools from different regions of the United States and Canada, but have not expanded it to other countries.
• I have only included schools with relationships to Baptist denominations and agencies.
• I have also tried to select schools from different kinds of Baptist groups.
• All of the schools included here are also accredited by at least one recognized agency.

This selectivity, coupled with the large number of Baptist schools, means that some really good schools are not on the list, but are mentioned below.⁹⁹

1. Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA

• Degrees: associate’s, baccalaureate, master’s, doctoral
• Enrollment: Over 140,000 in 2025/26; 6,344 at Liberty Theological Seminary (fall 2025)¹⁰⁰
• Founded: 1971
• Affiliation: Southern Baptist Convention of Virginia
• Online: yes

LU has numerous “colleges” and “schools” and the largest distance education programs of any Baptist school. It is one of the largest universities in North America, with over 700 majors. Liberty Theological Seminary (LTS) offers the master of divinity (MDiv), numerous master of arts (MA) programs, and doctoral degrees such as the doctor of ministry (DMin) and doctor of philosophy (PhD). LTS’s PhD is available asynchronously online, making it distinct from other programs on this list.

Liberty provides Logos to its students through a Logos for Education partnership.

2. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY

• Degrees: associate’s, baccalaureate, master’s, doctoral
• Enrollment: 5,469 (1,181 undergraduate and 4,288 graduate for 2024/25)
• Founded: 1859
• Affiliation: Southern Baptist Convention
• Online: yes

The oldest of the six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention, SBTS’s MDiv is its most populated degree and the second most-enrolled MDiv in the United States. SBTS’s PhD program is among the oldest in North America (1892), and all concentrations can be earned via intensive delivery. One concentration, the PhD in Christian studies, can be earned fully online synchronously. Southern offers eighteen master’s programs and four doctoral programs. Boyce College is the undergraduate unit within SBTS, offering associate programs and bachelor degrees in areas like business administration, communication, and elementary education, as well as biblical counseling, global studies, and biblical and theological studies. SBTS offers the MDiv and several MA programs fully online, in both English and Spanish. SBTS also offers a five-year pathway to earn a bachelor’s and MDiv degree.

SBTS provides Logos to its students through a Logos for Education partnership.

3. California Baptist University, Riverside, CA

• Degrees: associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral
• Enrollment: 12,516
• Founded: 1950
• Affiliation: California Southern Baptist Convention
• Online: yes

Cal Baptist has nearly 120 bachelor’s programs, over 50 master’s programs, and 10 doctoral programs. Cal Baptist does not offer an MDiv program, but has a Christian studies and applied theology major at the bachelor’s level offered through its School of Christian Ministries.

Cal Baptist provides Logos to its students through a Logos for Education partnership.

4. Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, OK

• Degrees: bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral
• Enrollment: 1,526¹⁰¹
• Founded: 1910
• Affiliation: Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma
• Online: yes

OBU lists over eighty bachelor’s degree areas and six master’s degree areas. They are adding four health science graduate programs. The Hobbs School of Theology and Ministry offers bachelor’s degrees in cross-cultural ministry, global marketplace engagement, and biblical and theological studies, among other areas, and has an accelerated BA to MDiv track. Their graduate program includes the MDiv and three MA areas.

OBU provides Logos to its students through a Logos for Education partnership.

5. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, LA

• Degrees: associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral
• Enrollment: 1,535 graduate (fall 2025)
• Founded: 1917
• Affiliation: Southern Baptist Convention
• Online: yes

NOBTS offers the MDiv and several MA programs residentially and online. Some programs are multilingual (Spanish and Korean). Their doctoral programs include the DMin and the PhD. NOBTS’s Leavell College offers bachelor’s programs in more than ten areas. They have an accelerated BA to MDiv track.

NOBTS provides Logos to its students through a Logos for Education partnership.

6. Welch College, Gallatin, TN

• Degrees: associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral
• Enrollment: ~400¹⁰²
• Founded: 1942
• Affiliation: National Association of Free Will Baptists
• Online: yes

For many years, Welch was known as Freewill Baptist Bible College. Welch has several master’s programs in areas of ministry, humanities, and social science. Welch Divinity School offers an accelerated five-year baccalaureate-to-MDiv program. The school has a Spanish Ministry Institute, but full programs appear to be English only.

7. Gateway Seminary, Ontario, CA

• Degrees: master’s; doctoral
• Enrollment: 1,546 (fall 2025)
• Founded: 1944
• Affiliation: Southern Baptist Convention
• Online: yes

For many years, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary served the San Francisco Bay area. In 2016, the seminary moved to its present location in Ontario, CA. Gateway has additional locations (Fremont, CA; Phoenix, AZ; Vancouver, WA; Denver, CO) as well as a robust asynchronous distance education program. Gateway’s MA programs are about double the amount of its MDiv enrollment, and it has a growing doctoral studies program offering the DMin and PhD.

8. Dallas Baptist University, Dallas, TX

• Degrees: associate’s, baccalaureate, master’s, doctoral
• Enrollment: 4,230 (fall 2025)¹⁰³
• Founded: 1924
• Affiliation: Baptist General Convention of Texas
• Online: yes

DBU offers eight associate’s degrees, over seventy-five bachelor’s degrees, more than thirty master’s degrees, and two doctoral programs. Beyond residential and online delivery, they also offer hybrid, flex, and HyFlex options. They offer eight MA programs in various areas of ministry (counseling, children’s ministry, family ministry, etc.).

9. Campbell University North Carolina, Buies Creek, NC

• Degrees: associate bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral
• Enrollment: ~4,800 students overall;¹⁰⁴ Campbell Divinity School 106 (fall 2025)
• Founded: 1887
• Affiliation: Baptist State Convention of North Carolina
• Online: yes

Campbell University has many bachelor’s programs and over a dozen are available fully online. They have extension locations at Raleigh, Camp Lejeune, and Fort Bragg. They offer eight-week accelerated programs. Campbell Divinity School offers MDiv, MA, and DMin degrees. Two MA programs are available via synchronous online-with-intensive delivery.

10. McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, ON

• Degrees: master’s; doctoral
• Enrollment: 255 (fall 2025)
• Founded: 1887
• Affiliation: Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec
• Online: yes

McMaster Divinity School offers several MA programs, the MDiv, a doctorate in practical theology, and a PhD. McMaster allows both synchronous and asynchronous participation in its master’s degree courses. It has an accelerated five-year MA to PhD program.

What are the Southern Baptist seminaries?

I’ve already mentioned three in the list above. But the Southern Baptist Convention has six seminaries total. See also

• Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO
• Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC
• Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Ft. Worth, TX

All offer a historically Baptist education that is accessible, rigorous, and will prepare students for faithful service.

Why does theological education matter?
Watch Dr. Albert Mohler’s interview on Logos Live.

What should one look for in a Baptist school?

Theological commitments

Many students choose to attend a Baptist school because they want a distinctively Christian education or because they are preparing for ministry in a Baptist context.

As noted above, Baptists sometimes differ from one another in specific practices and teachings. Students should review a school’s statement of beliefs carefully and talk to current students, alumni, or faculty when selecting a school. Many schools on this list have published doctrinal statements to which faculty (but not students) must adhere. Other Baptist schools do not require faculty to follow a doctrinal standard.

Accreditation

All of the schools in this article are accredited by one or more recognized agencies.

Accreditation provides external quality assurance and accountability to widely agreed upon hallmarks of quality in higher education, things like consistent missional focus, sound fiscal management, wise strategic planning, consistent admissions policies, healthy patterns of shared governance between faculty, administration, and boards, ongoing quality enhancement, and so on. Being accredited does not mean that a school is theologically consistent with its Baptist roots, nor is it a sign that an institution has surrendered its Christian identity to the world. Lack of accreditation does not mean that a school is bad, but it does mean that it may have less accountability outside of its walls.

The Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS) is the oldest and largest “professional” accreditor of theological schools. ATS lists thirty-four Baptist schools among its members as of May 2026. Other accrediting agencies to be aware of include the Association for Biblical Higher Education, Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, or secular “institutional” accrediting agencies like the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools or the Higher Learning Commission.

Cost and financial assistance

In every generation, many students have found the cost of education high and have required help to pay for their school. Before the twentieth century, this help was largely via private donations or sponsors. In the United States, federal financial aid has become so common that the vast majority of institutions, even faith-based schools, participate.

In keeping with the longstanding Baptist commitment of religious liberty, some schools on this list do not participate in federal financial aid (SBTS, NOBTS, and Gateway). Instead, these schools rely on denominational support and private donors to control the cost of education.

Each school will have a financial aid office that can answer specific questions.

Online and intensive options

In the past twenty-five years, online learning has moved from a novelty to a significant platform for higher education. Online courses and programs allow students greater flexibility to study while working, caring for family needs, or serving in ministry. However, some students prefer the Christian community and formative interactions that a residential experience offers.

Students should know the difference between “synchronous” online courses where students participate in live classes with a professor and peers and “asynchronous” courses that feature recorded content that students can study with greater flexibility. Some schools blend both sorts of delivery, while others tend to prefer one kind of delivery over another. Often, master’s courses are asynchronous while doctoral courses are synchronous, but the approach may differ by school.

Another consideration is the degree of interactivity that online courses feature. It’s common to distinguish no- or low-interaction courses as “correspondence” courses and medium- to high-interaction courses as “distance education.” Interacting with faculty and fellow students is an important element of higher education. Distance education almost always provides a better and more well-informed learning experience because it minimizes isolation.

Many schools have developed innovative “intensive” options that involve some online work with compressed live instruction. Sometimes called “modulars” or “intensives,” these courses might meet during winter or summer months, or at different points in a school’s regular semester. These classes can provide a nice middle ground to allow flexible scheduling and high interactivity.

Finally, one should consider information literacy and access to resources. In a traditional residential model, schools have libraries, which provide access to books, articles, and other media for research. Knowing what kind of resources to choose, how to find them, and how to use them ethically and profitably (information literacy) is an important skill. Having access to high-quality and relevant materials is vital and can quickly become expensive. Students should learn more about what resources are available to them as online students and how to access these resources.

Multilingual programs

Increasingly, colleges and seminaries are offering programs in languages other than English. While Spanish is the most widespread additional language, some schools have expanded offerings to include Chinese and Korean, among others.

Conclusion

Baptist universities, colleges, and seminaries train students to engage the world, whether in vocational ministry or in the workplace. Between the schools listed in this article, there are around a thousand different areas of study, with dozens of programs focused on areas of Christian and public service. These schools are forming students in the Baptist tradition.

Logos for Education

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Share your thoughts

What other Baptist schools would you add to this list? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Resources to consider

Welcome to College: A Christ-Centered Guide to Lasting Faith in a Changing World, 3rd ed.

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Surviving and Thriving in Seminary: An Academic and Spiritual Handbook

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Succeeding at Seminary: 12 Keys to Getting the Most out of Your Theological Education

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How to Stay Christian in Seminary

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Equipped to Serve: How Seminary Strengthens You for Ministry

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The Baptist Vision: Faith and Practice for a Believers’ Church (Hobbs College Library)

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Related content

• What Do Baptists Believe? An Intro to Baptist Theology & Roots
• Baptist Denominations: A Guide to the Main Branches
• Who Enrolls the Most Students? The Top 5 Christian Universities
• Top 5 Seminaries by Enrollment: Data & Trends
• Where Is Theological Education Heading? Flexible Faithfulness

You should study Jude and 2 Peter.

Jude is often called the “most neglected book in the New Testament.”¹⁰⁵ David deSilva laments, “If Bible publishers stopped printing Jude, it might take years for some people to notice.”¹⁰⁶ Yet, while Jude’s epistle may be quite short, by some accounts a mere 464 words in the original Greek,¹⁰⁷ it offers a dense and important account.

• It has much to say about God’s judgment against wickedness (Jude 4–7, 11–16).
• It issues an important call to persevere in the faith, urging believers “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3).
• It contains a higher density of material on angels than any other New Testament book (Jude 6, 9).
• It presents a fascinating text-critical debate as to whether it was “Jesus” or the “Lord” who “delivered his people [Israel] out of Egypt” (Jude 5).
• It mentions “love feasts,” an early Christian communal practice (Jude 12).
• It raises questions about inspiration and canonicity, alluding to the assumption of Moses where Michael disputes with the devil over the body of Moses (Jude 9) and quoting the Book of Watchers in 1 Enoch (Jude 14–15; cf. 1 Enoch 1.9).
• It ends with an astounding doxology (Jude 24–25).

But above all, it forces us to develop a rich theology of heresy! As John Calvin wrote:

Now, if we consider what Satan has attempted in our age, from the commencement of the revived gospel, and what arts he still busily employs to subvert the faith, and the fear of God, what was a useful warning in the time of Jude, is more than necessary in our age.¹⁰⁸

Meanwhile, neglect and doubt as to 2 Peter’s authorship has led it to be regarded as the “ugly stepchild” of the New Testament.¹⁰⁹ However, I regard 2 Peter as a canonical capstone, drawing on several parts of the New Testament:

• It recalls Matthew’s transfiguration account in order to showcase the glory of King Jesus and celebrate Peter’s own testimony (2 Pet 1:16–18).
• It reminds his audience of Jude’s warning about false teachers (2 Pet 2:1–3).
• It takes up the contested nature of Paul’s letters and legacy in the early church (2 Pet 3:15–16).

Second Peter is a book that calls us to consider

• Theosis/deification (2 Pet 1:3–4)
• Christian virtues (2 Pet 1:5–7)
• Biblical inspiration (2 Pet 1:19–21)
• The dangers of heresy (2 Pet 2)
• The promise of Jesus’s second coming (2 Pet 3:1–13)

Second Peter stresses the importance of learning to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 3:18). I like how N. T. Wright puts it:

I have a sense that this letter might be a word for our times. If our desire is to bring God glory both now and in the day when his new age dawns, we could do a lot worse than study it carefully, pray it in, take it to heart, and put it into practice.¹¹⁰

Second Peter and Jude are worth your study. But what commentaries and resources can help you along the way?

Technical commentaries

In study and sermon preparation, I always think it wise to consult at least one technical commentary that gets granular, puts everything under the microscope, and declares a heads up on what the scholars are saying about a book or passage.

When it comes to the dense scholarly commentaries on Jude and 2 Peter, there are two clear winners:

Bauckham, Richard. 2 Peter, Jude. World Biblical Commentary. Word, 1983.

This is the commentary you have to get if you want to wrestle with the Greek text, historical-critical questions, and scholarship on these two epistles. It’s slightly dated now—a second edition is apparently coming with Darrian Lockett—but Bauckham is a wise exegete who sifts the evidence with laser-like focus and possesses an amazing knowledge of ancient sources.

Jude, 2 Peter (Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 50 | WBC)

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Frey, Jörg. The Letter of Jude and the Second Letter of Peter: A Theological Commentary. Baylor University Press, 2018.

Jörg Frey stands in the line of German scholars like Martin Hengel. He is an expert in ancient Judaism and Greco-Roman religions, and his commentary is the best up-to-date technical work on Jude and 2 Peter right now. Filled with reasoned and judicious analyses of the text, it shows sensitivity to the theological questions and matters these epistles raise for modern readers.

Intermediate commentaries

If you want something robust and comprehensive, but not as technical or bogged down in scholarly debates, then I recommend the following:

Davids, Peter H. The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2006.

Davids is an expert in the Catholic Epistles and well-known for his work on James and 1 Peter. He provides an accessible, learned, and erudite analysis of Jude and 2 Peter that covers everything you need to know. This is probably the #1 commentary I’d recommend to students and preachers who want something serious but not too scholarly or intimidating.

The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude (Pillar New Testament Commentary | PNTC)

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Schreiner, Thomas R. 1–2 Peter and Jude. Christian Standard Commentary. Holman Reference, 2020.

Although Schreiner is mainly a Pauline scholar, he does make the odd foray into biblical theology and other parts of the New Testament. In this volume, Schreiner has delivered a sober and capable analysis of both letters, and his conclusions are always well reasoned. It’s somewhat conservative in its historical judgment, but no worse because of it.

1-2 Peter and Jude (Christian Standard Commentary | CSC)

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Reese, Ruth Anne. 2 Peter and Jude. Two Horizons New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2007.

I like Reese’s commentary because she wrestles with exegetical and theological questions with acumen and wisdom. It is a commentary that dares to ask, “Well, so what?” in its engagement with the text. A good complement to any collection of commentaries on Jude and 2 Peter.

2 Peter & Jude (The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary | THNTC)

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Mbuvi, Andrew M. Jude and 2 Peter. New Covenant Commentary. Cascade Books, 2015.

Mbuvi has an excellent knowledge of these letters and their scholarly debates, and yet writes an accessible and commendable intermediate commentary. His African perspective is fresh and illuminating. The “fusing the horizons” sections are great models for thinking about application.

Jude and 2 Peter (A New Covenant Commentary | NCCS)

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Accessible and practical commentaries

As for commentaries that are less taxing on the reader, written for the non-specialist but still a rich resource for preachers, I recommend these:

• Green, Michael. 2 Peter and Jude. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. InterVarsity Press, 1987.
• Lucas, Dick, and Christopher Green. The Message of 2 Peter and Jude. Bible Speaks Today. InterVarsity Press, 1995.
• Moo, Douglas J. 2 Peter, Jude. NIV Application Commentary. Zondervan, 1996.
• Wright, N. T. Early Christian Letters for Everyone. SPCK, 2011.

Of all these, Lucas/Green is my pick for something light, devotional, and immediately applicable.

2 Peter and Jude (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries | TNTC)

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The Message of 2 Peter & Jude (Bible Speaks Today | BST)

Regular price: $13.99

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2 Peter, Jude (NIV Application Commentary | NIVAC)

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Other useful works

Bauckham has two other works on Jude and 2 Peter which I recommend:

• Bauckham, Richard. Jude–2 Peter. Word Biblical Themes. Zondervan, 1990.
• Bauckham, Richard. Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church. T&T Clark, 2004.

2 Peter–Jude (Word Biblical Themes)

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Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Bloomsbury Academic Collections)

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Good complements to any commentaries are Davids’s theology of 1–2 Peter, Jude, and James and, for those wanting to dive deeply into the original languages, his analysis of the Greek text:

• Davids, Peter H. A Theology of James, Peter, and Jude. Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Zondervan, 2014.
• Davids, Peter H. 2 Peter and Jude: A Handbook on the Greek Text. Baylor University Press, 2011.

A Theology of James, Peter, and Jude: Living in the Light of the Coming King (Biblical Theology of the New Testament | BTNT)

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2 Peter and Jude: A Handbook on the Greek Text

Regular price: $22.99

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If I had to add some extra commentaries, it would be these:

• Green, Gene L. Jude and 2 Peter. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Baker Academic, 2008.
• Harink, Douglas. 1 and 2 Peter. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. Brazos, 2009.
• Perkins, Pheme. First and Second Peter, James, and Jude. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. John Knox, 1995.

Jude and 2 Peter (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament | BECNT)

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1 and 2 Peter (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible | BTC)

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First & Second Peter, James, and Jude (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching | INT)

Regular price: $20.99

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For a study of that intriguing textual variant in Jude 5, I’d start with these:

• King, Daniel. “The Textual History of the New Testament and the Bible Translator.” Bible Translator 68 (2017): 20–37.
• Houghton, Hugh A. G. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2025.

A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament: A Companion to the 6th Edition of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (UBS6)

Regular price: $27.99

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For Jude’s use of non-canonical sources, in addition to the standard commentaries I’d consult the following:

• Lanier, Gregory R. Noncanonical Influences on the New Testament: Apocryphal Prophets and Athenian Poets. Broadman & Holman, 2024.
• Scott, James M. “Jude the Obscure: The Letter of Jude and the Enochic Heritage,” Journal of Theological Studies 74 (2023): 137–67.

Apocryphal Prophets and Athenian Poets: Noncanonical Influences on the New Testament

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Share your thoughts

What are your favorite resources on 2 Peter and Jude? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Related content

• Does Jude Quote Enoch as Prophecy? | Wes Huff on Jude 14–15
• Demonology: What Does the Bible Say About Demons?
• When Did Jesus Preach to Spirits in Prison? | Thomas Schreiner on 1 Peter 3:18–22

Does James contradict Paul? In this episode of What in the Word?, host Kirk E. Miller sits down with pastor and theologian Mark Jones to tackle James 2:14–26. They explore the apparent tension between Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith alone and James’s claim that “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Tune in to consider how genuine saving faith operates in the life of a believer.

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Episode guest: Mark Jones

Mark Jones is the pastor at Faith Reformed Presbyterian Church in Vancouver (PCA). He is married to Barb and they have four children. He has authored and edited many books and is involved in theological education all over the world, particularly in Cape Town, South Africa, at Trinity Reformed College.

Episode synopsis

Framing the key interpretive issue

According to Mark Jones, James’s letter reads, in many ways, like a retelling of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in pastoral prose. It is an incredibly practical book, which opens up the question: What does it actually mean to have genuine saving faith? That question, in turn, opens up one of the most contested areas of Christian theology: the role of works both in salvation in general and justification in particular.

James 2:24 contains the only explicit use of the phrase “faith alone” in the entire New Testament. Yet instead of affirming justification by faith alone, it states that “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (emphasis added). For those who believe in the Protestant doctrine of sola fide, this is a striking verse to reckon with! Many see James as standing in tension—if not outright contradiction—with Paul, who teaches justification by faith and not works (e.g., Rom 3:20–4:8; 9:32; Gal 2:16, 21; 3:11; Gal 5:4; Phil 3:9; cf. Rom 11:6; Eph 2:8–10; Titus 3:5; 2 Tim 1:9; etc.).

Major interpretations of James 2:14–26

Mark Jones and Kirk E. Miller sketch some of the major interpretations of James 2:14–26 and the Bible’s overall teaching on justification and works.¹¹¹

1. Initial and final justification: Typically in Roman Catholic tradition, Paul and James are understood as describing two different justifications. Paul’s justification excludes all works and initiates salvation; James’s “second justification” is the perfecting or forming of that justification through works of love. In this scheme, what Protestants would call sanctification effectively becomes folded into justification itself.
2. A vindication of faith: The historic Reformed Protestant reading understands James as describing, not a second justification, but God’s vindication of the church and the believer’s faith, confirming God’s prior act of justifying them.
3. Justification before men: As Kirk mentions, some maintain that, whereas Paul is concerned with justification before God (salvation), James is concerned with “justification” before men, that is, a public proof that one is a believer.
4. Rewards for good works: Free grace theology is especially cautious about assigning works any role in salvation. This view interprets any judgment according to or justification by works as pertaining to degree of rewards, not salvation.

Within Protestantism, disagreement exists as to how strong a role works play in salvation. Some treat works as mere evidence of faith. Others understand works, not as an optional confirmation of faith, but a necessary feature of genuine possession of salvation. Mark holds to the latter. He maintains that there is only one justification, received by faith, complete and irrevocable. Yet God’s judgment will also affirm the righteousness of this verdict. Good works performed in the Spirit, by faith, will publicly exhibit evidence that the believer’s profession of faith is real.

In what sense is one justified “by works”?

James’s most pointed claim comes in James 2:24: “A person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” How should we understand this, the role of works in justification?

Following Reformed theologians of the post-Reformation era, Mark distinguishes between the right to eternal life and the possession of it. The right to life, Mark explains, is what faith alone secures: an irrevocable legal standing grounded entirely in the work of Christ, with no admixture of works. But the possession of that eternal life happens only along the path of good works. As is often said, faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is never alone. Works don’t provide the right to eternal life, but their presence proves that the faith which justified was genuine, rather than an empty assent.

Thus, the proposition “faith justifies without works,” where “without works” modifies “justifies,” is true. Faith justifies without the assistance of works, because works form no part of the ground of justification. At the same time, the proposition “faith without works justifies,” where “without works” modifies “faith,” describing a kind of faith that has no works accompanying it, is false. Such faith, according to James, is “dead” (Jas 2:17, 26), “useless” (Jas 2:20), i.e., it does not save (Jas 2:14). This so-called faith is a mere fiction, incapable of justifying anyone.

Reconciling James, Paul, and the rest of Scripture

Mark pushes back against the idea that Paul and James stand in tension. If we ask how James reconciles with Paul, we must equally ask how Paul reconciles with Paul, since Paul also speaks of justification and judgment according to works (e.g., Rom 2:6–11, 13; 2 Cor 5:10).

In fact, New Testament writers regularly testify to the necessity of good works for salvation and the final judgment (Matt 7:21–23; 16:27; 25:31–46; John 5:28–29; Rom 6:22; 1 Cor 6:9–10; Gal 5:19–21; 6:7–8; Phil 2:12–13; Heb 12:14; 1 Pet 1:17; 1 John 2:3–6; 3:7–10; Rev 20:12–13; 21:27; 22:12). Thus, as Mark points out, it’s a bit peculiar that we tend to isolate James 2:14–26 as especially problematic, since James’s teaching here seems quite in line with what is taught in many other places. If James is to be explained away, a great deal of the New Testament will have to be explained away with him.

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Many argue that some of the above texts (e.g., Rom 2:6–11) teach a mere hypothetical path of justification, God’s standard of righteousness that we all fail to meet. However, Mark argues that Scripture’s teaching on the necessity of works recurs in too many texts to be explained this way. One would seemingly have to treat them all as hypothetical, doing violence to these texts.

Kirk notes the striking detail that both James and Paul appeal to Abraham in their respective writings on justification (Rom 4:1–25; Gal 3:6–9; Jas 2:21–23). This shared reference suggests the two are not adversaries but complementary witnesses to the same faith that both trusts Christ alone and inevitably bears its fruit.

Puritan commentator Thomas Manton helpfully clarifies that Paul’s doctrine of justification is opposed to the condemnation of a sinner in general, while James’s teaching on justification is opposed to the condemnation of a hypocrite in particular. These are not competing theologies, but complementary teachings on the same doctrine.

What counts as “good works”—and how many are enough?

If works are a necessary part of salvation, it raises the questions: What exactly are these “works”? And: How many works need to accompany faith in order for that faith to be justifying?

Mark defines good works as those done by faith, empowered by the Spirit, in obedience to God’s moral law, and aimed at God’s glory. If we want to understand what James specifically means by works, Kirk suggests looking at those concrete acts James mentions throughout his letter, e.g., controlling the tongue (Jas 1:26; 3:1–12), caring for widows and orphans (Jas 1:27), not hoarding wealth (Jas 5:1–6), etc.

Mark reframes the question of quantity: The issue is not whether one tallies enough good works but whether good works, however few or many, are genuinely present. In fact, religious systems that clearly define what good works are necessary—and how many—can result in adherents partitioning their religious devotion instead of offering their life to God. Instead, every aspect of our life is meant to consist of faith and good works.

Can we have assurance if works are necessary?

Does the necessity of works eliminate the possibility of genuine assurance and our ability to rest solely in the work of Christ?

Mark flips the question: Should not the total absence of good works rob someone of assurance? In other words, as we’ve seen, Scripture recognizes that works necessarily accompany true, saving faith.

Christ is the ultimate ground of our assurance, received through faith alone. But Scripture also identifies our good works as subsidiary grounds or corroborating evidence. Together, these function like an ecosystem of evidence for assurance of salvation.

Preaching and teaching James 2:14–26

It’s fine and good to answer people’s questions about how James’s teaching harmonizes with the rest of Scripture. But do not spend your sermon apologizing for James, qualifying every statement with what James “doesn’t actually mean.” James would not want us to apologize on his behalf. Allow the burden of the text to be the burden of your sermon, landing with the same force James intended. Trust that the broader teaching of Scripture will hold together without needing to mute this particular text.

Logos values thoughtful and engaging discussions on important biblical topics. However, the views and interpretations presented in this episode are those of the individuals speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Logos. We recognize that Christians may hold different perspectives on this passage, and we welcome diverse engagement and respectful dialogue.

Let us know what you think

How do you interpret James 2:14–26? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Mark Jones’s recommended resources

• John Davenant, A Treatise on Justification (2 vols.)

Commentary on the Book of James (The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 4)

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The Works of John Owen, Vol. 5: Faith and Its Evidences

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Additional related resources

Paul vs. James: What We’ve Been Missing in the Faith and Works Debate

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Four Views on the Role of Works at the Final Judgment (Counterpoints)

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A Christian’s Pocket Guide to Good Works and Rewards: In This Life and the Next

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The Doctrine of Good Works: Reclaiming a Neglected Protestant Teaching

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Treatise on Good Works

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Did Jesus Teach Salvation by Works? The Role of Works in Salvation in the Synoptic Gospels

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Mobile Ed: TH351 Perspectives on Justification by Faith: Five Views on Its Meaning and Significance (4 hour course)

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Justification: Five Views (Spectrum Multiview Books)

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Related content

• What Is Justification? | Stephen Westerholm
• Justification by Faith: Debates Old and New
• Who Are Paul’s Law-Abiding Gentiles? | Jarvis Williams on Romans 2:14–15
• What Does It Mean to Work Out Our Salvation? | Lynn Cohick on Philippians 2:12–13
• Is Your Definition of Salvation Too Small? The Bible’s Full Teaching

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