Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children
To fulfill religious obligations Joseph and Mary take their child to Jerusalem where he is greeted by praise. First, from an old man and, second, from a woman of great age. Neither are the official priests but are among those untitled persons that Jesus will meet throughout his future ministry
Gabriel’s answer, “Nothing will be impossible with God,” echoes God’s response to Abraham when the declaration that he and Sarah would have a son was found laughable. It is also the foreshadowing of the sick being healed, forgiveness being granted, enemies reconciled, the dead raised and people
John the Baptist describes himself not as a Messiah or a forerunner or even as a prophet but as a “voice.” So too, every Christian is like John — called to point toward Christ with their lives. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” ’, John the
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right
‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was
Matthew 23:1-12 In Matthew’s gospel these words are spoken on the day after Jesus’ humble entry into Jerusalem (our Palm Sunday story) thus Jesus is speaking of humility having just exemplified it. His three parallel prohibitions against giving sovereignty to anyone than God (you have one
The Greatest Commandment When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your
Matthew 22:15-22, New Revised Standard Version This passage records the first of three debates between Jesus and religious leaders. Jesus eludes their plot to entrap him, and instead astounds them with his clever, profound response. Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he
In Matthew we have yet again another kingdom of God parable. To capture the dynamism of the original Greek, the theologian Karl Barth translated the Greek word, “basileia,” often translated as “kingdom” or “reign” for kingdom, as “revolution.” He thought “the revolution of God” better captured