The New Testament’s Favourite Verse

The Bible has always been a central part of Christian life and there have always been particular verses that have stood out to various generations of believers. Indeed, a survey of favourite verses provides a wide-angle snapshot of people’s theology. As I have previously written about, the favourites verses of the first generation of Christians show they had a very a different theological outlook from us today. Now the early church’s favourite verse is something most Christians today are not familiar with. That verse is Psalm 110:1, which says,

The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” (ESV)

The Royal Shepherd

One of the important things I learnt from reading Dr Joshua W. Jipp’s excellent book, Christ is King: Paul’s Royal Ideology (Fortress Press, 2015), is learning how to spot ancient political tropes in the New Testament. One such trope I was not aware of was the shepherd-king.

The Grammar of Messiah

What does “Christ” in Jesus Christ mean? It is it a name, a title, or is there something more to it? New Testament scholar Dr. Matthew Novenson has written what some consider now the preeminent study of what the word meant and how it was used. In the interview below at OnScript podcast, Novenson discusses his trailblazing 2017 book The Grammar of Messianism: Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users. 

Gospel Allegiance with Matthew Bates

New Testament scholar Dr. Matthew Bates has written a follow-up to his popular 2017 book Salvation by Allegiance Alone, which had a great impact on me and I have talked a lot about on this site. The follow-up is called  Gospel Allegiance: What Faith in Jesus Misses for Salvation in Christ (2019). In it he updates his summary of the essential elements of the gospel as follows:

All Hail the Heir of David!

When Christians talk about the birth of Jesus one of the things that is often underappreciated is his Davidic lineage. In both nativity stories what makes Jesus birth significant is that he is the true heir of David. Matthew and Luke are careful to emphasise his royal ancestry and that his birthplace was the ancestral home of the family of David. In those and other ways, both writers were indicating that the circumstances of Jesus’ birth fulfilled the scriptural prophecies about who the long awaited Messiah was going to be.