“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.” Jesus says that in the midst of his rebuke of the Jewish religious authorities who challenged his saying that he is the son of God. It reminds me of a tendency among…

In John 5:19-29, Jesus speaks about his relationship with God as God’s son, and then turns to his role as judge. Yes, I know: The gospel of John twice (John 3:17 and 12:47) says that Jesus did not come to judge the world. But his saying here that “The Father .. has given all judgment…

The story in John 5 of the man waiting at the pool of Bethesda for the right moment to receive a healing miracle who received it after Jesus told him to take up his mat and walk is sometimes told as if it was the man’s fault that he had not been healed before. This…

Usually when I read John 9, the story of Jesus healing a blind man, I am drawn to the rebuke Jesus gives to the people who asked who committed sin such that the man was born without sight. His blindness had nothing to do with any wrongs done by him, his parents or ancestors, Jesus…

Does the self-righteousness of people who consider themselves “holy” turn you off? Well, know that it turns off Jesus, too. Luke 18 contains a parable Jesus directed at those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” There is the religious person who thanked God that he went through all…

In Mark 12 we find Jesus with the religious authorities in the temple at Jerusalem. They are putting him to the test, challenging his spiritual authority. But they end up being the ones who are amazed at Jesus’s knowledge and wisdom. So one of the scribes, impressed with how Jesus responded to the questions and…

The phrase “a house divided against itself cannot stand” comes from an incident recounted in both Matthew 12 and Luke 11. When the religious authorities see that Jesus cast out a demon from a man that prevented him from being able to speak, their response was this power could not have come from God, but…

“I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it,” Jesus says at one point during what is commonly called the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). “The law,” to his Jewish hearers, meant all of the moral codes that were given to the people of Israel, from the Ten Commandments to all…

Let’s not overlook the fact that in the parable in Matthew 18 Jesus uses to underscore that our willingness to forgive should not have hard limits—not seven times, but 77 times, Jesus says—the story centers on money that a servant owed to a king. In the parable, the hired servant asks the king who he…