This post will offer a fresh perspective on the grammar of a much-debated, and theologically loaded, verse in the Hebrew Bible: שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד Listen, Israel! YHWH is our God. YHWH is the one. My interpretation is a...
Bible study is the practice—whether individually or within a group—of reading, interpreting, and applying Scripture to daily life. Christians don’t study the Bible simply to amass information they won’t use. The point of Bible study is to know God...
Effective Bible study practices Studying the Bible is an important part of the Christian life, but it’s a part that all too often gets swept under the rug and pushed off until a later date. Even if you take the time to read the Bible every day, how...
We are familiar with God’s calls in Scripture to be marked by a tender heart. Paul commands Christians, “Be … tenderhearted” (Eph 4:32), and Peter tells believers to “have … a tender heart” (1 Pet 3:8). These teachings clearly show what God expects...
Family discipleship is hard work. The days are long with small children: a messy home, a litany of whys, and a gaggle of shouts of joy and frustration over the big and the small. In the midst of all this, you might ask yourself: Am I up for fighting...
Hope. It’s a word most of us overuse: “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.” “I hope there’s a good parking spot open.” And, of course, “Hope you’re well!” as a pleasant (admittedly unoriginal) email intro. The Bible uses hope this way sometimes...
It’s women’s history month—and March 8 was International Women’s Day. To celebrate, we’re highlighting 20 Christian women in Church history who served God in both extraordinary and ordinary ways. 1. Priscilla (first century AD) Though the Bible...
The Bible is a big book. More accurately, the Bible is a collection of books written at different times to different people by different authors. Readers will find that the Bible contains literary genres including history, narrative, law, poetry...
Why is Logos so expensive? People out there kind of mock us for it, and I’m here to admit that we feel a little sensitive on this point. Babylon Bee, for example, had a headline a few years back: When this came out, my colleagues and I laughed one...
What you’ll see in this Logos Live episode Dr. Mark Ward interviews Bible scholar, professor, and author Rev. Dr. Vern Poythress about Trinitarian theology and more. Vern Poythress (PhD, Harvard; DTh, Stellenbosch) is distinguished professor...
The word “exegesis” might sound fancy, but its meaning is simple—and the act of doing it is paramount for understanding the Word of God by which followers of Jesus live and breathe.
Virtually all Christians practice some form of baptism. In fact, Paul mentions our universally experienced baptism among those things that demonstrate our unity as believers: “one body and one Spirit … one hope … one Lord, one faith, one baptism...
Commentaries are tools in the toolbox of Bible teachers and preachers. But just as a woodworker will use a table saw, miter saw, and band saw for different purposes, Bible teachers will turn to different types of commentaries for different purposes...
I’ll never forget the moment when a nurse led my wife and me over to press a button on the wall to announce to everyone in the hospital the good news of the birth of our newborn son. We pressed the button and chimes calmly rang throughout the...
“Is this worship?” That’s not a thought I expected to have nearing the end of my first 15K race, but there it was. As I watched seagulls soaring overhead and one foot fell in front of the other, my reasoning went like this:...
How can Gollum, hyperlinks, and product placement help us to understand why there are lament psalms at the end of the Psalter? A popular generalization about the Psalter is that it moves in a trajectory from lament to praise, and from psalms spoken...
Professional athletes were as popular in the ancient world as they are today, even if the sports back then were somewhat different. Wrestling competitions, for example, were held throughout mainland Greece and Asia Minor in various festivals. And...
The Church season known as Lent is here again. Many Christians who did not grow up practicing the liturgical calendar are now becoming very interested in it. Some are madly in love with all things liturgical, seeing Lent as one way to rediscover...
Today is Ash Wednesday. Also called Day of Ashes, Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent—the 40 weekdays before Easter for Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant believers. Many Protestants in less liturgical churches or people outside the...
Dr. Michael Heiser, author of the bestselling book The Unseen Realm, has passed into life everlasting after a years-long battle with cancer. Dr. Heiser served as Logos’s scholar-in-residence from 2004 to 2019. During and after his tenure at Logos...
A covenant in biblical times served two primary purposes: 1) to establish kinship relationships among non-kin and 2) to establish peace where there was potential for violence.
I remember well my first semester as a full-time professor of Bible at Biola University. Every minute had a purpose and there was no time to be idle. “Give it five years,” I was told by my more experienced colleagues. “You’ll start to find a rhythm...
No Hebrew word is an exact equivalent for the English term repentance. Repentance was expressed by a number of different actions that show a change in thinking and attitude toward sin and God.
Dr. Tavis Bohlinger interviews Bible scholar, professor, and award-winning author Dr. Craig Evans his life and writings.
Is cursing a sin? Many Christians would instantly answer yes. But not so fast—it depends on what we mean by “cursing.” When you read the Bible, you’ll see that “cursing” and “swearing” mean something very...
Far from receding after the Gospels, the theme of repentance continues throughout the book of Acts. When a guilty crowd asked how they should respond to their complicity in the death of Jesus, their Messiah, Peter commanded them, "Repent and be...
There are 211 instances of “the practice of communicating with a deity” in the Bible, according to the Logos Bible app‘s Factbook . Such a list demonstrates the massive undertaking that is the study of prayer. So, when we approach the topic of...
A few years ago as I was exploring spiritual disciplines, I found myself surprised at how often fasting came up. Fasting wasn’t something I heard much talked about in the churches and communities I’d been a part of. But it kept coming up...
Is there a sin so terrible it can’t be forgiven? If so, what is the unforgivable sin? The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) all record Jesus’s teaching that the unforgivable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Matthew 12:31–32Mark...
In the final hours of a hectic day, sometimes it’s all we can do to get the kids to bed, or rinse the dinner dishes, or whisper a quick prayer before crawling under the covers. And then the alarm is set for tomorrow, when we’ll do it all over again...