Jesus narrowed the most significant priorities of life to just two: Loving God–with all your heart, soul, and mind–and loving others, as you already do love yourself (Matthew 22:36-40). Contrary to a deluge of humanistic teachings, there is no third commandment to “love yourself” in this key passage of Scripture. Our inherent “love of self” does not need…
By Daniel B. Wallace, Th.M, Ph.D Matthew 22:39 This is one of several occasional essays on “Scripture Twisting.” The purpose of these very brief essays is to challenge certain popular interpretations of the Bible that really have little or no basis. Matthew 22:39 reads simply, A second [command] is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In…
by Randy Alcorn of Eternal Perspective Ministries A writer friend was at an event many years ago when he witnessed the following: He was standing near a woman confined to a wheelchair. Suddenly a well-known woman, who had written and spoken extensively about her gift of healing, marched up to the lady in the wheelchair,…
Doing good works—often defined as being obedient to religious tenets and/or moral practices—is the most commonly supposed qualification for a person to go to heaven, or “to enjoy the afterlife” as some religions state. You may not know it, but Christianity is the only spiritual belief that says it is impossible to qualify for heaven…
by Randy Alcorn, Director of Eternal Perspectives Ministries The world is desperately hungry for two things—grace and truth. Jesus Christ is full of both: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace andtruth” (John 1:14). When Jesus…
What does Scripture teach with regard to “forgetting your sins”? Does God’s Word teach that a believer is “to forget these sins” with the meaning of “not having a remembrance of those sins”? One will look in vain to find biblical support for the necessity of “being unable to recall” or “to lose remembrance” of…
The conflict between biblical truth and false teaching is a battle over what “source” (authority) is to be trusted. A person’s authoritative source of truth for life and relationships will either be from humans (natural wisdom, typically disseminated via books, public presentations, and broadcast media) or from God (divine wisdom stated in Scripture and portrayed…
False teaching has bombarded the Church for almost 2,000 years. In recent decades, this deception has come in like a tidal wave through publishing and broadcast media. Surprisingly, false teaching has received credibility in the Christian world by its echoes from pulpits and teaching positions in churches, schools, and seminaries around the globe. The present and long-term…
When a believer exposes false teaching, even in a biblically loving way, that person might still be considered unloving, hateful, or arrogant. Such an opinion is sometimes linked to the erroneous belief that exposing unbiblical teaching fosters disunity in the church. Beyond a doubt, believers in Christ are to maintain unity in the body of…
Guest article from Give Me That Book “In their uncompromising determination to proclaim truth, Christians must avoid the intellectual flabbiness of the larger society. They must rally against the prevailing distrust of reason and the exaltation of the irrational. Emotional self-indulgence and irrationalities have always been the enemies of the gospel, and the apostles warned their…