For many abuse survivors, the Bible has been used as a weapon rather than as a source of healing. Yet Scripture reveals a God who aims to bring shalom and is fiercely concerned for the oppressed. In this episode of Logos Live, Kirk E. Miller sits down with Dr. Steven Tracy to tackle the sobering reality of how Scripture is often misused in contexts of abuse and how we can reclaim it as a source of protection and healing for survivors. Together they explore important hermeneutical principles for using and applying Scripture as a medicine rather than a poison.

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Episode guest: Steven Tracy

Steven Tracy is the President and International Director of Mending the Soul Ministries. Steve and his wife, Celestia, founded Mending the Soul in 2003 to create best-practice Christian resources for understanding and responding to abuse. Steve earned his PhD in biblical studies from the University of Sheffield in England and taught theology and ethics at Phoenix Seminary for 30 years. Before coming on staff with MTS, Steve pastored for 15 years in three different churches.

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Episode synopsis

Christians turn to Scripture as a source of comfort and guidance. Yet, as Steven Tracy observes, the Bible is not always used as intended: as a source of life. For many survivors of abuse, the very Word of God, which God gave for healing and renewal, has been weaponized to excuse, justify, or even afflict abuse.

How do we know what constitutes health or harm?

To make assessments of “harmful” uses of Scripture, are we just imposing an outside standard to determine whether we deem it good or damaging?

To the contrary, Scripture serves as its own standard for understanding its proper use to heal or misuse to harm. The Bible’s grand story is one of restoring shalom (peace, wholeness, flourishing). It is an account of God’s ultimate healing which culminates in the new heavens and the new earth. So we look to God’s design in creation and his work of redemption to define what health and healing look like. It is the world as God intended it to be, where the image of God (imago dei) in every person is respected and nurtured.

Conversely, harm is defined as anything that attacks this original design or hinders a person from becoming who God intended them to be. Abuse is a direct assault on the image of God.

What’s at stake in misusing Scripture in cases of abuse?

Just because one appeals to the Bible does not make that use of the Bible “biblical.” The devil quotes Scripture, too (Matt 4:1–11)! This misuse of God’s Word is as old as the garden of Eden: “Did God really say … ?” (Gen 3:1). So 2 Peter 3:16 speaks of those who twist Scripture. This twisting is not a benign error. As Peter says, it leads to “destruction.”

To misuse Scripture with abuse victims is to poison the very well from which God intends to renew them. When God’s Word is used to harm or justify and excuse harm, abuse survivors can unfortunately associate God’s Word with its abusive misuse, making it hard to engage Scripture as a source of healing and goodness. When the Bible is misused in cases of abuse, this can cause individuals to doubt the goodness of Scripture. Inasmuch as God’s Word represents God himself, Scripture’s misuse misrepresents God’s character to the abused.

Moreover, when someone uses Scripture to defend, excuse, or perpetrate abuse, they are engaging in spiritual abuse, the misuse of God’s authority to do harm. As Steven Tracy helpfully put it,

While any type of abuse can be extremely damaging, we have found that spiritual abuse is often some of the most damaging due to the way it shatters the very resources we need for health and healing.¹

How can we use Scripture well, to heal and not harm?

How can we avoid abusing Scripture when applying it to cases of abuse? Steven highlights two fundamental rules for anyone handling the Word:

1. Attend to Scripture’s context. Perhaps the most common mistake is ignoring the context of a passage. We must recognize and honor the specific setting of a text. When we take words out of their context, we can make the Bible teach just about anything—which is a frightening prospect.
2. Interpret Scripture with Scripture. Be wary of building an entire moral model on a single, isolated passage. We can easily go astray when we treat one verse as if it is all God has to say on a subject.

Kirk E. Miller describes such misuses as reductionistic interpretations. This approach involves taking complex ideas from Scripture and distilling them into overly simplistic, one-dimensional directives that ignore the overall teaching of Scripture and the reality of a survivor’s experience. By stripping Scripture of its required nuance, reductionistic readings can transform Scriptures into a blunt instrument of condemnation and, frankly, bad counsel.

What is God’s heart for the abused?

Perhaps because the ancient text of Scripture does not utilize our modern terminology, we sometimes mistakenly assume the Bible does not say much, if anything, about abuse.

However, the Bible is saturated with accounts of abuse, from the fatal domestic violence of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 to the widespread violence that grieved God’s heart in Genesis 6. Rather than sanitizing the text, the Bible is brutally honest about human depravity’s tendency toward abuse. Moreover, the fact that Scripture frequently includes these accounts—such as the sexual assault of Tamar (Gen 38) or the horrific atrocities against women at the end of the book of Judges (Judg 19–21)—demonstrates a concern for abuse. God is neither silent nor indifferent. He intentionally highlights the plight of the oppressed against the wickedness of their abusers.

Scripture also testifies directly to God’s heart for the oppressed. For example, in Exodus 3:7–8, the text explicitly states that God saw the affliction of the Israelites, heard their cries, was concerned about their suffering, and came down to deliver them. Likewise, Jesus expresses his fierce intolerance for abuse. For those who cause any of his “little ones” to sin, he declares it would have been far better had they been drowned in the sea with a massive millstone attached to their neck (Matt 18:6). That would have been a better fate than what he has in store for them! This is how seriously Christ takes the abuse of his people.

Jesus: abused for the abused

Many still grapple with the “why” of abuse. Although our attempts at an answer often feel unsatisfying, Steven points us to the person and work of Jesus Christ. The cross is the ultimate evidence of God’s care. Does God truly care for the abused? The cross resounds with a loud, “Yes!”

God took on flesh and allowed himself to be abused in the most horrific manner imaginable. He did this to defeat evil and eventually put an end to all our suffering. We may not have a full answer for the problem of evil. But we do know how God has answered evil through the work of Christ.

Scripture reveals a God who is highly attuned to the cries of the broken and who is actively working a plan of redemption that will one day end all tears (Rev 7:17; 21:4; Isa 25:8).

Share your thoughts

Why is the abuse of the Bible so harmful, especially for the abused? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Steven Tracy’s suggested resources

To Heal or Harm: Scripture’s Use as Poison or Medicine for Abuse Survivors

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To Heal or Harm: Scripture’s Use as Poison or Medicine for Abuse Survivors (Audio)

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Mending the Soul, Second Edition: Understanding and Healing Abuse

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Mending the Soul, Second Edition: Understanding and Healing Abuse (Audio)

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Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

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Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church (audio)

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A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing

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A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing (audio)

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Related content

• What Does the Bible Say About Abuse? Probably More Than You Think
• On Spiritual Abuse | Michael Kruger
• Recovering from Spiritual Abuse: A Practical Pathway Toward Healing
• Ministering to Trauma Survivors: 3 Lessons from the Book of Job
• What Does the Bible Say About Church Hurt? 5 Lessons

Luke records that the early Jesus followers in Jerusalem “held everything in common” (Acts 2:44–45; 4:32–37). Does this mean the early church abolished private property and embraced a sort of communalism? Luke-Acts scholar Darrell L. Bock joins Kirk E. Miller on this episode of What in the Word? to discuss these texts and what they might mean for us today.

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Episode guest: Darrell Bock

Darrell L. Bock is Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas, as well as Executive Director of Cultural Engagement for the Hendricks Center there. He is also a New York Times bestselling author. The author of around forty books, his special fields of study involve hermeneutics, the use of the Old Testament in the New, Luke-Acts, the historical Jesus, Gospel studies, and the integration of theology and culture. He is a graduate of the University of Texas (BA), Dallas Theological Seminary (ThM), and the University of Aberdeen (PhD). He is married to Sally and has two daughters (both married), a son, three grandsons, and a granddaughter.

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Episode synopsis

Did the early church abolish private property?

Immediately following the events of Pentecost (Acts 2:1–41), Luke describes the early Jerusalem church as selling possessions and distributing the proceeds “as anyone had need” (Acts 2:42–47). Acts 4:32–37 revisits the same pattern in greater detail: Owners of land and houses were selling them and bringing the proceeds to the apostles’ feet, so that “there was no one needy among them.”

To many today, this portrait resembles ideas within modern communism. It raises anxious questions about economic obligations or unrealistic idealism. To others, the text is simply glossed over or so heavily caveated that its entire force is nearly lost.

Yet Luke presents these descriptions as positive profiles of the primitive Christian community. He includes no hint of critique. So what is going on with this text, and what are we to do with it?

Luke’s positive portrayals of the early church

As Dr. Darrell Bock points out, Luke offers six positive traits of this early Jerusalem church (Acts 2:42–47):

1. The apostolic teaching
2. Fellowship and relationship with one another
3. The breaking of bread (hospitality and the Lord’s Table)
4. Prayer and engagement with God
5. Ministry to those outside the community, testified by signs and wonders
6. A family-like unity, displayed by even selling possessions to meet each other’s material needs

The placement of this description (Acts 2:42–47) immediately follows the pouring out of the Spirit on this people at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–41). In other words, Luke is detailing the transformation that occurs when the Holy Spirit takes up residence in a community. This passage provides an answer to the question, What does a Spirit-filled people look like?

So too, Luke’s description in Acts 4:32–37 follows the church’s prayer for boldness (Acts 4:23–31) after Peter and John’s arrest and release (Acts 3:1–4:22). Darrell regards this prayer as one of the most striking moments in Acts. Faced with their first persecution, the believers do not pray for the hostility to stop or for judgment on their enemies. Instead, they pray for boldness to keep preaching and serving. Thus, the “signs and wonders” they ask for are not mere displays of power but instruments of care, ways of demonstrating God’s goodness to a hostile audience.

Following this prayer, the church is again “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 4:31), which sets the frame for the profile that follows (Acts 4:32–37): The “full number” of believers were of “one heart and soul,” no one regarded their possessions as their own, and they held all in common, such that “there was not a needy person among them.” Those who owned land and real estate sold them and brought the proceeds to the apostles so it could be distributed as needed. They held their material possessions with open hands, as resources with which to meet the needs of others (so also Acts 6:1–7). Luke identifies Barnabas as a specific exemplar (Acts 4:36–37).

In direct contrast to Barnabas, Luke follows this with a negative example of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11). The latter sold a piece of property, kept a portion of the proceeds for themselves, yet presented the remainder as though it were the full amount. They were both struck dead.

Key exegetical details that clarify

Peter’s rebuke of Ananias and Sapphira, however, makes clear that this sacrificial giving was voluntary; no one was required to sell their possessions and give away the proceeds. As Peter says to Ananias and Sapphira, “Before it was sold, did it not belong to you? And when it was sold, was the money not at your disposal?” (Acts 5:4). The issue wasn’t simply that Ananias and Sapphira had kept “part of the proceeds from the sale of the land” (Acts 5:3). The property was theirs. The money from the sale was theirs. Rather, their sin was lying, offering a portion of the proceeds as if it were the entirety of the proceeds (Acts 5:1–11). In other words, they wanted the reputation of a Barnabas without the sacrifices of a Barnabas. They pretended to be generous without actually practicing generosity, and so lied to the Holy Spirit.

This episode, however, makes clear that the sharing of possessions in Acts was entirely voluntary. No one was compelled to sell their possessions or hand over what they owned. No one was required to surrender private property as a condition of membership, such as in the Qumran community. Rather, this giving was an expression of genuine, sacrificial, Spirit-empowered care, not a community rule or an economic policy.

Additionally, the verbs Luke uses in Greek to describe this practice are in the imperfect. The imperfect presents a verb’s action, not as a once-for-all snapshot like the aorist, but as something ongoing. As Darrell maintains, the imperfects here seem to have an iterative function, meaning this selling and giving was a habitual pattern within the community, not a single complete act in which everyone liquidated all their assets. Rather, this sort of generosity arose again and again as needs appeared.

Use the Grammar section in Logos’s Exegetical Guide to locate comments on your passage within Greek and Hebrew Grammars.

For instance, later in Acts 12:12, immediately after God miraculously freed him from prison, Peter goes to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many believers are gathered and praying. We see here that Mary clearly still owns her house; she has not sold it. This indicates that not everyone in this early Jesus community had sold all their property. That said, we do see Mary using her house sacrificially, opening it up to the believers. Her hospitality is then another mode of the generosity the Spirit produces—using what one has in service to others, rather than clinging to it as merely one’s own.

Descriptive—not prescriptive—yet commended

Some point out that the Jerusalem church’s generosity apparently left it financially depleted, requiring Paul later to organize a collection from gentile churches on its behalf (2 Corinthians 8). On this reading, the early community’s radical giving was admirable but ultimately unsustainable, a cautionary tale rather than a model.

Yet, as Darrell points out, the picture Luke paints of this early community is unqualifiedly positive. He provides this portrait to show what Spirit-filled generosity looks like in practice. In fact, as Kirk E. Miller points out, Luke’s phrase “there was no one needy among them” seems to be a deliberate allusion to Deuteronomy 15, which speaks of the sabbatical year and its intent that “there will be no poor among you” (Deut 15:4). In other words, this new covenant community is becoming what God always intended his people, Israel, to be. The Spirit is realizing what the law of Moses had always aimed toward.

When interpreting the Bible, we ought to distinguish between what is descriptive vs. prescriptive: Just because the Bible describes (recounts) something, does not mean it prescribes (commands) that thing. In fact, the Bible describes many things (e.g., murder, stealing, assault) we ought not repeat. So Acts, as narrative, describes what happened in the early church without necessarily prescribing such things as normative or things we are meant to replicate.

Yet this distinction does not mean the Bible’s narratives are neutral, without an implicit message for us. In the case of Acts 2:44–45 and Acts 4:32–37, although the specific actions recounted here are not prescribed, they are nonetheless commended as exemplary of the type of generosity that ought to characterize Christian communities. They aim to stir the reader.

As Darrell points out, this fits how ancient biography functioned: You observe virtues and vices such that you are persuaded, even if not commanded. Narrative teaches, among other things, by example.

Additionally, the early church’s generosity was an outworking of Jesus’s teaching.

• Jesus taught, “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy” (Luke 12:33).
• So Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell everything (Luke 18:18–30).
• Jesus commended Zacchaeus for giving half of his possessions to the poor and restoring fourfold what he had stolen (Luke 19:1–10).
• On the other hand, Jesus told a parable of a man who built bigger barns to store his material riches yet was not “rich” toward God (Luke 12:13–21).

Thus, the Jerusalem believers may well have understood themselves as simply doing what Jesus said. In this way, Acts 2:44–45 and Acts 4:32–37 present a descriptive account of a prescriptive ethic already taught by Jesus himself.

The practical significance

As these passages exemplify, we are ultimately stewards, not owners, of what we possess. We should ask ourselves, How can I use what God has entrusted to me to serve others? As Galatians 6:10 says, “As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” See also 1 Timothy 6:6–10, 17–19, which provides some of the New Testament’s most direct teaching on the Christian’s use of wealth.

Within the church, this means treating fellow believers as genuine family, people whose material needs are your concern. This finds visible expression in things like the church’s care for its widows (1 Timothy 5:9–16; see also Acts 6:1–7), the kind of coordinated giving Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 8, or a church’s well-funded, actively used benevolence ministry, where the church has decided to set resources aside to care for the needs of its members as they may arise. These things translate the spirit of Acts 2:44–45 and Acts 4:32–37 into the ordinary life of a congregation.

Advice for those teaching or preaching

Clearly explain the text, noting the voluntary nature of its giving. Yet do not so hedge the text (it’s not communalism; it was voluntary; it’s descriptive not prescriptive) that you drain the text of its intended force. Caveats are necessary, but they are not the point. Rather, the text’s point centers on the exceptional, exemplary nature of this Spirit-filled community’s life together. Don’t lose that point in the midst of your qualifications.

So allow the passage be challenging. Allow the congregation to squirm under its conviction as needed. The passage presses us to ask, Am I attentive to the needs of those around me? Do I see my finances and possessions as existing for myself? Or do I hold my resources loosely enough that I am free to serve others with them—even at great cost to myself? As C.S. Lewis said,

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charities expenditure excludes them.²

Logos values thoughtful and engaging discussions on important biblical topics. However, the views and interpretations presented in this episode are those of the individuals speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Logos. We recognize that Christians may hold different perspectives on this passage, and we welcome diverse engagement and respectful dialogue.

Let us know what you think

What might it look like to practice the spirit of Acts 2 and 4 in our churches today? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Darrell Bock’s recommended resources on Luke-Acts

Luke, Volume 1 & Volume 2 (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament | BECNT)

Regular price: $134.99

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Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament | BECNT)

Regular price: $64.99

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Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (4 vols.)

Regular price: $269.99

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A Theology of Luke and Acts: God’s Promised Program, Realized for All Nations (Biblical Theology of the New Testament | BTNT)

Regular price: $42.99

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Additional suggested resources on Acts

The Message of Acts (The Bible Speaks Today | BST)

Regular price: $15.99

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The Acts of the Apostles (Pillar New Testament Commentary | PNTC)

Regular price: $75.99

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Acts (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament | ZECNT)

Regular price: $59.99

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Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments (IVP Bible Dictionary)

Regular price: $49.99

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Mobile Ed: Darrell Bock Luke and Acts Bundle (3 courses)

Regular price: $559.99

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Mobile Ed: NT211 Introducing the Gospels and Acts: Their Background, Nature, and Purpose (6 hour course)

Regular price: $229.99

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• Is It Wrong to Want to Be Rich? | Malcolm Foley on 1 Timothy 6:6–10
• To Have or to Hold? What the Bible Says About Money
• Baptism of the Holy Spirit: What It Means & How We Get It Wrong
• Acts of Persuasion: Why Did Gentiles Convert to Christianity?
• Women in Acts: Women’s Role in the Birth of the Church

If you want to go deeper into Scripture, one tool helps more than almost any other: a great study Bible. That’s why many pastors and teachers recommend that every Christian own at least one.

The Bible was written by dozens of authors in several languages across thousands of years. The books of the Bible emerged in cultures very different from each other—and all very different from our culture today. A good study Bible helps bridge the gap between us and the original writers (and readers) of the Bible. It explains historical background, literary context, and theological connections that might be easy for us to miss on our own. Whether you’re new to studying the Bible or looking to go deeper, the right study Bible can become one of the most valuable tools in your spiritual life.

But there’s one problem.

There are dozens of excellent study Bible options out there. Some focus on theology. Others emphasize archaeology, application, or biblical languages. With so many choices, finding the best study Bible for your needs can feel overwhelming.

Table of contents

In this guide, we’ll consider:

• What are study Bibles?
• Why use a study Bible?
• What are different types of study Bibles?
• What makes a good study Bible?
• What are the best study Bibles?
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What are study Bibles?

A standard Bible contains only the biblical text. A study Bible, however, includes additional tools designed to help you better understand Scripture. These often include:

• Verse-by-verse explanatory notes
• Historical background
• Detailed charts and maps
• Book introductions
• Articles on theology or biblical themes

In most study Bibles, the main text of Scripture appears at the top of the page, and the study notes appear below it. These notes are written by scholars who explain the historical, literary, and theological context of what you are reading.

In short, a study Bible is a miniature library of biblical scholarship placed next to the text of Scripture.

How do study Bible notes get written and reviewed?

Most major study Bibles are written by teams of biblical scholars. For example, the widely respected ESV Study Bible involved over ninety scholars and editors.

The process typically includes:

• Study notes written by subject experts
• Editorial review
• Theological review
• Final proofreading and revisions

This collaborative process helps ensure accuracy and clarity.

Are study Bibles biased toward certain interpretations?

Yes, at least to some degree. Every study Bible reflects the theological perspective of its contributors. Some lean Reformed. Others are Pentecostal. Many study Bibles are developed exclusively by scholars from a specific tradition (e.g., evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox).

That’s not necessarily a problem. But it’s wise to read the notes thoughtfully and remember they represent interpretations, not inspired Scripture.

Why use a study Bible?

The Bible was written long ago in cultures very different from our own. Without help, some passages can be difficult to understand. A good study Bible helps you:

• Understand historical context
• Recognize literary structure
• See connections between passages
• Grasp theological themes
• Apply Scripture to life

In other words, it helps you read the Bible more thoughtfully and accurately.

Do study Bibles help with understanding difficult passages?

Absolutely. A good study Bible can explain:

• Confusing Old Testament laws
• Difficult prophetic imagery
• Uncommon cultural practices
• Divisive theological topics

Instead of guessing what a passage means, you gain insight from scholars who have spent years studying the text.

What are the advantages of a digital study Bible?

Digital tools make study even easier. Platforms like the Logos Bible app allow you to:

• Conveniently access and open up your study Bible right to your passage (using tools like Logos’s Factbook and Insights).
• Open and compare multiple study Bibles at once.
• Sync your study Bibles with your Bible as you study and scroll.
• Quickly search your study Bibles’ comments or use Logos’s AI-powered Study Assistant to find answers from your resources, including your study Bibles.
• Easily record and save your own personal insights.
• Take your resources and study tools with you wherever you go.

Instead of flipping through several physical books, you can explore multiple digital resources in seconds, dramatically accelerating study. And alongside your study Bibles, Logos allows you to quickly compare translations, access original language tools, get answers to your theological questions, and more—empowering study for serious Bible readers.

Your Bible study resources are more powerful in Logos.
Try for yourself—for free!

What are different types of study Bibles?

Not all study Bibles aim to do the same thing. Understanding the main categories can help you choose the right one.

Commentary-based study Bibles

This is the most common type. These study Bibles explain the text verse by verse, much like a commentary. They contain detailed explanatory notes, theological articles, and historical background. For many readers, these are among the best study Bibles for serious study.

Devotional study Bibles

Some study Bibles focus primarily on application and spiritual growth, with notes that help readers ask practical questions about how the passage can shape their lives. For many believers, these are the best sort of study Bible for personal devotions.

Archaeological and historical study Bibles

Some study Bibles focus on the world behind the text. They immerse you in the geography, archaeology, and culture of the Bible. If you want to visualize the places where biblical events occurred, this type of study Bible can be incredibly helpful.

Topical study Bibles

Some study Bibles focus on specific themes or perspectives. Examples include chronological Bibles that arrange events historically. Others might focus on a specific denominational or theological perspective.

Academic study Bibles

There are a handful of study Bibles designed primarily for classroom and scholarly study rather than devotional reading. The notes tend to focus on historical background, literary structure, textual criticism, and scholarly debates about the biblical text. For readers who enjoy digging deeply into the academic study of Scripture, they provide a fascinating window into the world of biblical scholarship.

What makes a good study Bible?

Before choosing a study Bible, it helps to know what to look for. The best study Bibles typically include:

1. Clear explanatory notes. The notes should illuminate the text without overwhelming it.
2. Strong scholarship. Trusted contributors and editors matter.
3. Helpful cross-references. These reveal how Scripture interprets Scripture.
4. Book introductions. These provide historical and literary context.
5. Visual resources. Maps, charts, timelines, and diagrams improve engagement and comprehension.
6. Theological articles. Many study Bibles include essays on major doctrines and other theological topics.

What are the best study Bibles?

Here are several widely respected study Bibles used by pastors, teachers, and everyday Bible readers. I provide them in the order of the various types listed above.

1. ESV Study Bible

If you ask pastors and serious Bible students to name the best study Bible available today, the ESV Study Bible almost always makes the list. It’s incredibly thorough.

The notes lean theological and explanatory, helping you see how passages connect across the whole story of Scripture. It can feel a little dense at times, but that depth is exactly why so many keep coming back to it.

ESV Study Bible (Notes only)

Regular price: $39.99

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ESV Study Bible (Bible and Notes)

Regular price: $44.99

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2. NIV Study Bible

The NIV Study Bible has been helping Christians understand the Bible for decades, and for good reason. It strikes a really nice balance between clarity and depth. The notes explain historical context, cultural details, and tricky passages without overwhelming the reader.

For many people (myself included), this was the first study Bible that showed us how much more there was to discover in Scripture.

NIV Study Bible: Notes (Fully Revised Edition)

Regular price: $43.99

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3. CSB Study Bible

The CSB Study Bible is a great all-around option that combines solid scholarship with an approachable tone. It doesn’t feel quite as dense as some academic study Bibles, but it still gives you meaningful insight into the text. I often recommend it to people who want a serious study Bible that still feels readable enough for everyday use.

CSB Study Bible (notes only)

Regular price: $23.99

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CSB Study Bible (Bible and Notes)

Regular price: $31.99

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4. Life Application Study Bible

The Life Application Study Bible (available in NLT, NIV, NKJV, and KJV) takes a slightly different approach. Instead of focusing mainly on historical explanations, its notes are designed to help you apply Scripture to everyday life. As you read, the notes constantly ask, “What does this mean for the way you live?” That makes it one of the most helpful study Bibles for personal devotions or for people who want to connect Bible reading directly to spiritual growth.

Life Application Study Bible Notes

Regular price: $24.99

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5. NIV Application Bible

The NIV Application Bible is built around the idea that understanding Scripture happens in three movements:

1. what the text meant originally,
2. what theological principles it teaches, and
3. how those truths apply today.

The notes follow that pattern, guiding you step-by-step from the ancient world of the Bible to your own life.

This Bible uses study notes drawn from the longstanding NIV Application Commentary series. It’s thoughtful without being overwhelming, which makes it especially helpful for readers who want to grow both intellectually and spiritually.

NIV Application Bible Notes: Bringing the Ancient Message of the Bible into Your World (NIV Application Commentary Resources)

Regular price: $29.99

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6. Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

One of the most eye-opening ways to understand the Bible better is to learn more about the ancient world it came from. That’s exactly what the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible does.

Available in the NIV, NKJV, NRSV, and RVR (Spanish), it focuses heavily on the customs, beliefs, and daily life of the ancient Near East and Greco-Roman worlds. Reading the Bible with this kind of cultural insight often makes familiar passages feel brand new.

Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible Notes

Regular price: $39.99

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7. CSB Holy Land Illustrated Study Bible

The CSB Holy Land Illustrated Bible is one of the most visually engaging study Bibles you’ll find. It’s filled with photographs, maps, and illustrations that help you picture the places where biblical events happened.

If you’ve ever wished you could walk through the geography of the Bible or see the landscapes where these stories unfolded, this Bible does a fantastic job bringing that world to life.

CSB Holy Land Illustrated Bible Notes

Regular price: $19.99

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8. NET Full Notes Edition

The NET Full Notes Edition is truly unique among study Bibles. Instead of traditional commentary-style notes, it includes over sixty-thousand notes from the translators of the New English Translation (NET). These notes explain why the translation team made specific decisions when moving from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into English.

If you’re curious about how Bible translation works, or you enjoy digging into textual details, this Bible is a treasure trove.

The NET Bible: Full Notes Edition (2nd ed.)

Regular price: $19.99

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The NET Bible, Second Edition (NET) with Reverse Interlinear

Regular price: $29.99

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The NET Bible: Full Notes Edition (1st ed.)

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9. New Interpreter’s Study Bible

The New Interpreter’s Study Bible is a thoughtful option for readers who want to engage Scripture alongside serious academic scholarship. This Bible features the NRSV translation (with Apocrypha) and is based on a twelve-volume commentary series from a diverse team of biblical scholars. The tone feels more like a seminary classroom than a devotional guide, which can be helpful if you want to wrestle deeply with the biblical text and see how scholars approach difficult passages.

10. The New Oxford Annotated Bible

The New Oxford Annotated Bible has long been one of the most widely used study Bibles in academic settings. It’s the kind of Bible you’ll often see assigned in university or seminary courses. The notes focus heavily on historical context, literary structure, and scholarly interpretation.

If you’re curious about how biblical scholars analyze the text and its ancient context, this study Bible gives you a front-row seat to that conversation.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible: An Ecumenical Study Bible, Third Edition

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11. SBL Study Bible

The SBL Study Bible is one of the newer entries in the study Bible world, and it reflects the work of the Society of Biblical Literature. It’s designed with academic study in mind, offering insights drawn from contemporary biblical scholarship and research.

What I appreciate about this one is that it helps readers see how modern scholars approach the Bible’s history, languages, and literary forms, making it a great resource for readers who want to explore Scripture through a more contemporary scholarly lens.

FAQs

Which is the best study Bible for beginners?

Many beginners benefit from the NIV Application Bible or the Life Application Study Bible. These study Bibles offer clear explanations, helpful introductions, and practical insights. They provide guidance without overwhelming new readers.

Which is the best study Bible for serious Bible study?

Readers looking for deeper scholarship often choose the ESV Study Bible or the NET Full Notes Edition. These resources provide extensive explanatory notes and detailed translation insights. They are particularly helpful for pastors, teachers, and advanced students.

Which is the best study Bible for historical and cultural context?

Two excellent options include the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (available in multiple translations) or the CSB Holy Land Illustrated Bible. These Bibles highlight archaeological discoveries, cultural practices, and historical settings that can greatly enrich your understanding of the biblical world.

How can I get the most from my study Bible?

Once you choose a study Bible, the next step is to learn to use it. Here are three simple habits.

1. Develop consistency

Consistency matters more than intensity. Choose a regular time and place to read. A mere fifteen to twenty minutes a day can lead to remarkable growth over time.

2. Read actively

Don’t just skim. Engage the text. Highlight or underline things that stand out. Write down questions that come to mind. Spend time journaling your insights. Active reading helps the truth stick.

3. Discuss what you learn

One of the best ways to deepen understanding is conversation. Talk with your spouse or a friend. Ask your pastor about your questions. Share with your small group. Scripture often becomes clearer when we process it together.

Conclusion

So which is the best study Bible? The “best” ultimately depends on your goals. Do you want theological depth, historical context, devotional guidance, or translation insight? Here are the best by category:

• Best overall: ESV Study Bible
• Best for beginners: NIV Study Bible
• Best for application: Life Application Study Bible
• Best for historical context: Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
• Best for translation insight: NET Bible Full Notes Edition
• Best for academics: New Oxford Annotated Bible

That said, the best study Bible is the one you actually use, the one that helps you read and understand Scripture consistently.

Christians today have access to extraordinary study tools. But the goal is not simply to collect resources. The goal is to know God through his Word. A great study Bible can serve that goal by guiding you into deeper understanding, richer theology, and stronger faith.

So, choose one that fits your needs. Open it often. And let it guide you deeper into the story of Scripture.

Share your thoughts

Which study Bible is your favorite? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Related articles

• 3 Things You Should Look for in a Good Study Bible
• 10 Grievances about Study Bibles (& Which Are Best)
• 10 Single-Volume Commentaries, Suggested by Logos Users
• Bible Dictionaries: What They Are & Why They Matter
• The Definitive Guide to Bible Commentaries: Types, Perspectives, and Use

What do all Christians have in common?

When browsing social media, you might think Christians have little in common—besides our ongoing disagreements over politics, modes of baptism, proper use of spiritual gifts, interpreting the end times, models of Trinitarianism, and much more. Understandably, we may identify ourselves as Christians, but we tend to add specific denominational or theological modifiers (e.g., evangelical, Reformed, Pentecostal, Arminian, dispensational, etc.). It’s become like introducing oneself: “Hi, I’m so-and-so, and I’m a [fill in the blank].”

Yet despite our theological and denominational differences,³ Christians share a common identity: Above all else, we are all disciples of Jesus Christ.

But what exactly is a disciple, and what is discipleship?

What is a disciple and discipleship?

Sometimes a word or phrase becomes overused to the point that we use it without clearly explaining or agreeing on its meaning. For instance, we might throw around “gospel-centered” without clearly defining what the gospel is (and isn’t)—or what it actually means for our ministries to be “centered” around it.⁴ The same is true for the words “disciple” and “discipleship.”

Simply put, a disciple of Jesus is a Christian (see Acts 11:26).⁵ As Peter Morden says, “All disciples of Jesus are Christians and all Christians are disciples.”⁶

The word disciple refers to “an adherent, pupil, apprentice, or follower. More specifically, a ‘disciple’ is regularly defined in the realm of knowledge and learning. … A disciple is thus someone who learns, who understands, who gains wisdom.”⁷ Thus, disciples of Jesus are not just believers in Jesus. We are followers, learners, imitators, and students of our Master Teacher, Jesus. Disciples are believers who believe, followers who follow, learners who learn.

Discipleship, then, is the process of learning from Jesus, following his ways and words, and teaching others to do likewise.⁸ Paul models this approach of discipleship in Philippians 4:9. By helping others become more like Christ through instruction and imitation, he tells the Philippians to “do” (CSB) or “put into practice” (NIV) what they’ve “learned,” “received,” “heard,” and “seen” in him.⁹

In discipleship, what we do (following Jesus) reflects who we are (followers of Jesus; Matt 16:24; 28:19–20; John 8:31–32; 15:8). Being a disciple involves both our identity and our actions—who we are and what we do.

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5 notable books on discipleship

Of course, grasping the meaning of discipleship is one thing. Living it out is another.

So if you’re looking to go deeper, the following books are among the most helpful I’ve found.

1. Theology as Discipleship, by Keith L. Johnson

Sometimes we divide Christians into two groups: intellectual theology nerds and practical Jesus followers. You either have academic interests (a thinker) or you’re into practical application (a doer).

As Keith Johnson’s students often ask him, “What difference does theology actually make for our lives?” and “Shouldn’t we just focus on following Jesus?”¹⁰ Those are valid questions, especially as we consider what discipleship entails.

Johnson contends that believers ought not to choose between theology and discipleship, since the two should inform one another: The way to live out discipleship is through the discipline of theology.¹¹ If learning is central to being a disciple (see above), we follow Jesus by studying his Word (theology), which then guides our actions (application).

In other words, studying theology is part of discipleship: Teachers and pastors teach others to discipline the mind through theological study. This then guides the heart to obey Jesus and equips us to help others do the same through his Word.

Theology is not secondary to discipleship. Theology informs discipleship.

Theology as Discipleship

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2. Deep Discipleship: How the Church Can Make Whole Disciples of Jesus, by J. T. English

English’s central insight is that everyone is being discipled—shaped, formed, or influenced—either by the world or by the church.¹² Two key takeaways from this stand out:

1. Deep discipleship means churches need more Bible, theology, spiritual disciplines, gospel, and Christ, not less.
2. The goal of deep discipleship focuses on God, not on church growth or church programs.¹³

Also helpful: While churches often choose between Sunday school and small groups, English recognizes the value of both contexts for discipleship. Disciples benefit from being mentored in theological instruction (Sunday school) and imitation (small groups).¹⁴

Church leaders will find this book especially useful for understanding how to cultivate followers of Jesus across various settings: church services, Sunday school, small groups, and even theological training programs or Bible institutes. Deep discipleship means more theology and more Jesus, not less.

Deep Discipleship: How the Church Can Make Whole Disciples of Jesus

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3. Discipling: How to Help Others Follow Jesus, by Mark Dever

For those seeking a straightforward introduction, Mark Dever’s book covers the key parts of discipling:

• the what (the nature of discipleship)
• the where (the place of discipleship)
• the how (the process of discipleship)

Yet Dever first clarifies that being a “disciple of Christ … does not begin with something we do. It begins with something Christ did.”¹⁵ We become disciples not by first acting but by believing in Christ’s perfect obedience on our behalf. Christians become followers of Jesus, but we don’t become Christians by following Jesus: Our acceptance precedes our obedience (Eph 2:8–10; Titus 3:4–8).

Dever keeps it simple: Discipleship according to Scripture is about following Christ and teaching others to do the same. It involves obeying Jesus by loving God and neighbor, demonstrated through teaching God’s Word and modeled within the local church. While individual believers are to make other disciples, Dever argues that the local church is the primary discipler of believers.¹⁶

Further, discipling isn’t just about mentoring other believers. It also involves helping non-Christians come to know Christ. In other words, discipling includes evangelism (Matt 28:19–20).¹⁷

Discipling: How to Help Others Follow Jesus (9Marks Building Healthy Churches Series)

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4. Hearers and Doers: A Pastor’s Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine, by Kevin J. Vanhoozer

This book is intended for pastors, and its title draws on James 1:22–25 and Jesus’s call for how true disciples respond to him: by hearing and doing (Matt 7:24). Vanhoozer’s big idea is that true disciples are those who hear and do Christ’s word, and the job of the pastor is to make disciples of Christ by training them toward that end.¹⁸

For Vanhoozer, then, pastors make disciples by teaching and training believers to read the Bible properly, namely, to be hearers and doers, spiritually fit for godliness (1 Cor 11:1; Eph 4:11–12; 1 Tim 4:12; Titus 2:7; 1 Pet 5:3).¹⁹ This is what truly shapes people into disciples who imitate Christ (Luke 8:21; 11:28).

Finally, this very pattern should be reflected in pastors, who themselves listen to and live by Scripture and doctrine (Matt 4:4; 1 Tim 4:6, 15–16). Pastors disciple others through preaching and practice—by their own hearing and doing.

Hearers and Doers: A Pastor’s Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine

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5. The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can’t Get Their Act Together, by Jared C. Wilson

Wilson loves to write books that consistently remind his readers to know, love, and follow Jesus above everything else.

So here, Wilson writes with raw honesty and transparency, not to those who have it all together or have everything figured out, but to those who may have encountered discipleship books with unrealistic expectations. His book is for everyday disciples—those like me and possibly you—who struggle to pursue discipleship.²⁰

While other books on discipleship helpfully outline how to disciple and be discipled, Wilson warns that following such programs can often lead to disappointment, discouragement, and despair, particularly when we find ourselves thinking we can become better disciples by focusing on discipleship itself—rather than on Jesus (Matt 11:28–30; Heb 12:2–3).²¹ But following Jesus is not primarily about doing but about being with him. It is not primarily about behaving but about beholding, with behaving flowing from that beholding (2 Cor 3:18). Only by his grace can we believe, behold, and behave.

The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can’t Get Their Act Together

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Share your thoughts

What books on discipleship might you add? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Additional resources on discipleship

Mobile Ed: Discipleship Training Bundle (3 courses)

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Bill Hull Discipleship Collection (4 vols.)

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Design for Discipleship Collection (8 vols.)

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Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time

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Discipleship (Reader’s Edition)

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Patterns of Discipleship in the New Testament

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A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, Commemorative Edition

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“Here Are Your Gods”: Faithful Discipleship in Idolatrous Times

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Related content

• How the Bible Defines Discipleship: 12 Core Elements
• Does Your Church Have a Discipleship Culture? How to Cultivate It
• Deep Discipleship in a Digital Age: Rethinking Church, Ministry, and Life Together in an Online World
• Family Discipleship: 5 Easy Things You Can Do with Your Kids
• Why Theology Is for Everyone & How the Church Can Provide Training

Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he gave one final command: Make disciples.

From Abraham who was called to leave his country for an unknown land (Gen 12:1–3) to the Great Commission (Matt 28:18–20), the Lord’s command to all believers is to follow him in humble faith and obedience. It’s a charge that most Christians recognize and affirm as their own.

Yet in our modern world, the language of discipleship has waned—along with a clear grasp of what it truly means. The very image can feel distant and antiquated to us: a band of rugged fishermen trailing behind a rabbi. The image does not translate easily into contemporary life.

While the language feels foreign in today’s world, the concept of discipleship remains relevant and integral to modern Christian life. And for those of us in ministry, understanding the Bible’s description of discipleship is vital if we are to disciple others.

To walk this path faithfully, let’s first consider what Scripture means by the word “disciple.”

What is a “disciple”?

The English word disciple traces back to the Latin discipulus and the Greek μαθητής. Both derive from verbs meaning “to learn.” By the time of the New Testament, the term had deepened.²² Learning remained central, but true discipleship required conformity to the master’s whole way of life, as well.

In the Gospels, disciple is the primary term used to describe a follower of Jesus. Likewise, Luke informs us that in the early church the word also meant believer. Luke uses the two words interchangeably (Acts 4:32; 5:14; 6:1–2, 7; 9:25–26; 10:45; 14:21–22). Acts 11:26 shows us the terms Christian and disciple were also synonymous.²³

This language of discipleship then conveys both learning from Christ and imitating his life. But this leads us to another important question: What does discipleship actually look like in practice, according to the Bible?

What does discipleship look like in practice?

To this end, let’s consider twelve core traits of discipleship as presented in Scripture.

1. Discipleship begins with a call

The picture of discipleship painted in the Gospels is remarkably simple, yet strikingly demanding. Jesus calls individuals to follow him. They drop everything and obey (e.g., Matt 4:18–22; Luke 5:27–28).

Such immediate obedience has only one explanation: the absolute authority of Jesus. As Bonhoeffer observes, “It is Jesus who calls, and because it is Jesus, Levi follows at once. This encounter is a testimony to the absolute, direct, and unaccountable authority of Jesus.”²⁴

This same authority continues after Jesus’s ascension, as the apostles become his appointed witnesses and mouthpieces. The call to follow Christ is now proclaimed through the apostles—and it still resounds today. It is a call we are invited not only to answer but also to proclaim (Rom 10:14–17).

2. Discipleship is rooted in grace

The call and response of discipleship are rooted in God’s grace. God’s saving grace is not only the starting point but also that which sustains and enables us at every stage of discipleship. He not only forgives us of our sins but grants us further grace to overcome the flesh and grow spiritually.

This grace was costly: “You were bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:20). Bonhoeffer warned us against cheap grace—this idea of “grace” without discipleship.²⁵ Thus we depend on that grace, knowing that apart from Christ, we can do nothing (John 15:5).

3. Discipleship exists by faith

Discipleship does not follow conversion, as if it were a second stage in the Christian life. Conversion initiates discipleship and is synonymous with the Christian life. All true believers are disciples. We follow Jesus at each step in our journey of faith.

True faith is not passive: It is active, responsive, and enduring.

With Logos’s Smart Search, search the Bible for passages on discipleship and get a summary of its findings. Start your free trial.

4. Discipleship ignites spiritual growth

Discipleship entails an inside-out transformation inspired by the indwelling, empowering presence of the Holy Spirit (John 14:15–17; Gal 5:22–23). The Spirit produces growth, shaping both character and conduct.

As we abide in him, Jesus promises, “you will bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8). Growth is not self-generated. It is Spirit-empowered and Christ-centered.

5. Discipleship informs our ethical life

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus depicts this obedience in a significantly deeper way than the Jewish leaders of his day were espousing: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). External obedience is not enough. Jesus took the law further, to its implications. Thoughts and motives are as important as actions (Matt 5:21–28). Love is to be the primary theme of a disciple’s life (Matt 5:43–45).

Responding to Jesus’s call requires obedience. His disciples are known by their good fruit and will be accountable before the Lord (Matt 7:15–20, 21–23).

6. Discipleship immerses us into community

Central to the early church’s discipleship was integration into its community (e.g., Acts 2:41–47). The basis of this fellowship was a shared union with Christ. Luke employs the term ὁμοθυμαδόν (“one accord” or “together”) to emphasize the unity of the early church (e.g., Acts 1:14; 2:46; 4:24; 5:12; 15:25).

Shared life is not incidental to discipleship. It is essential. Following Christ was never meant to be an individual pursuit. To be united to Christ is to be united to his people. Through daily habits of reading and teaching Scripture, offering prayer, and gathering for table fellowship, early believers were progressively formed as disciples of Jesus.

7. Discipleship pursues truth

The apostles’ teaching anchored the community of believers in truth (“they were devoted to the apostles teaching”; Acts 2:42). As eyewitnesses to Jesus’s life and ministry, the apostles provided doctrinal clarity and practical instruction.

Yet discipleship was not just about gaining knowledge but also about transformed living. True belief and righteous living are inseparable (see Titus 1:1).

8. Discipleship depends on prayer

Prayer was central to the life of the early church, indicating their dependence on the Holy Spirit. Growth in discipleship cannot be a self-reliant effort. The early disciples’ daily presence in the temple reflected this devotion (Acts 2:46), following the pattern of Jesus himself (Luke 19:47; 21:37; 22:52–53).

As believers in the early church gathered in unity, their prayers aligned their hearts with God’s will and empowered their witness (Acts 4:23–31).

9. Discipleship multiplies

Discipleship is never meant to stop with us. Followers of Jesus are called to bear witness and invite others into the same journey of following him.

The Great Commission (Matt 28:18–20; see also Acts 1:8) makes this call abundantly clear. Our witness is empowered by the Holy Spirit and extends outward to neighbors and to the nations.

10. Discipleship comes at a cost

At times, the Gospels present us with a shocking picture of what Jesus requires of those who wish to follow him. A disciple must “count the cost” (Luke 14:28). “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

This may be a far cry from what many consider it must mean to be a Christian. But Scripture is clear: Discipleship is not merely about belief—it is about participation. To belong to Christ is to be united with him in his death. Paul boldly asserts that we have “been crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20).

Yet, death is not the end—it is the pathway to life (see Rom 6:4). The cost of discipleship is indeed great, but the reward is infinitely greater.

11. Discipleship endures suffering

As Jesus’s mission becomes clearer—that he did not come to establish an earthly kingdom—the crowds eventually call for his crucifixion. Even his closest followers struggle to understand. Their faith is tested. Chapters earlier, when Jesus began teaching his disciples that he would suffer, Peter rebuked him (Matt 16:22–23). Why? As Bonhoeffer observes, the idea of a suffering Messiah “was a scandal.”²⁶

Yet those who follow a suffering savior should expect to experience suffering as well. As Jesus explains, “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake,” for “a disciple is not above his teacher” (Matt 10:16–25).

The feeding of the five thousand marks a turning point in Jesus’s ministry. After the crowds turn away from Jesus (John 6:60, 66; cf. John 6:22–59), Jesus asks the twelve if they, too, will leave. Peter replies: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68–69). This kind of absolute trust and abandonment to Christ marks true discipleship.

12. Discipleship is marked by love

Love is the greatest command. We are called to love God above all and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt 22:37–40).

These words are familiar and easily recited but far more difficult to embody. The brokenness around us testifies to this. We must fervently pray and encourage one another to live out of the self-giving love of Christ, so that, as Jesus indicated, all people will know that we are his disciples (John 13:34–35).

Conclusion

These elements are not exhaustive, but they provide a framework to help us understand and faithfully live out discipleship today. Discipleship is not a program or system but a dynamic and relational way of life.

As we walk in faithful dependence on our Master, may the Holy Spirit transform us into his very image (2 Cor 3:18).

Share your thoughts

How would you define discipleship? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Jeanette Pifer’s recommended resources on discipleship

• Goodrich, John K., and Mark L. Strauss, eds. Following Jesus Christ: The New Testament Message of Discipleship for Today. Kregel Academic, 2019.

Discipleship (Reader’s Edition)

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Patterns of Discipleship in the New Testament

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Following the Master: A Biblical Theology of Discipleship

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The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship

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The Kingdom Life: A Practical Theology of Discipleship and Spiritual Formation

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Related content

• Does Your Church Have a Discipleship Culture? How to Cultivate It
• Deep Discipleship in a Digital Age: Rethinking Church, Ministry & Life Together in an Online World
• Family Discipleship: 5 Easy Things You Can Do with Your Kids
• What Is Sanctification? A Biblical Definition
• How the Great Commission Echoes the Old Testament

My motivation was partly personal. At the time I began my research, I suffered from a complicated relationship with Christianity. I wanted to better understand both how I related to it and how Christians related to me. For many years, I had been part of a statistical cohort that showed a pronounced negative correlation between autism and Christian practice.

To put it simply, autistic people are less likely to be Christian than their non-autistic counterparts, and far less likely if they live in more secular areas (when you control for other factors).

I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at age sixteen. I then deconverted from conservative evangelicalism at nineteen during my second year of military college. Eventually, I made my way back to Christianity after ten strange and meandering years. But for a very long time, I, like many autistic men my age, directly attributed my lack of religious belief to my autism.

I’ve now spent the past twelve years researching the intersection of a belief in a normative orthodox understanding of Christianity and Level 1 autism (ASD 1).²⁷ I’ve sampled and surveyed around 26,000 online Level 1 autistics. The findings have been illuminating—but bleak, and they should be of concern to all Christians. When it comes to Christianity, many of us are falling through the cracks.

But the good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Is autism incompatible with Christianity?

The exact reasons why we are less likely to be Christian are complicated and would take an entire book to litigate. But the summary is this: The necessary work of translating Christian ideas into forms that autistic people can more readily grasp has often not been done.

This stems mostly from the fact that within many Christian circles, autism in all its forms remains little understood. Autistic ways of thinking and processing are often construed by pastors and clergy as problems to fix, rather than as different ways of understanding.

A foreign language

Consider the distinction many Christians draw between “head knowledge” and “heart knowledge.” In many Christian circles, intellectual knowledge is seen as “nice to have,” while the truest expression of the Christian faith is associated with the “heart.” This poses a fundamental distinction that most autistic Christians simply do not make and often do not understand. For many of us, systematized analysis and intellectual rigor are our heart language, the mother tongue to which we most naturally respond. Pastors often fail to understand this, and so send us searching for a “heart knowledge” that is simply not compatible with the way we process reality.

Another example that routinely comes up in my research is the concept of a “personal relationship with Jesus.” I’ve conducted around 640 long-form interviews with autistic Christians and ex-Christians about their understanding and experiences with Christianity. One finding that often surprises people is that 85 percent of autistic practicing Christians are confused by—or unsure what is meant by—this concept. This is less surprising when you consider that autism is characterized by the DSM as involving social and communication deficits affecting social-emotional reciprocity, non-verbal communication, and developing relationships.

Other common forms of Christian expression—like spontaneous verbal prayer, ecstatic emotional expression, and emotional spontaneity—are foreign and confusing to most of us and often difficult to naturally express.

A failure to translate

Unfortunately, we often fail to work with these quirks in cognitive styles that process the world in very different ways. Instead, we try to fit the square peg of autism into the round hole of a form of Christianity that was not built for people who think like us.

One of the most common sentiments expressed by autistic people online is: “Christianity is a religion by neurotypicals for neurotypicals.” While I disagree with this, I understand why they say it. Often, when pastors preach, when Christian authors write books, when we build guides for mentoring Christians, the assumption is almost always that the target person does not have autism.

This is a reasonable assumption—we make up at most 3 percent of the population. But it often creates a situation in which our needs are not met, our concerns go unaddressed, and the particularities of people with our condition are treated like a burden. While I don’t think the church should change everything it does to suit our needs, a very good case exists for reasonable accommodation.

Contextualizing Christianity for autistics

The good news is that there is no need to force the square peg into the round hole. Christianity is a very rich and diverse tradition. There are plenty of square holes in every Christian denomination for us to slot into, if we learn where to look.

There is nothing about autism that makes us inherently less likely to be Christian. The problem, rather, is that we have simply not heard a form of Christianity that makes sense to us. That, or we’ve tried to force an incompatible expression of Christianity through a brain that couldn’t comprehend it.

Christianity and contextualization

In 1 Corinthians 12:12–27, Paul uses the body as a metaphor for the diversity of the church and those in it.

He rightfully asks, “If all were a single member, where would the body be?” (1 Cor 12:19). In many ways we have forgotten Paul’s words. Instead of letting our autistic brothers and sisters be a different part of the body—one that functions differently, processes differently, and interprets the world differently—we try to force them to be a body part they are not. Or because they are different, we treat them as outsiders with no use to the body of Christ.

In Acts 17:16–34, the Apostle Paul speaks in the Areopagus to the gathered Athenians after noticing an altar dedicated to “the Unknown God.” In this speech, Paul presents the gospel in ways his hearers would understand, using their own philosophy, context, and cultural concepts. Instead of expecting the Athenians to adapt to him in order to hear the gospel, he accommodates to the concepts and language they understand in order to explain what Christ had done for them.

Christians have been following Paul’s example ever since. For the next two thousand years, Christian missionaries would bring the gospel to countless different cultures and shape its message into terms and concepts that local peoples could more intuitively understand. This process of shaping the gospel message into terms more readily understood by a host culture, without compromising its essential nature, is called contextualization. It is widely seen as a necessary precondition for evangelization.

This work has taken many interesting forms. One of my favorites is the Heliand, a ninth-century work written to explain the gospel to a resistant population of Saxons. It retells the Gospels using language, context, and concepts familiar to a Germanic warrior society; that is, it retells the gospel narrative as a Germanic epic poem, with the Scriptures reimagined as “secret runes” and Jesus as a “warrior–chieftain” who, powerful in divine knowledge, defied “Fate” (i.e., Death) and won, proving himself mightier than even the likes of Odin and Thor.

But not all examples of contextualizing are cross-cultural. Many Christian writers have taken up the great work of contextualizing Christianity to their own (often Christianized) cultures. For example, C. S. Lewis is one of the great contextualizers of the twentieth century, as most of his writing is best understood as contextualizing Christianity for a secularizing Britain. Every act of translating the Bible into the vernacular is another example of contextualization.

The animating motivation behind contextualization is the belief that Christianity should be accessible to everyone, and that making it accessible requires translating it into people’s mother tongue.

Autism and contextualization

To be autistic often feels like you were born on the wrong planet. In fact, one of the earliest autism internet forums was named Wrong Planet. Most people seem foreign to you. The way they act is confusing, the way they talk doesn’t make sense, their social expectations seem arbitrary, their rules are not intuitive, and nothing you say or do ever seems quite right.

Another common way autistic people describe their experiences is to compare it to constantly speaking in a second, learned language and never your mother tongue. Autistics often describe feeling lost in translation. For many autistic people, their experience with Christianity is no exception.

If we want to ensure that autistic people don’t fall through the cracks, apostatize, or reject the messages we try to deliver, we need to take seriously the work of contextualization for the autistic population. The good news is that Christianity has been doing this for a long time. We don’t need to reinvent anything. We simply need to borrow from this past.

How do we do this? 5 practical takeaways

While there is no single solution, several initial principles can guide this work.

1. Commit to the work

One challenge is that autism is a very heterogeneous condition: The accommodations needed and the way each person will think and process things differ greatly between individuals. As a result, contextualizing Christianity for autistic people will not be as simple as producing a new translation. It will require a long and continuous process of shaping and refining how we communicate to autistics who are wrestling with Christianity. There will be no silver bullets when it comes to translating Christian concepts into a form more easily understood by Level 1 autistic people.

That said, translation is possible. For example, while around 85 percent of autistic Christians are confused by or unsure about the term “personal relationship with Jesus,” only around 7 percent struggle with “discipleship.” Doing something as simple as changing conversations about a personal relationship with Jesus to ones about discipleship can significantly reduce confusion without changing much, if any, theological or biblical teaching.

2. Don’t mistake difference for sin

Autistic people will see things differently; they will process information differently; and they will interpret relationships and social dynamics differently.

Christians often interpret these differences as sin, disobedience, defiance, or a lack of spiritual fruit, when in fact they are simply differences in neurodevelopment. While autistic people are undoubtedly imperfect and sin like everyone else, differences that are often benign are treated as matters of spiritual failure.

One very common example: As part of their spiritual development, autistic people will want to “get to the bottom” of a question. This typically involves asking many questions, pointing out inconsistencies, and debating in order to work through their problem. This often gets misread as combativeness or challenging authority. Often the autistic person is completely unaware of how they are coming across and gets confused when they receive correction. For example, many an autistic person gets into hot water for engaging their group Bible study less like a cordial discussion and more like a debate to uncover the truth.

3. Expect varied fruit

Because people are different, the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23) will often express themselves differently in an autistic person than a non-autistic person. What love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control look like in someone without autism will often be quite different from what they look like in an autistic person.

We know that these qualities take different forms across different genders, ages, and cultures. Yet for some reason, we fail to extend that same expectation to differences in neurodevelopment. We unfortunately expect these fruits to appear identical. But fruit looks different when it grows on different trees.

For an autistic Christian, joy can look like sharing long, monotone monologues about a book by an obscure Dutch theologian. It might not look like ecstatic emotional expression, or much emotional expression at all. In fact, trying to force them to fit that mold can actually make them less likely to genuinely possess that fruit.

4. Be flexible

Autistic people can be a bit odd. Your conventional approaches may not work as expected. Even as someone who has autism, studied autistic Christians for twelve years now, and spent the better part of five years working to translate Christianity to autistics, I still don’t know what will work with a specific person.

Go into your engagements with an open mind and be willing to change course. As they say, throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Don’t be afraid to try things, explain things, or move on when something clearly isn’t working.

5. Entertain questions

Autistic people will have questions—hundreds, maybe thousands. Many will seem very odd. Most won’t be of the type you could anticipate. Their level of specificity might be startling. But even if you don’t understand why a question is being asked, or even if you think it strange, take it seriously. Your rule: There is no such thing as a dumb question. Those with autism often need the full picture before we can commit to something. The gist often doesn’t cut it.

I sometimes jest that the autistic love language is intellectual engagement—but it’s a joke that isn’t far from the truth. A very concerned young man once came to me with a question about the inspiration of Scripture. While I thought his question would be about Bible contradictions or historicity, he was much more concerned with figuring out timelines. He had brought a diagram with him containing two columns: “If Paul wrote Timothy” and “If someone else wrote Timothy.” He had read 2 Timothy 3:16–17 and concluded that its referents excluded “scriptures” not yet written at the time. So he was trying to figure out which books of the Bible were “God-breathed” based on the dating of 2 Timothy. Answering his question took around five hours of discussion about canonicity, followed by many more hours of follow-up questions.

Conclusion

So is Christianity a religion by neurotypicals and for neurotypicals?

My response: That might feel true. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Share your thoughts

How can Christians work to embrace autistic ways of understanding within their churches and relationships? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Resources for further reflection

Autism Spectrum Disorder: Meeting Challenges with Hope

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On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith, and the Gifts of Neurodiversity

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Disability and the Church: A Vision for Diversity and Inclusion

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Jesus and Disability: A Guide to Creating an Inclusive Church

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Belonging: Accessibility, Inclusion, and Christian Community (LifeGuide Bible Studies)

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Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community

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The baptism and subsequent temptation of Jesus not only stand at the outset of Jesus’s public ministry, but as a pair of events they also seem to set the terms for it. In his baptism, Jesus is anointed for his mission, even as his subsequent temptation in the wilderness seeks to draw him away from it. Together, these events help us to understand all that follows, revealing Jesus’s relationship to the Father and the devil’s place as his primary antagonist.

The Synoptic Gospels record three distinct accounts of Jesus’s temptation (Matt 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13). All three bear common witness to the fact that, after his baptism by John in the Jordan, Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days. Matthew and Luke note that he spent this period fasting. Towards the end of the period, he was tempted by the devil (named Satan in Mark’s account), after which he was ministered to by angels (in Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts).

But what exactly was at stake in each of these temptations, and what do they reveal about the work of Christ?

Old Testament background: the last Adam, a faithful Israel

Jesus’s time in the wilderness recalls several Old Testament events. In 1 Kings, Elijah fasted for forty days and nights in the wilderness (1 Kgs 19:8), after which he was commissioned for a series of tasks by the Lord. Elsewhere, in 1 Samuel, the great giant Goliath stood against Israel for forty days (1 Sam 17:16) before the newly anointed David crushed his head with a stone from his sling.

However, the events that provide a more prominent backdrop for the temptation of Jesus are the fall of Genesis 3 and Israel’s forty years of testing in the wilderness during the Exodus. The serpent tempted Eve in Eden and humanity fell by eating the forbidden fruit. The devil’s tempting of Jesus in the wilderness, especially the first temptation, provides a stark contrast: The last Adam proves faithful in much harsher conditions than those in which our first father fell.

After Israel refused to enter the promised land, they were condemned to wander until forty years had passed. Most members of the Exodus generation died out. A chief purpose of the wilderness was to teach Israel trust and obedience in God through trial. As God’s “firstborn son” (cf. Exod 4:22), Israel proved unfaithful. Yet through the bitter consequences of their failures, God taught them many lessons.

Toward the end of the forty years, Moses reminded the children of Israel of these lessons in a series of addresses recorded in the book of Deuteronomy. It is noteworthy that, as Jesus answers the temptations of the devil, he quotes from this teaching in Deuteronomy (Matt 4:4, 7, 10; cf. Deut 8:3; 6:13, 16).

Matthew’s Gospel, in particular, presents Jesus as recapitulating the story of Israel. He undergoes the same tests and experiences yet proves faithful where they had failed. The baptism of Jesus recalls the Red Sea crossing, after which Jesus was “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Matt 4:1), much as Israel had been led by the pillar of cloud and fire. The story of Jesus’s temptation echoes Israel’s wilderness experience, but with a Son who is obedient to his Father.

Matthew’s placing of the temptation on the high mountain—where Jesus is shown his inheritance of the kingdoms of the world—as the final in the sequence (but the second in Luke’s account) might also remind the reader of Deuteronomy 34. Like Moses on Mount Nebo, Jesus must die before he can enter the promise.

The Spirit’s role: distinct portrayals

The Spirit’s role is one of several differences between the Gospels’ accounts of the temptations. For instance, while each of the accounts tells us that Jesus went into the wilderness by the instigation of the Spirit, this fact is recorded in sharply contrasting ways.

In Matthew’s account, Jesus was “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Matt 4:1). This wording recalls descriptions of the Exodus (e.g., Exod 13:18; Jer 2:6; Amos 2:10).

In Mark, the Spirit “drove him out into the wilderness” (Mark 1:12), the language of expulsion and exile. Considering Mark’s focus upon Jesus as the Son of God, the one anointed to be king, we might consider David fleeing from Saul’s court and being tested in the wilderness, where he faithfully resisted the temptation to avenge himself or to seize the kingdom before God’s appointed time (e.g., 1 Sam 24–26). Jesus, David’s greater son, is similarly tested.

Luke’s description contrasts with both: “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit … was led by [or brought in by] the Spirit into the wilderness” (Luke 4:1). This wording is not unlike descriptions of prophetic visionary journeys, such as that related in Ezekiel 37:1: “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley.” Luke’s account of Jesus’s baptism (Luke 3:21–23) already recalls the start of Ezekiel, where, in the thirtieth year by the river, the prophet saw the heavens opened and God descending (Ezek 1:1).

Satan’s 3 temptations

1. To turn stones into bread

Following Matthew’s ordering, the first temptation is to turn stones into bread. In the context, which mentions Jesus’s hunger, this temptation appeals to Jesus’s natural desire for food after forty days of fasting. While this would seem to be an entirely reasonable thing for Jesus to do under the circumstances, as he is being led by the Spirit in his fast, doing so would prioritize satisfying his intense physical hunger over pursuing his mission.

Jesus responds to the devil by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, where Moses reminded the Israelites of the way that God taught that obedience and dependence through their hunger and his miraculous provision of the manna. Jesus was in a similar situation, and he entrusted himself to God’s care.

2. To cast himself from the temple

The second temptation, for Jesus to cast himself down from the “wing” of the temple, is a difficult one to interpret. Some commentators understand it as the temptation to perform a dramatic sign, causing people to believe in him. Attractive as this interpretation might be, I think it more likely relates to the temple as the symbol of the realm of God’s special presence amidst his people.

The temptation was a temptation to abandon the house, and Israel with it. Quoting from Psalm 91, the devil assured Jesus that God would protect him if he did so. Had Jesus not resisted it, he could have abandoned Israel and his mission of salvation. God would have protected him, and he would have saved his own skin (much as Moses could have allowed God to destroy the children of Israel and start again with him alone in Exodus 32:10), but God’s house would have been surrendered to the devil along with the people whom he was meant to save from destruction.

Deuteronomy 6:16, which Jesus quoted in response, reminded Israel of Massah, where they had questioned God’s good purpose for and presence with them. Israel had rebelled against God’s leading of them into the difficulties of the wilderness, but God’s presence is to be known in the path of his leading. Rejecting that path in order to avoid its difficulties put God to the test.

3. To receive the kingdoms of the world

Like the second, the third temptation, to receive all the kingdoms of the world by submitting to the devil, offered Jesus an alternative to the cross. Instead of the way of the cross, Jesus could simply bow to the devil, receiving rule without suffering, gaining the good end of the kingdom through satanic means. We could compare this to David’s temptation to gain the kingdom by assassinating Saul in 1 Samuel 24 and 26: While he was to receive the kingdom, he had faithfully to endure suffering to do so.

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Jesus’s rejection in Nazareth: the temptation’s sequel

Luke’s account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is followed by his rejection in Nazareth. It is illuminating to read it alongside Luke’s ordering of the temptations (where Matthew’s second and third temptations are reversed in their ordering), as there are parallels with each.

After Jesus declares the words of Isaiah 61:1–2 from the scroll, the people marveled “at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth” (Luke 4:22). When Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 in response to his first temptation in Luke’s account, the second half of the verse (“but … by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord”) was missing, but the description of the people’s response recalls it.

As Jesus declares his mission from the words of the scroll, he is showing what it means for him to live by the word of God.²⁸ Jesus’s food is to do the will of God, to perform the mission he is given (John 4:31–34). Like Ezekiel, Jesus has “eaten” the scroll. The words of Isaiah 61:1–2 are not mere lifeless words on a text but words that come forth from his very self.

Luke’s second temptation, to bow to the devil in order to receive the kingdoms of the world, is mirrored in the temptation the people of Nazareth would present: to serve them and the interests of his hometown over God. The Nazareth episode ended with the people trying to cast Jesus down from a cliff on the edge of their town, once again presenting him with the temptation to abandon the people he had come to save.

Luke’s account of the temptation concludes by telling the reader that Satan “departed from him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). It seems reasonable to connect this to the passion narrative. In Gethsemane, Jesus is once again tempted to live by something other than the Word of God. He could have refused to drink the cup and avoided his suffering, yet he faithfully drinks it (Luke 22:42). He could have sought the rule of the kingdoms of the world through fleshly or satanic means, striking those who came to arrest him with the sword (Luke 22:49–53). He faced the third temptation again when, on the cross, he was mocked and told to come down and save himself (Luke 23:35–39). He could have done so, but in the process would have abandoned us.

What do we learn?

Each of the things held out to Jesus in his temptation were good things—satisfaction for his hunger, God’s protection, and the inheritance of the kingdoms of the world—but Jesus refused to seize them, as Adam had seized the forbidden fruit, outside of God’s will. Unlike our first father, he committed himself as a righteous Son to the path of obedience, firmly setting in its opening episode the course that his entire public ministry would follow.

Jesus’s three temptations are guises of the temptations of the flesh (hunger), the world (to save ourselves from the pain, persecution, and rejection that come in the path of faithfulness), and the devil (to gain power by serving something or someone other than God).

We all face temptations from these same sources, and our Savior’s example in resisting them can assure us that, by his Spirit, we can resist temptation, too. He can sympathize with our weaknesses—having encountered them in a far more pronounced form than we ever could—yet also enable us to overcome them (Heb 4:15–16; 1 Cor 10:13).

In Jesus’s responses to his temptations, he demonstrated the importance of knowledge of God’s Word as a sword with which to repel Satan’s accusations and attacks. Those who live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord have the resources they need to answer the devil’s lies and distortions.

In resisting the devil, we do not follow uncharted paths. We walk in the way of Jesus, who, as the Angel of the Lord went before Israel, can similarly lead us into—and through—our personal wildernesses of testing, and finally to enjoyment of the glorious promises that are laid up for us beyond them.

Share your thoughts

How does Jesus’s temptation shape your understanding of his mission? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Resources for further reflection

The Work of Christ: What the Events of Jesus’ Life Mean for You

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Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ

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The Ache for Meaning: How the Temptations of Christ Reveal Who We Are and What We’re Seeking

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The Truth about Lies: The Unlikely Role of Temptation in Who You Will Become

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The Last Adam

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Temptations of Jesus in Early Christianity (Library of New Testament Studies | LNTS/JSNTS)

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• What’s Typology? Patterns of Creation in Redemptive History
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When Paul says that gentiles “do what the law requires” (Rom 2:14) and have “the work of the law written on their hearts” (Rom 2:15), is he describing morally conscious pagans who have God’s natural law or believing gentiles who experience the inward transformation of the new covenant? And how does this inform our reading of Paul’s teachings on judgment according to works just prior (Rom 2:6–11)? On this episode of What in the Word?, Kirk E. Miller sits down with Dr. Jarvis Williams to work through the interpretive issues.

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Episode guest: Jarvis Williams

Dr. Jarvis J. Williams serves as Professor of New Testament interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, having taught at Southern Seminary since 2013. His primary research interests focus on Pauline theology, Pauline soteriology, Romans, Galatians, and soteriology in Second Temple Judaism. He is the author of numerous books on Paul’s letters, Pauline theology, and a biblical theology of the people of God, including:

• Paul’s Gospel in Romans: Vertical, Horizontal, and Cosmic Dimensions
• Galatians (New Covenant Commentary Series)
• The Spirit, Ethics, and Eternal Life: Paul’s Vision for the Christian Life in Galatians
• Christ Redeemed ‘Us’ from the Curse of the Law: A Jewish Martyrological Reading of Galatians 3:13 (Library of New Testament Studies)
• Christ Died for Our Sins: Representation and Substitution in Romans and Their Jewish Martyrological Background
• Redemptive Kingdom Diversity: A Biblical Theology of the People of God
• One New Man: The Cross and Racial Reconciliation in Pauline Theology
• Colossians & Philemon, New Word Biblical Themes (Forthcoming)

Episode synopsis:

Setting the stage: Romans 1:18–3:20

In Romans 1:18–3:20, Paul presents a unified argument with a unified aim: to establish that both Jews and gentiles stand guilty before God.

Paul opens by emphasizing gentile transgression, cataloguing the kinds of vices that Jewish readers of his day would readily condemn (Rom 1:18–32). But Paul will soon extend that indictment beyond the gentiles. Already, Paul’s reference to “all ungodliness and unrighteousness of humanity” suggests Jews are included. By the time we reach Romans 2, this implication becomes explicit.

God is impartial, Paul insists (Rom 2:11), judging on the basis of obedience, not ethnic identity or covenant privilege. Whereas the gospel is God’s power to save believers, “the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16), God’s standard of judgment is the same, “to the Jew first and also the Greek” (Rom 2:9). Merely possessing the law is of no advantage if one does not obey it (Rom 2:25). It is the doers, not the hearers, of the law who will be justified in God’s eschatological judgment (Rom 2:12–13).

Jewish privileges are real, no doubt, including being entrusted with the oracles of God (Rom 3:1–2). But they do not thereby have an automatic advantage in God’s final judgment (Rom 3:9). All—Jews and gentiles alike—are under the power and condemnation of sin (Rom 3:9–18). Thus, no one—Jew or gentile—will be justified by means of works of the law (Rom 3:19–20).

It’s within this broader argument that we encounter Romans 2:14–15 where Paul speaks of gentiles who do obey the law.

What makes Romans 2 so difficult?

At the heart of the debate over Romans 2:14–15 is the question, Who are these gentiles who obey the law from the heart? Paul speaks of gentiles—those who do not possess the Mosaic law—nonetheless doing what the law requires. Is Paul talking about non-Christian pagans merely operating out of a common, God-given sense of morality? Or is Paul describing gentile believers who partake of the new covenant’s inward transformation?

Beyond this question, Dr. Jarvis Williams enumerates six additional difficulties of Romans 2:

1. Who is Paul’s target in Romans 2 specifically: Jews, gentiles, or both?
2. How can Paul say doers of the law will be justified in Romans 2:13, when in Romans 3:20 he insists that no one is justified by works of the law?
3. Who are the “doers of the law” in Romans 2:13? Are they faithful Jews, morally serious pagans, non-Christians who respond savingly to general revelation, mere hypothetical perfect law-keepers, or Spirit-empowered believers whose hearts are circumcised?
4. Is Paul writing primarily to gentiles or to a mixed Jewish–gentile congregation? If the former, is Romans 2 only relevant to gentiles?
5. Is Paul presenting his own views in Romans 1:18–3:20 or is he presenting the views of another, which he intends to critique?
6. In Romans 2:17, when Paul addresses someone “who calls himself a Jew,” is he addressing an idealized Jewish teacher or a gentile proselyte who wants to be identified as Jewish?

These questions don’t stand in isolation. Your answer to one affects your answer to the others. This episode, though, focuses specifically on the identity of those mentioned in Romans 2:14–15.

View 1: Moral pagans with consciences

One traditional view takes Paul to refer to moral pagan (non-Christian) gentiles. According to this interpretation, Paul observes how even people who never received Sinai’s revelation nonetheless, by nature of their God-given conscience, exhibit a degree of instinctive alignment with the law’s moral norms and requirements. In this view, Paul’s description here fits what has been traditionally called natural law.

Jarvis outlines five arguments for this perspective:

1. “By nature” (Rom 2:14) is taken to modify doing what the law requires. So most translations: “gentiles … do by nature” (KJV; NIV; NET; see also ESV; NRSVue); “gentiles … instinctively perform” (NASB2020; see also NLT). Gentiles do the things of the law by nature, meaning through moral intuition rather than divine revelation, and will be judged accordingly.
2. Paul refers to “the work of the law written on the heart” (Rom 2:15; emphasis added) rather than the new covenant’s promise of the law of God written on the heart (Jer 31:33). This, along with the phrase, “the things of the law” (Rom 2:14), are taken to refer to norms of the law that gentiles carry out according to their innate moral intuitions.
3. Paul says these gentiles are “a law to themselves” (Rom 2:14). This is taken to mean that gentiles have a natural witness to God’s moral norms within themselves (i.e., the conscience).
4. This view holds that the reference to “consciences” in Romans 2:15 explains the immediately preceding reference to “the work of the law written on the heart.” The latter does not refer to the promise of the new covenant, but the conscience.
5. The presence of both accusing and excusing thoughts in Romans 2:15 suggests Paul is describing someone with an afflicted conscience, not the believer.

View 2: Regenerate gentile believers

An alternative view, which Jarvis favors, maintains that Romans 2:14–15 describes regenerate gentiles who have experienced the promised transformation of the new covenant. Jarvis offers five arguments in support:

1. The connecting word “for” at the beginning of Romans 2:14–15 connects it to Romans 2:13, meaning Paul is explaining the “doers of the law who will be justified” (believers), not introducing a different, tangential subject.
2. The “work of the law written on the heart” is a clear allusion to the new covenant (Jer 31:33). So too the Old Testament anticipated a circumcision of the heart (see Deut 10:16; 30:6, Jer 4:4; contrast with Jer 9:25–26) and God’s Spirit causing obedience (Ezek 36:25–27). Paul refers to both these things in Romans 2:25–29, increasing the likelihood that Romans 2:14–15 is in fact an allusion to the new covenant.
3. Paul never clearly invokes the idea of “natural law,” which he presumably could have done if that was his intended meaning.
4. The phrase “by nature” should be connected to having the law, not doing it. According to this translation, gentiles did not receive the law by birth (as Jews did), and yet they now genuinely do the things it requires. This matches the use of “nature” in Romans 2:27, where Paul speaks of Jews who are “naturally” circumcised. He uses “nature” in both cases to matters that are tied to Jewishness, not “natural law.”
5. Jarvis takes Romans 2:15 to describe two groups, not one. In the final judgment (see Rom 2:16), there will be those whose thoughts condemn them and others whose consciences clear them. In other words, here Paul identifies two eschatological outcomes rather than one experience of ambivalence.

Paul’s argument in Romans 2:25–29 is particularly important, functioning as an interpretive lens for what he’s already said in Romans 2:14–15. Paul says the uncircumcised gentile who keeps the law’s righteous requirements will have their uncircumcision reckoned as circumcision in the eschatological judgment (Rom 2:26)—this despite the fact that uncircumcision itself is a failure to keep the Mosaic law! In contrast, Jews who do not observe the law will have their circumcision regarded as uncircumcision (Rom 2:25), i.e., they will be considered part of God’s people. Notice how this overlaps with Romans 2:12–16, where Paul says that the law’s doers—not its mere hearers—will be justified on “that day” (i.e., the day of the LORD) (Rom 2:12–16).

So in Romans 2:25–29, Paul identifies the “doers of the law” from Romans 2:12–16 as “inward Jews”: those who possess the Holy Spirit and whose heart has been circumcised. Further supporting this is Romans 8:1–9, where Paul also talks of the work of the Spirit fulfilling the law’s requirements among believers (Rom 8:4).

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Judgment according to works (Rom 2:6–11)?

How does this reading of Romans 2:12–16 inform our understanding of Romans 2:6–11, where Paul speaks of a final judgment according to works? Here Paul says that those who do good will receive eternal life, while those who do evil will meet God’s wrath.

Some interpret Paul as presenting a hypothetical based on a genuine principle of justice. According to this view, Paul describes what would happen for anyone who perfectly kept the law, knowing full well that no one does. Paul discloses God’s standard of judgment (i.e., obedience to the law) only to show us that it leaves us all condemned. So Paul concludes in Romans 3:20, “by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

A second view, held by Jarvis, maintains that Romans 2:6–11 describes a genuine eschatological reality. The obedience Paul describes here is that which results from the Spirit-wrought heart circumcision of Romans 2:25–29. These are the “doers of the law who will be justified” in Romans 2:13. These include those gentiles who have “the work of the law … written on their hearts,” so causing them to obey the law (Rom 2:14–25).

Jarvis emphatically insists, we are justified by faith alone apart from our works. He is not arguing that this obedience earns justification. Nonetheless, in the eschatological judgment, believers will display evidence that the verdict of “not guilty” is true. The Spirit fulfills the righteous requirement of the law within them (Rom 8:4). They fulfill the law by loving God and loving neighbor (Rom 13:8–10). This transformation is entirely owing to God’s grace in Christ.

The rhetorical and practical function of Romans 2

Romans 2 contributes to Paul’s overall argument in Romans 1:18–3:20, establishing that Jew and gentile alike stand condemned before God and in need of salvation. This “bad news” must be heard and felt before the good news can land with its proper weight.

Mere possession of the law, or ancestral membership in God’s covenant people, provides no shelter from God’s judgment. God demands real obedience, and the only path to real obedience runs through the heart-transforming work of the Spirit, available in Christ alone. So we must yield our lives to Christ by faith alone in light of this coming judgment.

Paul’s epistle also seems intended to resolve tensions in the Roman community between “weak” and “strong” Christians (see Rom 14:1–15:13). If Jewish–gentile differences in some measure stand behind these conflicts, Paul’s argument in Romans 2 prepares for his forthcoming exhortation: Since God himself judges and saves without partiality, we too must receive one another across ethnic and cultural lines.

Advice for preaching and teaching

For those preparing to preach or teach Romans 2:14–15, consider the following practical advice:

1. Be honest about the difficulty. Good, careful scholars differ on this text. Be humble. Acknowledge the debate, yet don’t let it paralyze your exposition.
2. Don’t isolate Romans 2:14–15 from its larger argument. This passage only makes sense when read as part of the sustained argument that runs through Romans 2:1–29. Jumping straight to Paul’s mention of the conscience, for instance, without tracing his appeal to the new covenant will produce a tunnel-visioned interpretation.
3. Keep the eschatological stakes in view. Paul is consistently focused on the eschatological day of judgment in this section: Who will be condemned, who will be exonerated, and on what basis? The whole argument is oriented toward that horizon.
4. Preach the transformative nature of the gospel. What is impossible for dead hearts, i.e., striving to keep external commands, God fulfills in us through Christ. The age of the Messiah has arrived, the Spirit has been poured out, and the obedience that the law always demanded is now a living reality for those who belong to Jesus, Jew and gentile alike.

Logos values thoughtful and engaging discussions on important biblical topics. However, the views and interpretations presented in this episode are those of the individuals speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Logos. We recognize that Christians may hold different perspectives on this passage, and we welcome diverse engagement and respectful dialogue.

Let us know what you think

Which interpretation of Romans 2:14–15 do you find most persuasive? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Jarvis Williams’ suggested resources on Romans

Romans, Second Edition (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament | BECNT)

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Romans: Text, Readers, and the History of Interpretation

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The Letter to the Romans, 2nd ed. (New International Commentary on the New Testament | NICNT)

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Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Pillar New Testament Commentary | PNTC)

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Paul’s Gospel in Romans: Vertical, Horizontal, and Cosmic Dimensions

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Protestants—particularly perhaps North American Protestants—sometimes struggle with the notion that “tradition” has a positive role in biblical interpretation. For modern exegetes to take their cues from the Church Fathers and Mothers, for example, might strike some as a betrayal of sola scriptura or “Scripture alone,” a bedrock principle of the sixteenth-century Reformation and Protestant identity ever since. If we begin from the assumption that biblical authority and exegetical tradition are at odds, then the recent conversations about “Reformed catholicity” can only strike us as misguided at best, or even as a contradiction in terms.²⁹

My aim in this article is to explore how the catholic tradition’s “exegetical lore” (to borrow a phrase from the late David Steinmetz) can in fact deepen our understanding of the Bible without threatening its unique authority in the church’s life and ministry.³⁰ I offer two historical case studies from the Reformation period that feature well-known Protestant theologians drawing upon patristic sources to untie difficult interpretive “knots” in the biblical text.

1. John Calvin (1509–1564) dialoguing intently with a single Church Father over a famous crux in 1 Corinthians 15:18–19.
2. A controversial passage in a Pauline Epistle (Rom 8:19–22), around which Martin Bucer (1491–1551) assembles a roundtable of early Christian voices.

Either approach can serve as a model for theologians and homilists today.

John Calvin: patristic writers as dialogue partners

The Church Fathers and Mothers can serve as dialogue partners in the work of biblical exegesis. I use the term “dialogue” advisedly. While early Protestant interpreters often presented a catalog of patristic views before offering up their own solution to a tricky passage (see the example of Bucer, below), they would also sometimes choose a single figure from the early church and build their interpretation around points of agreement and disagreement.

A helpful model for this “conversational” approach can be found in John Calvin’s Commentary on 1 Corinthians (1546).³¹ Calvin cites or alludes to many early Christian writers in this expansive work. However, one voice clearly rises above the rest: John Chrysostom (c. 347–407).³²

His engagement with the famous “golden-mouthed” (Greek chrysostomos) preacher bore fruitful results when it came to 1 Corinthians 15:18–19. These verses appear in the Apostle Paul’s reply to those who claimed that “there is no resurrection of the dead” at the end of time (1 Cor 15:12). In that case, Paul retorted, Christians were “of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19). Without the resurrection, the faithful dead were simply dead and had no hope.

Paul’s argument raises a number of vexing questions. Interpreters down the centuries have noted the potential problem it poses for traditional Christian notions of the afterlife. It looked as if Paul had overlooked a third possibility besides resurrection and annihilation. Even if their bodies were not raised, what if Christians experienced a spiritual afterlife as souls in heaven? Such a disembodied salvation might even have resonated with the Hellenistic Corinthians, as modern commentators have noted.³³

Calvin’s contemporary Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) wanted the Apostle Paul at least to acknowledge that possibility, and he was irked when he did not. While affirming his own orthodox belief in the bodily resurrection, Vermigli went so far as to fault Paul for shoddy reasoning in this passage. After all, “even if the resurrection of the dead were false, could not our souls still be more blessed than those of the impious?”³⁴ For Vermigli, the answer was obviously yes, meaning that Paul’s words, if taken too literally, ran the risk of undercutting belief in an immortal soul.

Calvin, for his part, agreed that the apostolic logic appeared flawed—at first glance. “If we concede the soul’s essence to be immortal, this argument, prima facie, appears to be weak,” he conceded.³⁵ Yet Calvin was convinced that the seeming hole in Paul’s reasoning was in fact a doorway to a deeper truth. This was the point where his dialogue with Chrysostom proved crucial. It is also where he can serve as an exemplar for interpreters using patristic sources today.

Calvin argued that the Scripture intentionally omitted any mention of the immortal soul to establish an important principle for both Christian anthropology and eschatology. Human beings were not just souls. They indeed had souls, but from a biblical perspective, the human being was incomplete, not fully realized in God’s image, except as a union of soul and body. A disembodied afterlife for souls in heaven would therefore leave us maimed and imperfect creatures. Instead, our eschatological redemption had to take the form of resurrection, just as the apostle had said.

Calvin had found this very conclusion in Chrysostom’s homilies on 1 Corinthians. The Reformer deliberately echoed the preacher’s language in his Commentary. “All [the Christian’s] happiness and consolation hang on the resurrection alone,” Calvin insisted, which simply expanded Chrysostom’s remark that “all things hang on the resurrection.”³⁶ Calvin’s dialogue with this voice from the Christian past had arguably given him greater insight into the biblical text than Vermigli, who (in this instance, at least) had limited himself to a rhetorical and linguistic analysis.

That is not to say that Calvin always agreed with Chrysostom. He had earlier declared a particular opinion of the preacher (on 1 Cor 1:11) downright “absurd.”³⁷ However, these moments of dissension do not invalidate the model I am proposing but are essential to it. Calvin did not esteem Chrysostom (or any of the Church Fathers and Mothers) as infallible authorities. They were instead partners in a common enterprise. They were the trustworthy faces across the table from you with a Bible open between. Calvin’s commitment to the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura did not necessitate reading Scripture solo.

Faithful interpreters could and should weigh views from the church’s past. Exegetes who wish to emulate Calvin’s “conversational” use of Chrysostom today might frame a sermon or essay around a dialogue with a specific patristic writer. Focusing on that one source, they could list out points of agreement and disagreement on the biblical passage at hand. The finished exposition could then be framed explicitly around this exchange, or else it could hold its conclusions and insights in the background (ideally acknowledging the patristic source in the notes). Either approach would be consonant to the way early Protestants utilized the Church Fathers and Mothers in their exegesis.

Martin Bucer: patristic writers in roundtable

A second example from the sixteenth century shows how a patristic dialogue could be expanded into something like a roundtable discussion.

The Strasbourg Reformer Martin Bucer influenced many streams of Protestant thought, including mentoring a young Calvin and contributing to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.³⁸ Bucer was a pioneering Hebraist and produced lengthy commentaries on the Psalms and the Prophets.³⁹ He also modeled for his many pupils how the Protestant commitment to “Scripture alone” could still maintain a robust connection to the Church Fathers and Mothers, as well as the catholic tradition more broadly. His massive Metaphrasis on Romans (1536) painstakingly works through each verse of the epistle, often pausing to register relevant patristic and medieval opinions along the way.⁴⁰ Nowhere were the benefits of his roundtable approach more evident than in the ever-controversial Romans 8:19–22.

Scholars continue to debate the identity of the “creation” (Greek κτίσις, Latin creatura) that Paul describes as “groaning together in the pains of childbirth” (Rom 8:22) and “longing for the revealing of the children of God” (Rom 8:19). In the ancient church, Augustine of Hippo (c. 354–430) had argued that “creation” referred only to human beings, emphatically denying any reference to nonhuman creatures such as “trees, vegetation, stones or other creatures of this sort.”⁴¹ This anthropocentric line had been largely adopted by Western interpreters through the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas had cited Augustine to argue that earthly creatures (humans excepted) would vanish completely in the eschaton.⁴² This view was also fiercely defended by Roman Catholic thinkers in the sixteenth century as the “teaching of the church.”⁴³ By this time, the notion that “creation” in Romans 8 meant “humanity” was so ingrained that it had become simply common sense: part of the exegetical lore passed down by generations of Western commentators.

Bucer went a different way, guided by patristic figures who stood outside the Western consensus. He knew well that “Blessed Augustine … understands this to mean ‘we ourselves,’ [i.e. humans], whom he supposes the Apostle to have called ‘all creation.’”⁴⁴ He also recognized that Aquinas and other scholastic doctors had endorsed this reading.⁴⁵ All the same, Bucer declared the “reasoning” (ratio) behind this weighty tradition to be “not firm” (firma non est).⁴⁶ He then brought forth a catalog of Church Fathers, including Origen of Alexandria, Ambrosiaster, and Chrysostom, all of whom had argued that “creation” in this passage signified, well, creation: the entire cosmos that God had made. With this support, Bucer concluded that the Apostle Paul was in fact promising the redemption of the whole physical world in Romans 8. He even ventured the opinion that plants, animals, and the earth itself would share in some sense in the final resurrection, though he did not wish Christians to divide over this point.⁴⁷

Bucer had defied over a millennium of exegetical common sense. In the process, he helped to birth something of a new Protestant tradition. His pupil Calvin also adopted his “cosmic” interpretation of the text, as would later figures like John Wesley (1703–1791).⁴⁸ You can arguably hear echoes of Bucer in modern conversations about eschatology and the “new creation” sparked by writers such as N. T. Wright.⁴⁹ And it all began with Bucer laying out patristic views on a particular Scripture and recognizing that many ancient voices contradicted the received wisdom of the mid-1500s.

Bucer no less than Calvin refused to raise the Church Fathers and Mothers to the level of infallibility: Scripture alone held that status. However, by assembling a roundtable of patristic perspectives, Bucer was able to see beyond the limits of his own intellectual setting. The pre-Augustinian Fathers showed him possibilities that might never have occurred to him otherwise.

Interpreters today might employ the roundtable approach similarly. Every moment in church history suffers from intellectual and cultural blind spots. The present is no exception. Taking the time to gather a “cloud of witnesses” (cf. Heb 12:1) from the Christian past helps us to glimpse new interpretive horizons and view even familiar landmarks in the Bible from new angles. Even if we end up sticking with the current consensus (whatever that might be), we will have benefited from the conversation. If nothing else, we will have learned that wise and pious eyes can see differently from ours.

Takeaways

Calvin and Bucer were not unique among the Reformers for revering the Church Fathers and Mothers and drawing on their insights for biblical interpretation. The early Protestant reception of “exegetical lore” from the patristic and medieval eras is in fact a vibrant subfield within Reformation studies. I have listed a few works below that will help interested readers delve more deeply.

Today’s students and ministers who wish to follow the Reformers’ lead might begin (where possible) by building their library of premodern commentary literature. The Reformers themselves often labored to edit and publish new editions of patristic works in the sixteenth century. Alongside modern historical-critical commentaries (which also surely have a place), pastors might avail themselves of resources, such as InterVarsity’s Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series (1998–2010), which represent a patristic roundtable in the Bucerian mold. This in turn might lead to a deeper connection with a specific figure from the early church. Translated collections of Augustine, Chrysostom, and many others have been and continue to be published. These two belong in your church library.

Once more, the goal of such ressourcement is not to replace biblical authority but to deepen our appreciation of it. The interpreters of the past (including the Reformers!) were not infallible. Bucer might find Augustine’s reasoning on a particular issue “not firm” and Calvin might occasionally deem Chrysostom “absurd,” yet neither would think to abandon their conversation with the tradition. Sola scriptura was never a call to “go it alone” in the work of biblical exegesis. Rather, we join hands with the Fathers and Mothers who have gone before us in the common task of proclaiming God’s divine Word to his people.

Share your thoughts

Are sola scriptura and exegetical tradition at odds? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Steven Tyra’s recommended resources

• Steinmetz, David C. Luther in Context. Baker Academic, 2002.
• ———. Calvin in Context. Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2010.

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Pastoring has always been difficult—and yet it has unique difficulties today.

The last decade has seen a lot of cultural disruption and convulsion. This convulsion has produced paradoxical results: ministry in our moment has become both increasingly precarious and increasingly opportune. In some ways, ministry is more difficult now, but we also see unique opportunities because of the tensions.

While some pastors are burning out from exhaustion and others are burning it all down with theological compromises or moral failures, many pastors are faithfully pushing forward. Many pastors are doing biblically-driven, gospel-centered, and mission-focused ministry. If that’s you, then you’re on the right track. And if you’ve drifted, there’s no better time to realign your priorities than now.

I also want to encourage Christians and church members to evaluate faithfulness in their pastors (and themselves) by a big-picture, long view of faithfulness. We should use the lens of Scripture, the gospel, and the mission as our reference. If these things are in order, many other matters fall into place, no matter what our preferences might be.

These three characteristics are all related, but each has a unique role in the ministry and calling of pastors. Let’s look at each one more closely.

Table of contents

1. Faithful pastors are driven by the Bible more than the culture
2. Faithful pastors are centered on the gospel more than partisan politics
3. Faithful pastors are focused on the mission more than the moment

1. Faithful pastors are driven by the Bible more than the culture

Christian ministry should be deeply rooted in the inerrant Word of God. Pastors should be trained in the Bible, and in turn we should be training and discipling people in the Bible. This is the heartbeat of pastoral and Christian leadership:

Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and teaching. (2 Tim 4:2)

For many pastors, this looks like formal theological education. I love all of our Bible-driven seminaries and schools of Christian higher education, like the Talbot School of Theology, where I’m the dean. Talbot and many others take the Bible seriously. That’s a nonnegotiable. But whether or not we do formal education, we must be students of the Word. “Bring the books” (2 Tim 4:13), Paul asked when in prison.

We must be biblically driven as pastors and church leaders. Pastors are not to be commentary machines, offering their opinion on every single issue. In fact, pastors should not comment on every single thing. As a pastor, I want the Bible to shape what I’m communicating. Then when some things do rise to the level of needing attention, we let the Bible drive the discussion.

Being driven by the Bible more than the culture doesn’t mean we don’t engage culture. Just the opposite. We engage the culture—and we let the Bible set the agenda.

My calling—and yours—is to teach and lead from Scripture. Tools like Logos (which means “Word” in Greek!) have long been used by pastors to engage deep study of God’s Word—and Logos is now more accessible than ever. I’m really glad about that, as more pastors and Christians can dig deeply into serious study of the Bible.

2. Faithful pastors are centered on the gospel more than partisan politics

At the core of the work of pastoral ministry is the work of discipleship: growing Christians in maturity by preaching Jesus.

We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. (Col 1:28)

However, many pastors have run into opposition here from Christians being discipled by cable news and shaped by social media more than the Bible.

The influence of these things forms—or deforms—people in many ways. Discussions on these platforms quickly become quite toxic, amplifying our worst impulses through anonymous accounts. We have even seen pastors exposed for using anonymous accounts to divide their Christian brothers and sisters. We show our captivity as our lives are increasingly oriented around partisan politics. Our politics have taken on religious importance in our culture, a trend that has in turn made our politics, and our culture, less healthy.

Our political discourse casts all issues as either “Right” or “Left.” But pastors and Christians should interpret everything in light of the gospel, not partisan wedge issues. This gospel-centrality will put us at odds with both sides of the political debate at different points.

I’m ultimately more concerned with how people view the gospel than how they view my political opinions. The gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom 1:16) and the “most important” thing (1 Cor 15:3). So, we should never betray our gospel focus for political influence or partisan lobbying.

3. Faithful pastors are focused on the mission more than the moment

We’re in a disrupted, precarious, and opportune time. We see all kinds of division and fragmentation in churches, evangelical groups, and more. We get pressure from all sides. The disruption presents both danger and opportunity, confronting us with the key question, “Will the church stay focused on the mission or get sidetracked?”

Although these pressures are not unique to this moment, our moment presents several notable temptations that can sidetrack pastors from the mission.

A. Our moment tempts us to compromise theologically

As Jesus told us, “No one can serve two masters” (Matt 6:24). We’ve seen some pastors walk away, deconstruct, and reject biblical truth. On the other hand, some have turned their churches from discipleship and biblical teaching into pockets of partisan political activism. When we lose the truth, we lose the mission of showing and sharing the truth.

B. Our moment tempts us to give up in exhaustion and discouragement

Some pastors have seen tremendous growth and fruit in recent years, but many others have been exhausted since COVID, feeling the stinging arrows of discouragement repeatedly. But the fruit of the moment doesn’t dictate the calling of our mission. We are on the mission Jesus has given us, and the results are ultimately up to him. So, as Galatians 6:9 says, “Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.”

C. Our moment tempts us toward moral failure and sin

We’ve seen the fall of more prominent Christian leaders in just the last several months. Such massive and catastrophic failures start with small compromises. So we must guard our hearts and continue to seek the holiness of God. We’re all sinners in need of grace, but as saved sinners, our lives must increasingly match the magnitude of our message and mission. As we’re reminded, “Pay close attention to your life and your teaching; persevere in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim 4:16).

Our moment has challenges, but it also provides us with opportunities for the gospel—if we stay focused on the mission more than the moment.

Conclusion

I remain encouraged. I’ve read the end of the book: Jesus wins. Jesus has already won the victory. The kingdom has broken into the world (Mark 1:15). And Jesus will complete that victory when he returns: “For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor 15:25).

Jesus has won. Jesus wins. Jesus will win.

So, Christians, pray for your pastors to stick with the Bible, the gospel, and the mission. Look at them through the lens of these characteristics.

And pastors, let’s stay where God has called us, biblically-driven, gospel-centered, mission-focused, not settling for less important things.

Share your thoughts

What traits do you believe are most vital for pastoral endurance today? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

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I could tell this conversation would be difficult.

A church elder—I’ll call him John—had called, complaining about a young woman my wife and I were assisting. John was certain her reports of childhood abuse were greatly exaggerated, that she was inventing problems to injure her “fine” family. John didn’t trust secular psychology, which he believed had made me harmfully alarmist. In his view, abuse was exceedingly rare, not a prevalent problem.

The irony is that John belonged to a church that was doggedly committed to the authority of Scripture. The tragedy is that he, like countless other church leaders, was blind to all that Scripture says about abuse.

Yet as a young pastor, I was no different. I’ve since discovered hundreds of passages in Scripture about abuse. Abuse is woven throughout Scripture, offering rich teaching on what abuse is, how it affects us, and how God responds to it.

What is abuse?

Abuse is a dark topic. But it can only be rightly understood against a positive backdrop: Abuse, at its core, involves the diabolical corruption of God’s very good creation.

Genesis 1–2 recounts the magnificent way God made humans, male and female, in his image and likeness. That image gives us innate dignity and worth. Abuse attacks and distorts—though it does not eliminate—this. It strikes at the very essence of who we are as image bearers.

Abuse is also always a misuse of our God-given power. In the creation account, the second command given to the man and woman involves having dominion over all of creation (Gen 1:28). God entrusts his image bearers with power—physical, relational, sexual, economic, etc.—to be used positively for others and the world around us. Abuse inverts this: Power is used to exploit and harm. As the writer of Ecclesiastes observes, “power was on the side of their oppressor” (Eccl 4:1; cf. Mic 2:1).

That Scripture addresses abuse so repeatedly and forthrightly is itself significant. It tells us that in a fallen world, it is a frequent and tragic reality which the people of God must reckon with and address.

1. Sexual

Sexual abuse is essentially any nonconsensual sexual activity.⁵⁰

Scripture addresses sexual abuse in dozens of passages—and harshly condemns it without exception.⁵¹ For example, under Mosaic law, rape was a capital offense: The rapist was to be put to death, while the victim faced no penalty since she “has committed no sin” (Deut 22:25–26). Scripture recounts and condemns attempted homosexual rape (Gen 19:4–5), incestuous rape (2 Sam 13:11, 14), fatal gang rape (Judg 19), and rape as a weapon of war (Lam 5:11; Zech 14:2).

Most often, rape in Scripture involves brute physical force (e.g., 2 Sam 13:11, 14). But in other instances, it appears to involve different forms of power (political, spiritual, etc.) used to coerce and compel someone into unwanted sexual relations. Bathsheba’s “power rape” is the classic example (2 Sam 11).⁵² David was king when he sent soldiers to bring Bathsheba to him. She had no choice. Eli’s two evil sons’ sexual relations with women serving in the temple likely fit this same category of spiritually coercive abuse (1 Sam 2:22; 3:13).

2. Physical

Physical abuse is the use of physical violence against another person. Physical abuse can also involve the threat of violence, a common tactic among abusers (1 Kgs 19:1–2; Ps 73:6, 8; Acts 4:21).

Scripture documents hundreds of instances of physical abuse, again suggesting how tragically common it is and how seriously God takes it. It is instructive that the first instance of fatal physical abuse, the murder of Abel by his brother Cain (Gen 4:8), appears immediately after the fall. By Genesis 4:23, we have the first recorded act of domestic violence: Lamech threatens his two wives, “Adah and Zillah, listen to me … I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.” Then just two chapters later, God declares, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence” (Gen 6:11).

Throughout the rest of Scripture, physical abuse is described and condemned. It’s perpetrated by professing believers (2 Sam 11:14–25), pagans (Exod 2:11), political leaders (1 Sam 22:11–19), powerful men and women (Matt 14:1–11), and spiritual leaders (Jer 26:8; Hos 6:9; Matt 23:31–35).

3. Neglectful

Neglect is the failure of a parent or guardian to provide for the needs of those under their care (minors or vulnerable adults).

In the creation account, God gives humans the privilege and responsibility to cultivate the ground and care for the plants and animals he created (Gen 1:28; 2:5). How much more essential is it for parents to care properly for the children God has entrusted to them (cf. Ps 127:3)?

This explains why God’s condemnation of neglectful parents is so severe, declaring they have denied the faith and are worse than pagans (1 Tim 5:8).

4. Spiritual

Spiritual abuse involves the misuse of spiritual authority (leadership, the church, traditions, Scripture) against others. It typically involves forcing people to do that which does not align with Scripture, illegitimately elevating human rules on a par with it (Mark 7:6–13). But spiritual abuse is not only seen in the demands that are made, but also in how they are made. Thus, Scripture admonishes elders to not “lord it over” the flock entrusted to them (1 Pet 5:3).

Scripture is replete with examples of spiritual abuse. Old Testament priests were often condemned for misusing their spiritual power to take advantage of the people (Ezek 34:2–4; Zeph 3:3–4). The most notable spiritual abusers in the New Testament were the scribes and Pharisees who created human traditions which violated Scripture (Mark 7:8; cf. Jer 5:31). They crushed the people through their harsh, domineering exercise of authority (Matt 23:4; John 9:13–34). The early church also experienced abusive spiritual leaders who delighted in arrogantly weaponizing their authority over others (3 John 9–10).

5. Verbal

Verbal abuse involves using words to manipulate, belittle, deceive, or attack others (Pss 10:3–10; 64:2–5; Prov 26:28).

This is one of the most well attested forms of abuse in Scripture. It can also be just as harmful as other types of abuse. Reckless words can cut like a sword (Prov 12:18). A perverse tongue crushes the spirit (Prov 15:4). Abusive speech is like a hellish conflagration which destroys everything in its path (Jas 3:6). It is worth noting that of the seven sins listed as those God particularly hates, almost half are verbal (a lying tongue, a false witness, one who spreads dissension among brothers; Prov 6:16–19).

Verbal abuse often co-occurs with one or more other forms of abuse (Ps 140:1–5; Isa 59:2–4; Jer 9:3–8).

How does abuse affect us?

The psalmist states that abusers’ victims “are crushed, they collapse; they fall under his strength” (Ps 10:10). Since abuse strikes at the core of who we are as image bearers, it’s not surprising that abuse proves exceedingly harmful.

Scripture attests to its wide range of devastating effects.

1. Body

Modern scientific research reveals a robust biological basis for the effects of trauma.⁵³ Yet, despite being written in a pre-scientific age, it is striking how so many of Scripture’s descriptions of abuse’s impact are also somatic (bodily), harmonious with current scientific findings. These descriptions include: heart palpitations, muscle trembling, quivering lips (Hab 3:16; Nah 2:10), nightmares and shaking (Job 4:13–14), reduced blood flow resulting in pale skin (Dan 5:6; Nah 2:10), and muscle weakness and dry mouth (Ps 22:15).

2. Mind

Abuse often causes great psychological harm, including an overwhelming sense of grief and loss (2 Sam 13:16–19; Lam 1:1–2, 12), hopelessness and depression (Lam 1:16; 3:4–7; Ps 88:8–18), and crushing fear and anxiety (Ps 55:2–5).

3. Relationships

The triune God created us in his image as relational beings (Gen 1:26–27). We are made for relationship with God and each other. Thus, some of the most devastating effects of abuse are often relational.

Abuse creates distrust and fear of others (Ps 116:3, 11). It often estranges us from our community (2 Sam 13:20). Because of the abuse he suffered, the psalmist complains,

I am the utter contempt of my neighbors and an object of dread to my closest friends—those who see me on the street flee from me. I am forgotten as though I were dead. (Ps 31:11–12)

4. Shame

One of the most common and destructive effects of abuse is toxic shame, an overwhelming sense that one is irredeemably defective, dirty, and broken. David prayerfully articulates this shame:

You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed; all my enemies are before you. Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none. (Ps 69:19–20)

Tragically, abuse victims typically feel the shame that in fact is due their abusers (2 Sam 13:11–19).

Use scripture to heal, not harm. Watch or listen to Steven Tracey’s interview on Logos Live.

What is God’s response to abuse?

Given its devastating impact, this picture of abuse so far is quite bleak. So we must place abuse into its larger redemptive context. Throughout Scripture, God declares not only that he will heal and redeem abuse, but in the greatest of all ironies, he will use abuse as the ultimate means of redemption and cosmic restoration (1 Cor 1:18–25).

Throughout Scripture, God redeems that which is evil. God used the abuse and suffering of Joseph as the means of saving his family and the future Jewish nation (Gen 50:20). God transformed Saul, one of the most aggressive persecutors of the early church, into its greatest evangelist and theologian. God chose to use Paul’s own sufferings, especially at the hands of his abusers, as a means to spread the gospel (Acts 9:15–16).

But the quintessential way God has used evil to conquer evil is the abuse of Jesus, namely, his death leading to resurrection. Crucifixion in the ancient Roman world was far more than a hideous form of torture. It was the ultimate form of humiliation and permanent shame. But God chose to use this most extreme form of degrading abuse to break the power of death, destroy Satan, and to redeem humanity (Isa 53:1–12; Col 2:13–15; Heb 2:14–15). Abuse is hideously destructive—but evil doesn’t have the last word!

Since abuse victims often feel that God has abandoned them or, at best, has failed to see and address their suffering (Pss 10:1; 44:23–24), let’s briefly consider how Scripture describes God’s response to abuse.

Want to explore what Scripture says on topics like abuse? Try Logos’s Smart Search today.

1. God sees abuse

In contrast to the church’s and society’s all-too-frequent denial of abuse stands Scripture’s emphasis on God’s recognition of abuse.

Abusers carry out their abuse as if God doesn’t see or care (Ps 10:11; Ezek 9:9). However, nothing escapes his sight (Ps 10:14). God sees every instance of abuse and hears every survivor’s painful cry (Exod 3:7). Furthermore, he compassionately grieves over human suffering (Exod 3:7; Isa 63:9; Hos 11:8).

2. God hates abuse

God detests abuse and unrepentant abusers (Pss 5:6; 11:5). For instance, Ezekiel 18:10–13 states that physical violence as well as oppression against the poor are “abominations.” They are so odious to God, he declares that those who do these things are to be put to death. It is worth noting that some of Jesus’s harshest words were directed at those who harm children:

If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. (Matt 18:6)

Yet God desires that abusers turn from their evil ways. He desires that they repent and find life (Ezek 18:23).

3. God will judge abuse

Sadly, many abusers do not repent but continue with seeming impunity to harm others. This travesty of justice will be rectified.

There are many accounts in Scripture of God judging abusers within the scope of biblical history (Ezek 22:27–31; Nah 3:1–7). But the ultimate judgment of abuse is still future, as Scripture repeatedly testifies to God’s final judgment of the unrepentant. God promises one day to bring complete justice to this unjust, broken world (Rev 21:1–4; 22:1–5, 15).

4. God heals abuse

Not only will God judge unrepentant abusers, but he delights in healing every evil they have perpetrated. Jesus came to “bind up the brokenhearted,” to “comfort all who mourn,” and replace ashes with beauty (Isa 61:1–3). In our several decades of service to abuse survivors, we have repeatedly seen God heal and redeem the worst abuses imaginable.

We take great comfort in Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians that God “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God” (2 Cor 1:4). This is a magnificent promise. God wants to comfort us so that we can extend his comfort to others experiencing similar pain.

Only the God of the resurrection could bring healing and redemption out of evil—and he delights in doing this.

A word of hope

God cares deeply about abuse because he is a God of justice and mercy. Thus, Scripture has robust teachings on the nature and effects of abuse. Thankfully, Scripture unequivocally declares not just God’s hatred of abuse but his commitment to bring justice and to heal and redeem. As followers of the crucified and risen Jesus, we can offer God’s hope filled response to abuse to a world in desperate need of healing.

Share your thoughts

How does it shape your perspective to know that God’s Word is not silent on abuse? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts?

Steven Tracy’s suggested resources on abuse

To Heal or Harm: Scripture’s Use as Poison or Medicine for Abuse Survivors

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Mending the Soul, Second Edition: Understanding and Healing Abuse

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What Is a Girl Worth? My Story of Breaking the Silence and Exposing the Truth about Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics

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Is It My Fault? Hope and Healing for Those Suffering Domestic Violence.

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Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores

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A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing

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On Guard: Preventing and Responding to Child Abuse at Church

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The Long Journey Home: Understanding and Ministering to the Sexually Abused

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The landscape of global Anglicanism can be confusing, even for those well acquainted with it. In a single US city, one can find Anglican churches from two or three different dioceses of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), along with other congregations connected to the Anglican Province of America, the Anglican Mission in the Americas, the Anglican Catholic Church, the United Episcopal Church of North America, and The Episcopal Church.

All present themselves as Anglican. Yet even a little casual digging reveals more than minor differences in worship expression and ethos, including some major variance in doctrine and even disparate definitions of what constitutes the gospel. Matters become more confusing when the Anglican Church in North American and The Episcopal Church both claim to be part of the Anglican Communion while denying that status to the other.

Who are all these groups, and how does a church belong to the Anglican Communion, if such a thing exists?

What is a communion?

Anglicans don’t prefer the term “denomination” to describe their groups, since essentially all Anglicans would say there’s only one Anglican “denomination,” to which all belong. Instead, Anglicans prefer to speak of communions. A better way to understand the Anglican landscape, then, is to consider which of its groups are in communion with each other.

But first, we need to clarify what is meant by a communion.

Communion among congregations

In the ancient and medieval church, communion had two primary referents. On a local level, it referred to individual Christians being in good standing with a Christian community, signified by participation in the Lord’s Supper. The loss of good standing due to unrepentance of notorious sins could result in ex communicatio, or removal from church fellowship signified by the pastor’s refusing to admit the unrepentant person into participation in the Lord’s Supper.

Extending from this local understanding, the second use of communion referred to relationship between congregations. These relationships included groups of congregations under a single bishop (eventually called a diocese), as well as of a diocese to the wider church of that region whose leadership periodically assembled for a synod.

The good standing of a congregation with its bishop was signified by the bishop from time to time presiding at the Lord’s Supper among them. They took communion together. Likewise, the mutual fellowship and goodwill of the diocese with the wider church was signified by their bishop’s participation in the Lord’s Supper at a regional synod or council. Bishops represented their dioceses and stood “in communion” together—in mutual acknowledgement, respect, and affirmation of faithfulness to “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph 4:5). In cases where a congregation or a diocese violated the region’s norms of doctrine, worship, or behavior, correction was exercised by refusing participation in the Supper, effecting an excommunication. The offending parties were “out of communion.”

Communion among Protestants

With similar assumptions, Reformation churches struggled to establish new Communions, or broad coalitions of churches linked by agreement on doctrine and practice. Famously, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli failed to agree on a doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, preventing a unification of German-speaking Protestants and resulting in fragmented Communions. By the end of the sixteenth century, Protestants fell roughly into three Communions:

• Lutherans, who believed in a real presence of Christ located in the bread and wine at the Lord’s Supper, with grace conveyed by eating the sanctified elements
• The Reformed, who believed in a spiritual presence of Christ in believers of the gathered body, with grace conveyed through the act of faithful reception of the signs of the body and blood of Christ
• Zwinglians, who saw the Lord’s Supper as only a memorial meal intended to stir up faith among the participants

Agreement on these eucharistic theologies allowed for a Communion between like-minded churches. In the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (5:8), Richard Hooker situated the Church of England’s eucharistic theology among the Reformed, distinguishing it from the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Zwinglian. As such, pastors from Basel or Strasbourg or Geneva could not only receive communion in English churches but could also be installed as Church of England pastors.

Emergence of an Anglican Communion

How then did multiple churches come into Communion from the Church of England?

British colonial expansion

While the term Ecclesia Anglicanae had long been used to refer simply to the Church of the English people, meaning simply the church on the island of Britain, the modern English adjective “Anglican” first came into common use in the nineteenth century. By this time, the Church of England had become the authorized state denomination, standing among tolerated dissenting denominations and sects including Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, Quakers, and more extreme radicals.

Before British colonial expansion, there was also no Anglican Communion. There was simply the Church of England. When colonists began chartering lands overseas, they brought the Church of England alongside overseas English settlers and merchant communities. At different rates, churches of non-English people multiplied through mission efforts. These colonial churches were extensions of the Church of England, and their bishops received letters patent from the crown, which granted them the right of office, even if they were elected by the colonial church.

As things stood in 1850, it could be said that there were three independent Anglican churches in communion together:

• England (including Ireland until 1869), the mother church with high, low, and broad expressions of worship, whose dependents were scattered around the world in British colonies
• Scotland, a high church expression in extreme minority next to the dominant Presbyterian Church of Scotland
• United States, a broad church expression with mixed high and low church influences and persisting as one denomination among many

The term “Anglican Communion” first appeared in 1851 and was used officially at the first Lambeth Conference in 1867.⁵⁴ The title and the conference where it became official resulted from the spread of the church in overseas territories of the English.

The Colenso controversy and its consequences

The first Lambeth Conference (1867) and its articulation of an Anglican Communion was prompted by a problem in the colonial church of South Africa. The English Bishop of Natal, John W. Colenso, was charged by his archbishop Robert Gray with teaching heresy by denying the reliability and authority of the Bible.⁵⁵ Though found guilty and inhibited, Colenso appealed the church’s decision to the secular court of the Privy Council. The Communion-altering ruling stated,

The Church of England, in places where there is no Church established by law, is in the same situation with any other religious bodies, in no better but in no worse position, and the members may adopt rules for enforcing discipline within their own body.⁵⁶

This verdict legally disestablished every colonial Anglican church. Every church that had been founded through mission efforts by the Church of England had then to reconstitute itself as a new Anglican church in the colony. The heretic escaped, as the court ruled Colenso held his position by letters patent from the queen and could not be removed by the church in South Africa.

The first Lambeth Conference (1867)

In the wake of the case, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley, called a meeting at Lambeth Palace of all the colonial bishops, plus those of America and Scotland, to consider how the colonial churches could maintain formal relationship with the Church of England that had founded them. The Lambeth Conference of 1867 determined that since rules of governance—called canons—could now not transcend national boundaries, there was a canonical impossibility of authority over foreign churches issuing from the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Church of England. They formally resolved,

That, in order to the binding of the Churches of our Colonial Empire and the Missionary Churches beyond them in the closest union with the Mother Church, it is necessary that they receive and maintain without alteration the standards of Faith and Doctrine as now in use in that Church. That, nevertheless, each Province should have the right to make such adaptations and additions to the services of the Church as its peculiar circumstances may require. (Resolution 8)

The result of the first Lambeth Conference was an Anglican Communion in which authority over doctrine and discipline rested in autonomous national churches and in which Lambeth conferences every ten years would provide a venue for counsel and consideration of common issues, producing non-binding resolutions. Not even the doctrinal statement of the Church of England, the Thirty-Nine Articles, was held as legally binding on national churches. In fact, the Episcopal Church of the United States had never required clergy to subscribe to them.

The Chicago–Lambeth Quadrilateral (1888)

If not by formal governance or doctrine, then how could an Anglican Communion be recognized?

The next Lambeth conference produced a resolution, the Chicago–Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888 (so-called because it was first proposed at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Chicago two years earlier). It began as an effort to invite reunification with non-Anglican bodies but became a cipher for interpreting Anglicanism.

The first three minimal requirements for establishing communion were basic principles of Protestant Christianity, specifying that churches must hold to:

1. “The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as ‘containing all things necessary to salvation,’ and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.”
2. “The Apostles’ Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.”
3. “The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord—ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of Institution, and of the elements ordained by Him.”

The fourth principle, which flagged the Anglican church as continuously connected to antiquity, was distinct among Protestant denominations:

1. “The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.”

In practice, the quadrilateral located Anglican identity in the fourth distinctive. While the great majority of Anglicans from the Reformation to the nineteenth century had seen bishops as not a necessary feature of a true church but as providing the best governance, the quadrilateral made bishops in the historic succession an innovative key criterion of legitimate Anglicanism.

Recognition and advisory bodies

Following Lambeth 1888, official recognition of a national church’s belonging to the Anglican Communion largely fell to the Archbishop of Canterbury, by means of his invitation to Lambeth Conferences. Those churches in communion with the Church of England, as seen by the invitation, were recognized by all as part of the Anglican Communion.

Subsequently, two other advisory bodies were formed to further strengthen cooperation amongst the Communion: the Anglican Consultative Council (formed in 1971) and the Primates’ Council (formed in 1991).

Interested in more on Christian traditions?
See our full series on denominations.

Realignment of the Anglican Communion

With no overarching governance nor binding theological commitments, what counted as an Anglican church or Anglicanism became increasingly murky.⁵⁷

Independent Anglican bodies

Networks of churches in both England and the United States that became dismayed by theological drift within the Church of England or The Episcopal Church in the nineteenth century hived off and formed independent Anglican bodies—beginning with the Free Church of England (1841) and the Reformed Episcopal Church (1873) in America,⁵⁸ both of which formed from evangelical opposition to the perceived Roman Catholicizing of the national church.

Other organizations of Anglican churches seeking to hold on to certain threatened convictions branched off to form independent structures. Several groups of Continuing churches, named as such for their claim to continue the faithful stream of The Episcopal Church while the majority abandoned the traditional faith, formed during the 1960s and 1970s. Of these Continuing groups, the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC), Anglican Province of America (APA), Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK), Holy Catholic Church—Anglican Rite, and Anglican Church in America (ACA) tend to be Anglo-Catholic in doctrine and practice, while the United Episcopal Church of North America (UECNA) is Reformed and the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA) is evangelical and charismatic. All of these organizations accepted the Chicago–Lambeth Quadrilateral and have long been recognized as valid Anglican churches, yet not part of the Anglican Communion defined by participation at Lambeth conferences.

Additionally, churches that use the Book of Common Prayer for worship or adhere to the Thirty-Nine Articles might also claim to be Anglican. Such churches are often seen as Anglican in style but not ecclesiology.

Doctrinal crisis within the communion

A more dramatic and thorough realignment of the Anglican Communion itself resulted from a failure of the inherited structure to maintain the foundational principle of the Lambeth Quadrilateral: The Holy Scriptures as the revealed Word of God. When American bishops explicitly denied biblical authority, along with pushing for rites to bless same-sex marriages, many leaders of the Anglican Communion began to doubt the basic Christianity of Western bishops and to consider how correction could be effected. At the Lambeth Conference of 1998, the gathered representatives passed Resolution I.10, which affirmed the traditional Christian view of marriage as between one man and one woman, and called for pastoral care for those experiencing same-sex orientation without blessing same-sex unions.

When dioceses in the United States, Canada, and England subsequently elected bishops in homosexual relationships, member provinces of the Anglican Communion were pushed to determine whether and how the church could hold together. After the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, invited the offending bishops of the United States, Canada, and England to the Lambeth Conference of 2008, conservative bishops across the Communion organized an alternative meeting in 2008, the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem, to consider how the Anglican Communion could remain in relationship when communion had been broken.

Emerging from the conference, the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008 provided “the basis for the fellowship,” essentially restating the guiding norms of the English Reformation. The conference established a Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans identifiable by adherence to the Jerusalem Declaration. Finally, the gathering called for the formation of new structures to facilitate the Anglican Communion without reference to the instruments that had failed to bring discipline or maintain doctrinal unity, specifically the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Anglican Church in North America was also formally initiated by a resolution of GAFCON 2008.

Competing Anglican communions

Since 2008, two different narratives have claimed to speak authoritatively about what the Anglican Communion is.

The Anglican Communion, Canterbury

Centered on Canterbury, an office called The Anglican Communion maintains that inclusion in the Anglican Communion follows the colonial-era “instruments of unity”—the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, Anglican Consultative Council, and Primates’ Council.

This explanation is unapologetically institutional, continuing to lack doctrinal or worship standards while resting communion on recognition by the Church of England. On this account, The Episcopal Church, which has departed from historical Christian teaching on Scripture’s authority, is part of the Anglican Communion while the Anglican Church in North America, which holds to the historic doctrine, is not.

Global South Fellowship of Anglicans

The next two groups reject the colonial-era instruments as sufficient for communion and representing the vast majority of Anglicans globally. They have proposed approaches to communion that prioritize doctrinal and worship standards.

The first is the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA). GSFA has worked toward a covenantal structure that maintains provincial autonomy together with voluntary submission to an Anglican Covenant.

Some national churches of the GSFA have been reluctant to break communion with Canterbury and the Church of England, while acknowledging the insufficiency of those institutions to maintain unity. Thus, the GSFA approach holds to the traditional structures while shifting leadership to the Global South.

The Global Anglican Communion

The second is the Global Anglican Communion, a global Anglican structure established at a conference of bishops in Abuja, Nigeria, in March 2026. This Anglican structure emerged from the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON) which put forward the Jerusalem Declaration and sought to return to the original vision of Anglican unity expressed at the first Lambeth Conference. It draws together all Anglicans who wish to hold to the doctrinal and liturgical inheritance of Anglicanism.

Because inclusion requires only consent to the Jerusalem Declaration, the large majority of the Global Anglican Communion churches are also part of the GSFA. In fact, most leaders of the Global Anglican Communion leadership council are also part of the GSFA leadership.

The Global Anglican Communion definitively rejects Canterbury as the focal point for Anglican identity, instead locating the Communion in the Bible, creeds, and historic formularies of the Anglican Church. It is a traditional and doctrinal proposal rather than an institutional one. This move realigns the Anglican Communion to a shared heritage issuing from the Church of England, through global mission, and ever bounded by biblical authority.

Conclusion

Anglicanism is in the midst of a watershed moment. Many leaders hope that the fragmentary impulse, so common to Protestantism and resulting in denominations, can be reversed by a broad inclusion under basic doctrines and standards of the Anglican tradition. Rather than end up with unrelated denominations, communion can be held together and even expanded as churches in the Anglican tradition hold fast to the historic faith.

Share your thoughts

How would you describe Anglicanism’s “denominations”? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Benjamin Fischer’s recommended resources

• Fischer, Benjamin. Confessional Anglicanism. Anglican House, 2026.
• Chapman, Mark D., and Jeremy Bonner, eds. Costly Communion: Ecumenical Initiative and Sacramental Strife in the Anglican Communion. Anglican-Episcopal Theology and History. Brill, 2019.

Reformation Anglicanism: A Vision for Today’s Global Communion (The Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library, vol. 1)

Regular price: $24.99

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Reformation Anglican Worship: Experiencing Grace, Expressing Gratitude (The Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library, vol. 4)

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Additional resources on Anglicanism

Crossway Anglican Theology Collection (5 vols.)

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T&T Clark Anglican Studies Collection (12 vols.)

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SPCK Anglican Studies Collection (6 vols.)

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The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker (3 vols.)

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• What Is Anglicanism? Its History, Beliefs & Practices
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• Anglican Bible Study: The Major Books, Thinkers, and Principles
• 10 Anglican Books You Should Know

Join Kirk E. Miller and Old Testament scholar Chad Bird as they discuss the so-called “Curse of Ham” in one of the Bible’s most cryptic and infamously abused passages: Genesis 9:18–29. Discover the different views on the nature of Ham’s sin, why Noah curses his son Canaan instead of Ham, and how to properly interpret and apply this passage.

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Episode guest: Chad Bird

Dr. Chad Bird is a scholar in residence at 1517. He has served as a pastor, professor, and guest lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew. He holds master’s degrees from Concordia Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College. Bird has contributed articles to Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Modern Reformation, The Federalist, Lutheran Forum, and other journals and websites. He is also the author of several books, including The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament (1517, 2001) and Limping with God: Jacob & the Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship (1517, 2022).

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Episode synopsis: Curse of Ham

Noah as a new Adam in a renewed creation

As we approach Genesis 9:18–29 within the wider flood narrative, we see how Noah plays the role of a “new Adam.”

• Through the flood, it was as if the earth reverted to its watery formless state at creation (Gen 1:2).
• At creation, God’s Spirit (רוּחַ) was over the face of the waters (Gen 1:2). So, too, the wind (same word: רוּחַ) blew over the waters at the flood (Gen 8:1).
• As the Spirit hovered like a bird (רחף) over those creation waters (Gen 1:2), so Noah sends out a dove from the ark (Gen 8:8–12).
• When Noah and his family emerge from the ark, God blesses them and commands them to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 9:1, 7), repeating the creation mandate given to the first family (Gen 1:26–28).
• As Adam received dominion over all living creatures and every green plant to eat (Gen 1:26–30), so Noah and his family receive authority over the animals—now to eat them—along with every plant for food (Gen 9:2–3).
• The idea of the image of God is repeated (Gen 1:26–27; 9:6).

The flood, then, is like a de-creation and then re-creation, with Noah emerging as a new Adam. Through the flood, creation goes back to its formless start. Emerging out of the flood, God gives his creation a “restart.”

A new fall narrative

Yet this restart comes with an implicit question: Will things go differently this time? Has the flood eradicated the problem of sin?

Any hope that the flood has fixed humanity’s problem quickly fades. As Genesis quickly shows, the problem was not the outside order, but the disorder of the human heart (cf. Gen 6:5 with Gen 8:21). Even after renewal and judgment, the human condition still calls for redemption.

Genesis 9:18–29, which immediately follows the flood narrative, serves to demonstrate this. According to Chad Bird, it functions as one of Genesis’s “fall narratives,” recapitulating Genesis 3. Noah, like Adam, fails. The hope that Noah might be the one to reverse the curse (Gen 5:28–29) proves misplaced. Just as Adam sinned in a garden setting, Noah sins in a vineyard: He plants, harvests, and becomes drunk, ultimately lying uncovered in his tent.

This moment of vulnerability sets the stage for Ham’s actions and subsequent events.

What did Ham actually do?

Central to the difficulty of Genesis 9:18–29 is the cryptic nature of Ham’s sin: What exactly did Ham do? The text says Ham “saw the nakedness of his father” and told his brothers. But what exactly does this mean, especially in light of Noah’s severe response?

One of the main reasons this passage is so difficult is its brevity and “elliptical” nature: The narrative provides minimal detail and significant gaps in explanation. The narrative raises more questions than it answers.

Bird surveys several common interpretations:

First, older rabbinic sources suggest that Ham castrated Noah. Adherents point to the fact that Noah didn’t have any children from this point on, which castration could explain. Chad finds this interpretation rather speculative and weakly supported by the text.

Second, some maintain that Ham sexually violated Noah. This view draws on parallels from Leviticus 20:17–21, where “see” (ראה) and “nakedness” (עֶרְוָה) (the same words used in Gen 9:22) function as a euphemism for sexual activity. Proponents argue that such an act would explain Noah’s intense response.

However, although the combination of “see” and “nakedness” can function euphemistically (e.g., Lev 20), they need not always do so. In many cases they do not. In fact, apart from the possibility of Genesis 9:22, this pairing of words never has this sense in Genesis (e.g., Gen 42:9, 12). Instead, Genesis consistently uses language like “he went into her” (Gen 16:4; 29:21) and “he knew her” (Gen 4:1, 17) to describe sexual activity.

Secondly, “see nakedness” in Leviticus 20 is a euphemism for heterosexual activity, whereas Genesis 9, according to this view, describes homosexual activity. Apart from the possibility of the text in question (Gen 9:22), “see nakedness” is never used to refer to same-sex sexual activity. Instead, when referring to homosexual sex, Leviticus 20 uses “lie with a male as with a woman” (Lev 20:13).

Third, some suggest Ham slept with Noah’s wife (Ham’s own mother). This view also appeals to the euphemistic possibility of “see nakedness”—and so suffers from some of its same critiques. However, this argument relies on connections between “seeing nakedness” and “uncovering nakedness,” where uncovering a man’s nakedness can refer to relations with that man’s wife. Thus, for Ham to “see the nakedness” of Noah is for him to have sexual relations with Noah’s wife (Ham’s mother). According to this view, Canaan would be the product of this illicit union, giving reason why Canaan is cursed—something other interpretations struggle to explain.

Chad recognizes that “see nakedness” in Genesis 9:22 could have a sexual meaning. Genesis does contain numerous narratives involving sex, including the “sons of God” (Gen 6:1–4), Lot and his daughters (Gen 19:1–11), Judah and Tamar (Gen 38), and Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Gen 39). However, a major weakness of these views is the very next verse: Shem and Japheth walk backward to cover their father’s nakedness (same word), making sure they avoid seeing it (Gen 9:23). This description strongly suggests that “seeing nakedness” in the passage as a whole refers to literal sight of literal nakedness, rather than a euphemism.

Thus, Chad slightly favors a fourth view, that Ham literally saw Noah’s nakedness. Ham dishonors his father by exposing his shame rather than covering it, as his brothers did (Gen 9:23). Instead of acting with respect and discretion, he broadcasts his father’s vulnerability to his brothers (Gen 9:22). In a culture that placed a high value on honoring one’s parents, this would have been a serious offense.

But why is Canaan cursed?

Interestingly, the narrator wants us to know at the outset that Canaan is Ham’s son. Both times Canaan is introduced, the text goes out of its way to specify that he is “the father of Canaan” (Gen 9:18, 22)—this even before Canaan himself enters the narrative.

This is to prepare us for what follows: When Noah awakes and somehow recognizes what Ham has done, he pronounces a curse. Yet not on Ham, but on Canaan (Gen 9:25).

But why? The text isn’t clear. Kirk further notes that Scripture elsewhere prohibits punishing children for their fathers’ sins (e.g., Ezek 18:20; Deut 24:16), increasing the difficulty of Noah’s actions.

Some propose that the curse is indeed meant for Ham. Maybe we are meant to read it as an ellipsis: “Cursed be [Ham, the father of] Canaan.” Or maybe Canaan is mentioned as representative of Ham.

Others suggest Canaan was somehow involved in Ham’s sin, although the text doesn’t explicitly say so. But this would explain why Canaan is cursed.

Chad’s preferred explanation is that Noah’s words function as a prophetic pronouncement. Rather than merely reacting to a personal offense, Noah speaks about the future of Ham’s descendants, specifically the line of Canaan. In this sense, the curse is less about immediate punishment and more about forecasting the historical relationship between the descendants of Canaan and Shem (see Gen 9:26), especially Israel. This curse then finds its fulfillment in the broader narrative of the Old Testament, where the Canaanites become Israel’s primary adversaries and are eventually judged during Israel’s conquest of Canaan (Deut 7:1–5, 16–26).

Racist readings of the so-called “curse of Ham”

Kirk raises how this so-called “curse of Ham” has been used to justify racism and the enslavement of African peoples, particularly in the context of the transatlantic slave trade. According to this interpretation, black Africans, who are seen as the descendants of Ham, are destined for servitude under white Europeans, who are seen as the descendants of Japheth (Gen 9:27).

Chad strongly rejects this interpretation as exegetically absurd.

1. The text does not curse Ham, nor does it curse all his descendants. It specifically curses Canaan.
2. Those specific descendants of Ham who are associated with Northern Africa—Cush, Egypt, and Put (Gen 10:6)—are not cursed.
3. The one whose line is cursed—Canaan—is associated with the land of Canaan in the Near East.

Thus, the attempt to link this curse to African peoples is an ideological abuse of Scripture.

Blessing, curse, and Christ

Kirk draws attention to the appearance of blessing and cursing in this passage. Noah’s pronouncement includes both elements: Canaan is cursed, while the Lord, the God of Shem, is blessed. These themes run throughout Genesis and the rest of Scripture:

• They connect back to Genesis 1–3, where God blesses creation but also pronounces a curse as a result of sin.
• They continue in Genesis 12, where God promises to bless Abraham and make him a blessing to all nations, while also cursing those who oppose him.
• Israel’s history unfolds under covenant blessings and curses (Lev 26; Deut 27–28).
• The prophets later speak of a future when God will reverse the curses and restore blessings.

Ultimately, this trajectory of blessing-in-place-of-cursing finds its resolution in the promised “seed,” who is Christ (Gal 3:16). The New Testament presents Jesus as the one who takes the curse upon himself in order to bring blessing to others (Gal 3:10–14).

Scripture opens with the promise of a “seed” who will defeat the serpent (Gen 3:15). Initially, the identity of this “seed” is broad, applying to the offspring of the woman. But from there, it narrows. Genesis 9 points to the line of Shem, which leads to Abraham, then to Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David—and ultimately to Christ.

Genesis 9:18–29, then, reinforces the need for this promised seed. Noah had been born with hope attached to him, that he might be that seed (Gen 5:28–29). But Genesis 9:18–29 shows that Noah is not that promised deliverer. He proves unable to fulfill the role of a “new Adam” who will bring relief. He too is part of fallen humanity. He himself needs deliverance.

So this passage exposes the persistence of sin and the reality of the curse, while also pointing forward to the hope of future blessing.

Teaching and applying the passage

For those teaching or preaching Genesis 9:18–29, Chad emphasizes the need to handle this text carefully. Rather than focusing on resolving every interpretive question, he suggests using this narrative as a mirror of the human condition. This passage shows the ongoing reality of sin, shame, family brokenness, and the need for redemption.

In this way, teachers and preachers can show how this account points forward to humanity’s need for the true promised seed: the one who brings relief from the curse through his death and resurrection.

Logos values thoughtful and engaging discussions on important biblical topics. However, the views and interpretations presented in this episode are those of the individuals speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Logos. We recognize that Christians may hold different perspectives on this passage, and we welcome diverse engagement and respectful dialogue.

Let us know what you think

Which interpretation do you find most plausible? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Chad Bird’s suggested resources for studying Genesis 9

• 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, Episode 15.

The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17 (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament | NICOT)

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The Book of Genesis, 2 vols. (New International Commentary on the Old Testament | NICOT)

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Genesis 11:27–50:26 (New American Commentary | NAC)

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Genesis, 2 vols. (The New American Commentary | NAC)

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Genesis (The JPS Torah Commentary)

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Additional resources on Genesis

Logos Research Commentary: Genesis 1–11

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Genesis Expository Preaching Kit, L

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Genesis, 2 vols. (Word Biblical Commentary | WBC)

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Genesis: A Commentary

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Genesis (NIV Application Commentary | (NIVAC)

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Genesis (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries | TOTC)

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Creation and Blessing

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Related content

• Did God Command Genocide? | Tremper Longman on the Canaanite Conquest
• Who Are the “Sons of God” and Nephilim? | James Hamilton on Genesis 6
• When Did Jesus Preach to Spirits in Prison? | Thomas Schreiner on 1 Peter 3:18–22
• Is the Creation Story Literal? | Vern Poythress on Genesis 1:1–2:3

Despite only appearing in a handful of verses, Nimrod is a legendary character reputed to be the founder of great cities and a mighty hunter.

This article explores who Nimrod was, what the Bible says about him, and why he still matters for Christians today.

Who was Nimrod in the Bible?

Nimrod is an ancient king, a mighty warrior, and one known to be a mighty hunter before the Lord (Gen 10:8–9; 1 Chron 1:10). According to Genesis 10:11–12, he founded many cities: 

The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.

Genesis 10:6–8 and 1 Chronicles 1:10 identify Nimrod as the descendant of Cush, from whom the Cushites get their name.⁵⁹ The Cushites lived roughly in modern Ethiopia (Kush) and they play an important role in the Bible’s story. For example, Moses marries a Cushite (Num 12:1). Given this marriage, it seems unlikely that Nimrod’s father, Cush, and the Cushites took a reputation hit for being related to Nimrod.  

Genesis 10:8 further explains, “he was the first on earth to become a mighty warrior [גִּבּוֹר].” Of all the names mentioned in the Table of Nations (Gen 10), Nimrod “is the only figure significantly elaborated upon.”⁶⁰

Of the three places where Nimrod is named in the Bible (Gen 10:8–12; 1 Chron 1:10; Mic 5:5–6), Micah best illustrates his ongoing significance in the historical memory of Israel. In Micah 5:5–6, the prophet associates Assyria with the land of Nimrod, which suggests not only a long-term interest in the person of Nimrod but also hints at where ancient Hebrews believed Nimrod built his cities.

What does it mean that Nimrod was “a mighty hunter before the LORD”?

The phrase “a mighty hunter before the LORD” (Gen 10:9) seems simple at first glance. Calling Nimrod a hunter may simply describe him as one who hunts for game, for food. Yet its specific meaning is debated.

“Hunter”

Due to Nimrod’s association with Babel, Augustine suggests that the title “hunter” may indicate that Nimrod was “a deceiver, an oppressor, a slayer of earth-born creatures.”⁶¹ Augustine may be correct, given how negatively Genesis portrays Nimrod. Genesis Rabbah, a Jewish midrash, likewise supports Augustine’s negative view of the title “hunter.” The midrash points to a parallel between Esau and Nimrod and concludes, “just as that one hunted [ensnared] people through their words, so, too, this one hunts [ensnares] people with their words” (Gen Rab 37:2).

Additionally, Genesis 10:9 recasts Nimrod into the image of the mighty men of old, those identified as Nephilim, in the antediluvian age (Gen 6:4). The adjective “mighty” (גִּבּוֹר) is the same word that describes the Nephilim in Genesis 6:4—“the mighty men.” In ancient Greek translations, usually called the Septuagint (LXX), Nimrod is called a “giant” just as the Nephilim are in Genesis 6:4. If we grant this connection, then the description of Nimrod as a “mighty hunter” may take a more sinister tone. Was Nimrod like the Nephilim of old, those mighty men who led to the flood of the earth? And, if so, might the word “mighty” take a negative connotation, as it does in Isaiah 49:25, where it means “tyrant”? If so, the act of hunting may very well represent acts of evil.

Further, since Genesis 10:10 says, “The beginning of [Nimrod’s] kingdom was Babel,” it seems likely that he founded the city of Babylon,⁶² which rebels against God in Genesis 11. That Nimrod founded Babylon furthers the impression that Nimrod, this mighty hunter and founder of cities, is portrayed as a Nephilim. This would also support Augustine’s suggestion that the word “hunter” implies that Nimrod was “an oppressor, a slayer of earth-born creatures.”

“before the LORD”

The next debated word is the preposition “before” (לִפְנֵי).

Historically, authors like Augustine of Hippo believed that this word took on the sense of being “against the Lord.”⁶³ Others like Chrysostom took the phrase to imply that Nimrod was “strong and brave.” Chrysostom maintains that “before the Lord” likely means that God created Nimrod, yet wonders if it might mean that God intended to provoke our wonder at his creation of such a legendary figure.⁶⁴ Interpreters have gone back and forth on the moral implications of the word “before.” Only contextual factors can ultimately decide the question.

That said, לִפְנֵי only appears three times prior to Genesis 10:9 (Gen 6:11, 13; 7:1), and in each case it takes the sense of “according to the opinion of.”⁶⁵ For example, in Genesis 7:1, the LORD says of Noah, “for I have seen that you are righteous before [לִפְנֵי] me.” If Genesis 10:9 follows this pattern, it may mean that the LORD judges Nimrod to be a mighty hunter. However, the next three uses of לִפְנֵי in Genesis take temporal and spatial senses of “before” (Gen 13:9, 10; 17:1). So we should be slow to conclude one way or the other.

We do, however, know what its object means: the LORD. In English versions of the Old Testament, LORD translates God’s covenantal name Yahweh, not the general term for God, Elohim. Therefore, no matter how Nimrod is before the LORD, Genesis 10:9 tells us Nimrod was a mighty hunter before Yahweh—whether that means in the presence of Yahweh, against Yahweh, or in the opinion of Yahweh. 

Interestingly, a small group of late Greek and Latin witnesses replace LORD with God, perhaps because of the oddness of this phrase. But the majority reading is LORD in Greek (κυρίου) and YHWH in Hebrew (יהוה). This small exception in the manuscript tradition may suggest that scribes were uncomfortable with Nimrod being before the “LORD” and thought it better to say “God.”

Whatever the meaning of this phrase, we can safely conclude that Nimrod was an important figure in the ancient world, not only for his city-building efforts but also because of his connection to Yahweh.

Is Nimrod connected to the Tower of Babel?

Nimrod founded many cities in the land of Shinar, including Babylon, according to Genesis 10:10: “The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar.” In the land of Shinar, people built the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:2). It stands to reason that, due to the relationship between the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 and how those nations rebelled against God in Genesis 11:1–9, readers should see Nimrod as a founder of a kingdom that rebelled against God at the Tower of Babel.

The name Nimrod may also hint at his connection to Babel. The Hebrew root מרד (m-r-d), from which the name Nimrod (נִמְרֹ(וֹ)ד) could derive (n-m-r-d), means “to rise in revolt” or “to rebel.”⁶⁶ While it is not possible to know for sure if readers are meant to hear “rebel” in the name Nimrod, a number of textual clues suggest that this is indeed intended.

First, as noted above, the word “mighty” recalls the mighty men of old from Genesis 6:4, possibly identifying them with the Nephilim.

Second, Genesis 11:1–9 and Genesis 10:8–12 share a number of verbal allusions, which includes vocabulary and phrases such as חלל (“to begin”), בָּבֶל (“Babel”), שִׁנְעָר (“Shinar”), עַל־כֵּן (“therefore”), בנה (“to build”), and the city-building motif culminating in הָעִ֥יר הַגְּדֹלָֽה (“the great city,” 10:12) paralleling עִ֗יר וּמִגְדָּל (“a city and a tower,” 11:4). Since these terms describe human activity explicitly condemned by YHWH in Genesis 11:1–9, the lexical links cast Nimrod and his empire-building as rebellious.

Third, the simple fact that Nimrod builds empires confirms this interpretation. He builds four cities, one of which, Resen, is called “the great city” (Gen 10:11–12). In the Bible, the empires of man are regular antagonists of the city of God, Jerusalem—or the people of God, Israel (see the next section). Further, Nimrod’s kingdom includes the city of Babel, which—along with the city of Nineveh, which he also builds—stands as the key city that opposes God in Scripture.

In summary, Genesis 10 names Nimrod as an extraordinary figure whose name is associated with the cities of man that rebel against the city of God.

How does Nimrod’s kingdom contrast with the kingdom of God?

Genesis traces two groups of people: those born of the seed of the woman and those born of the seed of the serpent (Gen 3:15). The groups are not marked by biology but by worship and morality. So Cain, as the offspring of the serpent, murders Abel and founds the first city, which he names after his son, Enoch (Gen 4:17). 

While the city has beauty, culture, and science (Gen 4:21–22), its foundation on murder means that it culminates in murder, too. The beautiful, murderous, and vengeful poem of Lamech stands as a testimony to what the city of man can achieve (Gen 4:23–24).

The great cities of Nimrod, including Babel, mark a continuation of Genesis’s critique of the cities of man. The Tower in Babel is what such cities create. By contrast, the Pentateuch speaks about another city, a city that God will build, where he will place his name (e.g., Deut 12:5). 

This city—not made with human hands but whose founder and designer is God—is eventually symbolized by Jerusalem. As the earthly symbol for God’s true city, it symbolizes the Jerusalem above that at the end of time will descend from heaven to wipe out “Babylon the Great” (Heb 11:10, 16; 12:22; 13:14; Rev 18:2; 21:1, 10). Augustine famously applies these themes of two seeds and two cities in his work The City of God.

Applying this biblical theology to Nimrod clarifies that his city-building is not a morally neutral activity, but rather an attempt to build safety and security apart from God in the wasteland of a sin-cursed world.   

What can Nimrod teach us today? 

Nimrod becomes a link between the antediluvian world’s “mighty men” and the postdiluvian’s. Despite the flood, “great ones” still exist.

Nimrod shows how the story of the two seeds (see Gen 3:15) plays out in a postdiluvian world. We learn that it is not biology but sin and rebellion that places one on the side of the seed of the serpent.

Nimrod sets up an archetypal man, a hunter like Esau, who rebels against God. The city of God stands fast against the city of man. 

Christians, therefore, have much to learn from Nimrod. We can learn to avoid his pride, as Babel aimed to build its tower into the heavens. Instead, we need God to descend from heaven. We need a Savior who will come down to us, not us to him.

Even the mighty men and their empires cannot suffice.

Share your thoughts

What else can be known about Nimrod? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Resources for further study

The Book of Jubilees

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The Unseen Realm: Discovering the Supernatural World of the Bible (Expanded Edition)

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Babel: Political Rhetoric of a Confused Legacy

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From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1–11

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The City of God and the Goal of Creation (Short Studies in Biblical Theology)

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The City of God, 2 vols. (The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century)

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Related content

• The Tower of Babel Story: What Really Happened?
• Where Are Giants in the Bible Other Than Goliath?
• Who Are the “Sons of God” and Nephilim? | James Hamilton on Genesis 6
• Does God Change His Mind? | Wyatt Graham on Genesis 6:5–8
• When Did Jesus Preach to Spirits in Prison? | Thomas Schreiner on 1 Peter 3:18–22

Only about 1.8 percent of Americans have a PhD.⁶⁷ Getting a PhD is rare.

If you are considering joining this academic minority, keep reading. What follows is a short guide meant to help you think honestly about the decision. Perhaps I will talk you into it. Perhaps I will talk you out of it. Either way, the goal is clarity.

Let me talk you into a PhD

There are many reasons why people might pursue a PhD. Some are healthy. Some are not. I once had someone tell me he wanted to earn a PhD so no one could ever argue with him again. That confidence would not survive long. He would only need to wait until he published a monograph and received a one-star review from a freshman.

Still, there are good reasons to do the work. Here are five:

1. You have an itch that will take five to seven years to scratch

When I first started asking whether I should pursue a PhD, I talked to a friend who was nearing the end of his thesis. I expected a long speech.

Instead he said, “Only do it if you have an itch you want to scratch for five to seven years.”

A PhD requires a subject you care about deeply enough to live with it for a long time. You will read about it constantly. You will return to the same question again and again as days turn into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. During my own program, I spent seven Christmas breaks working on my topic!

But this is also the gift of the PhD. It is one of the few seasons in life where you are allowed to examine one idea more carefully than almost anyone else in the world has examined it.

2. You want to produce original research to contribute something unique

In my book A World Without God: The Search for Meaning in a World Overcome by Despair, I describe the digital age as the peak of modernization. We are drowning in information. Everyone is repeating someone else. It becomes exhausting.

What the world actually needs are people who step out of that current and contribute something genuinely thoughtful.

Mortimer Adler wrote in How to Read a Book, “To be informed is to know simply that something is the case.” Much of what passes for expertise today falls into that category. People know facts. They repeat facts. They repeat them loudly. But Adler continues:

To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about. Why it is the case. What its connections are with other facts. In what respects it is the same and in what respects it is different.⁶⁸

A PhD moves a person from being informed to becoming enlightened, albeit in a narrow area of study. The process pushes you to understand not only what something is but also why it matters and how it connects to everything around it.

3. Your work will be tested by other scholars

One of the most difficult aspects of doctoral work is also one of the most valuable. Your thinking will constantly be examined.

Your supervisor will challenge your claims. Other scholars will question your assumptions. Every argument will be pressed. As a sports fan, I often think of this as full-court pressure that lasts for years.

My own thesis was 180,000 words. My supervisor required me to defend every sentence. Sometimes I would submit a chapter and receive pages of comments in return. At the time it felt exhausting. Later I realized it was a gift. He was preparing me for the final defense. He wanted to make sure I knew my own argument better than anyone else in the room.

When the process is complete, something meaningful happens. Other scholars recognize that your work has been examined and tested. In a world where anyone can start a podcast or self-publish anything they want, peer review still matters. It signals that your work has endured scrutiny.

4. You want to teach in higher education

If your goal is to become a professor, a PhD should be on your radar.

In most universities, especially those accredited by the Association of Theological Schools, doctoral training is required for teaching certain subjects. That means that if you want to teach New Testament, Old Testament, hermeneutics, or theology at the graduate level, the PhD becomes necessary. The degree signals that you have spent years studying the discipline deeply enough to guide others through it.

5. You value the formation that comes through endurance

When someone earns a PhD, it says something about their character.

It means they can commit themselves to a long process. They can develop a method for studying a problem. They have engaged hundreds of books and articles. They wrote something substantial that contributes to an ongoing conversation.

That level of endurance requires discipline, patience, and humility (because you will be corrected often).

The process trains you to think carefully and to persist through long stretches of work that offer little immediate reward. That formation alone can make the experience worthwhile.

Let me talk you out of a PhD

I have also watched many people begin the PhD conversation with great excitement. Then the process stalls before a proposal is ever written.

So here is the other side of the conversation. As the old proverb says, Caveat emptor (“Let the buyer beware!”).

1. There are no shortcuts

A PhD usually takes five to seven years. Sometimes longer.

Certain chapters may take a year or two to complete. You will read books that turn out to be useless and buy expensive monographs that contribute only a single footnote. I once purchased a book for ninety dollars and realized within two minutes that I did not need it.

Your supervisor will return drafts with comments that send you back to work again. At one point, I spent nine months writing my first chapter, only to be told that the structure was wrong and needed to be rewritten.

There is no clever way around the work.

2. It is expensive

Doctoral programs vary widely in cost, but it is common to hear numbers between forty and eighty thousand dollars.

Some programs offer scholarships. Some universities provide funding packages. Those opportunities exist. Still, many people pay a significant portion of the cost out of pocket.

Other pressures tend to accompany the intellectual and financial pressures: tuition payments arrive while chapters are still unfinished, conferences require travel, and books continue to accumulate.

The rewards, if they come, arrive slowly.

3. Mental health can suffer

We need to be honest here: Studies suggest that depression and anxiety are highly prevalent among PhD students.⁶⁹

When people imagine doctoral study, they picture the prestige of the degree, the books they might publish, or the conferences where they will present. What they often overlook is the isolation.

You may spend long stretches working alone. Deadlines will loom constantly. Drafts will return with pages of corrections.

During my own program, I gained forty pounds. My weakness became key lime pie. After long writing sessions, I would sit at my desk and eat an entire one straight from the tin with a fork. I also developed a kind of obsessive attention to detail. Hours disappeared while adjusting footnotes. Parsing through bibliographical entries trained me to fuss over everything in my personal space: the wrinkles in my clothes, the objects in my home, the way my refrigerator was organized. It was misery.

4. The academic job market is tight

The number of full-time faculty positions is shrinking. Many universities have reduced or merged programs in the humanities. Theology departments face similar pressures. Adjunct teaching has increased. Tenure-track positions appear less frequently.

The familiar image of the gray-haired professor lecturing in a tweed jacket in a quiet hall is fading. That does not mean doctoral training is useless. It does mean that those who complete the degree may need an extra dose of creativity to figure out how to use their expertise.

5. You might become unbearable

There is also a social risk.

When you pursue a PhD, you spend years thinking about your thinking. You constantly analyze arguments, evidence, assumptions, and conclusions.

Eventually that habit follows you everywhere. You begin explaining things that no one asked about. Conversations drift toward analysis when they were meant to be casual. Friends may grow weary when ordinary discussions turn into miniature lectures.

It is difficult to notice when this shift happens. It is even harder to stop.

You decide!

The decision to pursue a PhD carries both risks and rewards. The process can shape your mind and open doors that would otherwise remain closed. It can also cost years of effort, a great deal of money, and a fair amount of emotional strain.

Before moving forward, it is wise to discuss the decision with the people closest to you. An informed decision is always the best decision. Whether your answer is yes or no, clarity is a gift.

Share your thoughts

Why should—or shouldn’t—one get a PhD? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Resources for further reflection

Surviving and Thriving in Seminary: An Academic and Spiritual Handbook

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Prepare, Succeed, Advance: A Guidebook for Getting a PhD in Biblical Studies and Beyond, 2nd ed.

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A Little Exercise for Young Theologians

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A Little Book for New Theologians: Why and How to Study Theology (Little Books)

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From Topic to Thesis: A Guide to Theological Research

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Mobile Ed: Introduction to Writing Bundle (3 courses)

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Writing Theology Well: A Rhetoric for Theological and Biblical Writers, 2nd ed.

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The Elements of Style

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Some of my most spiritually rich and formative years were spent in seminary.

From 2011 to 2014, I had the privilege of studying at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I was equipped for ministry in the classroom, gained practical experience as a member of a wonderful local church, and enjoyed the blessings of deep community life in both settings.

One of the unexpected gifts of those years—and one for which I remain deeply thankful to God—was a few good friends. From Super Bowl parties to fervent prayer gatherings, from March Madness excitement to memorizing Hebrew vocabulary, from tears of joy to tears of sorrow, our shared experiences profoundly shaped me.

In this article, I want to encourage those currently in seminary, or preparing to begin, not to overlook the value of cultivating a few close friendships. To that end, I will explore the why, what, and how of friendships in seminary.⁷⁰

Why pursue friendships in seminary

“Seminary is dangerous.”⁷¹ I was taken aback the first time I read those words. Seminary is supposed to be a place of growth, learning, and spiritual formation. How could it be dangerous? The warning is against becoming overfed on theological knowledge while becoming undernourished in our heart-level affection for God.

That danger is real and perhaps familiar. Yet others are more subtle:

• Spiritual isolation
• Neglect of the local church
• Academic rivalry
• The temptation to pretend we have everything together when we are struggling

Left unchecked, these dangers can make seminary a lonely and perilous place.

So how do we guard against them? One of the most important ways is to prioritize healthy, authentic friendships during seminary. Friendship is God’s idea and God’s gift—his means of grace to help us persevere and avoid making shipwreck of our faith (1 Tim 1:19). Good friends can help preserve us from unseen spiritual threats and strengthen us to remain spiritually alive.

Easily search the Bible for key passages on friendship with Logos’s Smart Search. Start your free trial.

Proverbs speaks often about the value of wise companions. In Proverbs 13:20, we read, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” These words remind us to choose our friends carefully, because they shape us profoundly—for good or for ill. Wise friends lead us toward spiritual life. Foolish friends can lead us toward spiritual harm.

Especially in the formative years of seminary, then, we should strive to be good friends and to pursue good friends, so that we might sharpen one another to the glory of God.

What good seminary friends provide

Below are four key components of friendship drawn from snapshots of friendship in Scripture. Together, they illustrate the kind of friend we should seek to be—and the kind of friends we should seek to have: The kind of friends who will help us navigate the exciting yet sometimes dangerous crosscurrents of seminary life.

1. Friends support one another

In Exodus 17:8–16, we read a vivid account of Moses interceding on a hill while Joshua was fighting against the Amalekites in a valley. This scene is often highlighted as a model of intercessory prayer, but it also provides a striking picture of friendship. Moses prays for Joshua while he is in the thick of battle—friends intercede for one another. When Moses’s arms grow weary, Aaron and Hur place a stone under him and physically hold up his hands so he can continue.

Friends step in when they see a companion struggling. Throughout seminary, there will be seasons when you need this kind of support, and seasons when you will give it. Good friends support one another.

2. Friends strengthen one another

In 1 Samuel 18–23, we see one of Scripture’s richest portraits of friendship: David and Jonathan. In chapter 23, David is weary, afraid, and hiding in the wilderness while Saul is hunting him down. Into that moment of vulnerability, verse 16 tells us “Saul’s son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and helped him find strength in God.” Jonathan does not wait for David to seek him out: He intentionally moves toward his friend. He encourages him, speaks truth, reminds him of God’s promises, and points him back to the true source of strength: God himself.

This portrait of friendship reminds us that good friends do not merely offer support. They direct us toward God and the strength found in him. Seminary will inevitably bring moments of weariness, discouragement, or spiritual dryness. Good friends help us find fresh strength in God when we need it most, lifting our eyes beyond our circumstances to the One in whom all true strength resides. Good friends strengthen one another.

3. Friends sharpen one another

Proverbs 27:17 tells us, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” The bright edge of our affection for God can grow dull if we approach theology in a purely academic manner. We need friends who will sharpen us spiritually, who will help keep our hearts warm, our minds alert, and our devotion vibrant.

I formed some of my most important theological convictions through hours of discussion, debate, and study with friends who pushed me back to Scripture and encouraged clarity, humility, and consistency in my thinking. Good friends sharpen one another.

4. Friends sacrificially serve one another

Jesus displayed the ultimate act of friendship through his sacrificial death for his people on the cross. In John 15:13, he declares, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” He then applies this astonishing truth to his disciples by saying, “You are my friends” (John 15:14) and again, “I have called you friends” (John 15:15). Jesus speaks of his self‑giving sacrifice as a deep expression of his love for his friends.

This means that the heart of Christian friendship is not just shared affection or shared experience, but Christlike, costly love. As those called to “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph 5:2), Christians are to extend that same sacrificial posture toward one another. True friends will gladly inconvenience themselves, bear one another’s burdens, and seek each other’s greatest spiritual good—even when it comes at some personal cost. Good friends serve one another.

How to pursue friendships in seminary

This can be intimidating, especially for those leaving home for the first time, so it is important to take seriously these points:

1. Intentionally create opportunities for friendships

Recognizing their importance, we should first make time to share our seminary journey with others. This will look different depending on your stage of life, but creating space for coffee breaks, meals, study sessions, or simple moments of rest and relaxation can go a long way toward initiating relationships that may deepen over time. These small, regular rhythms of shared life are the soil in which lasting friendships can grow.

2. Pursue spiritual depth with those with whom you naturally connect

This often means being the one to move the conversation beyond surface‑level topics. Share what God is teaching you through your classes, speak honestly about your struggles and encouragements, and create space to pray together. Over time, these kinds of conversations cultivate trust and foster genuine spiritual friendship.

3. Adopt an attitude of giving and receiving in your friendships

Healthy friendships are mutual. There will be seasons when you need the support and strengthening ministry of a few trusted friends, and other seasons when you will be the one offering support and sharpening to those who need it. In both roles, we learn humility, gratitude, and the joy of walking with others as we all seek to mature in Christ.

Conclusion

The friendships we make at seminary can become gifts that keep giving. Over a decade has passed since my own time at seminary, and I still have regular online calls with those few good friends. Though the years of study were temporary, the bonds forged through shared joys, trials, and prayers have endured far beyond the classroom.

These good friends were—and continue to be—a means of God’s grace. They have shaped my character, strengthened my faith, and helped me to navigate the challenges and pressures that come with pastoral ministry. Even though we are scattered across the world today, our fellowship remains strong as we continue to encourage, challenge, and pray for one another in our respective callings.

Seminary offers many gifts, but few are as enduring, steadying, or life‑giving as the gift of a few wise, godly friends. May those entering or journeying through seminary recognize this gift, pursue it intentionally, and give thanks to God for the friendships that will sustain and enrich them for years to come.

Share your thoughts

What’s the benefit of friendship during seminary? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Resources for further reflection

Iron Sharpens Iron: Friendship and the Grace of God

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How to Stay Christian in Seminary

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Becoming Friends: Worship, Justice, and the Practice of Christian Friendship

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No Greater Love: A Biblical Vision for Friendship

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Why Does Friendship Matter? (Questions for Restless Minds)

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Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship Direction

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Enduring Friendship: Sticking Together in an Age of Unfriending

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Transformative Friendships: 7 Questions to Deepen Any Relationship (Church-Based Counseling)

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• 3 Misguided Narratives About Success in Seminary
• 8 Ways to Gain Ministry Experience While in Seminary
• Learning by Doing: How to Train Seminary Students for Ministry
• Facing Doubt in Seminary: How to Grow Through Uncertainty

In Galatians 4:21–31, the Apostle Paul refers to the story of Sarah and Hagar as an allegory: Hagar corresponds to Mount Sinai and the present Jerusalem, while Sarah corresponds to the Jerusalem above. Is Paul twisting the Old Testament? Is he reading ideas into Genesis that aren’t really there?

Join host Kirk E. Miller and New Testament scholar David deSilva in this episode of What in the Word? as they explore Paul’s use of the Old Testament and how it serves as a sophisticated defense of receiving God’s promises by faith.

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Episode guest: David deSilva

David deSilva is Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, OH, where he has taught since 1995. He has held visiting professorships at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem, Regent College in Vancouver, and Colombo Theological Seminary in Sri Lanka. He holds degrees from Princeton University, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Emory University.

He is the author of forty books, including:

• Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (InterVarsity Academic, 2022)
• An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods, and Ministry Formation (InterVarsity Academic, 2018)
• Introducing the Apocrypha (Baker Academic, 2018)
• A Week in the Life of Ephesus (InterVarsity Academic, 2020)
• Archaeology and the Ministry of Paul: A Visual Guide (Baker Academic, 2025)
• Archaeology and the World of Jesus: A Visual Guide (Baker Academic, 2025)
• Archaeology and the Book of Revelation: A Visual Guide (Baker Academic, 2026)

He also has commentaries on:

• Galatians (Eerdmans, 2018)
• Ephesians (Cambridge, 2022)
• Hebrews (Eerdmans, 2000)
• Jude (Baker Academic, 2012)

He has also served as director of traditional music and organist at local churches since 1984. David is married to Donna Jean Heitman deSilva, with whom he shares three adult sons.

Episode synopsis

The pastoral crisis behind Galatians 4:21–31

The churches in Galatia, which Paul and Barnabas had planted, were being influenced by rival teachers who claimed that Paul had not told them the full story. According to these teachers, faith in Christ was not enough by itself. Gentile believers also needed to take up a Torah-observant life and receive circumcision if they wanted to belong fully to the people of God.

The rival teachers’ argument seemingly had some weight. God’s promises were given to Abraham and his descendants via the Abrahamic covenant, and circumcision functioned as the entry rite into that covenant (Gen 17). Surely then, so the rival teachers reasoned, if gentiles were to receive the blessings of the covenant, they had to receive its sign: circumcision. They had to become Jewish.

Paul, however, interprets this as a direct assault on the true gospel.

1. Contrary to these rival teachers who claim Paul’s gospel is insufficient, Paul maintains that his gospel is exactly what he received, first from Christ himself and secondly as approved by the Jerusalem apostles (Gal 1–2).
2. To require circumcision and Torah observance does not complete the gospel. It distorts it. It implies that Christ’s work is insufficient and that the gift of the Spirit is not enough to make gentiles full members of God’s covenant people (Gal 3–6).

That is why the tone of Paul’s letter is so urgent. He is not engaged in an abstract theological debate. He is fighting for the freedom of his converts and for the truth of the gospel which he had delivered to them.

Why this passage perplexes and proves difficult

In Galatians 4:21–31, Paul interprets Hagar and Sarah figuratively, claiming these two women represent things not specifically mentioned in the text of Genesis 16 and 21. Paul describes his interpretation using a word many English translations translate “allegorically” (ἀλληγορέω). For many, allegory suggests an interpretive approach detached from Scripture’s actual meaning, injecting it instead with hidden symbolism. For instance, ancient interpreters like Philo of Alexandria used the Bible’s narratives, like Genesis 16, in ways that moved far from the historical and literary concerns of the text. Hijacking the text in this way strikes many as irresponsible, especially those who want to affirm the authority and clarity of Scripture.

Not only this, but Paul defends the gospel by this interpretation. If Paul’s use of the Old Testament is arbitrary—simply making it say what he wants—then it calls into question whether the gospel is exegetically defensible or if it’s only propped up by illegitimate appeals.

What Paul means by “allegorically”

David deSilva clarifies: We shouldn’t load the Greek word ἀλληγορέω with everything we might associate with the word “allegory” based now on two millennia of allegorical readings of Scripture. At its most basic level, the word means that Paul takes the Genesis account as communicating something beyond a strict recounting of the events themselves. Paul reads the Genesis account figuratively, where Sarah and Hagar are understood to represent other things (e.g., the Mosaic covenant, which did not even exist in Hagar’s time). But to make this move, Paul goes beyond a “literal,” surface-level description of the account.

Importantly, Paul’s reading does not abandon the interests of the Genesis narrative though. Paul’s reading remains concerned with themes like covenant promises, offspring, and inheritance.

How Galatians earlier prepares for Paul’s allegory

Paul’s figurative application of Genesis 16 and 21 comes as the culmination of an argument he had already begun developing earlier in the letter.

The Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant must be distinguished. The law, which came 430 years after the promise, cannot nullify that earlier promise. Thus, inheritance of God’s blessing has always depended on God’s promise, not on what could be acquired by the flesh. The law was never intended to be the basis for receiving the inheritance (Gal 3:15–18).

Rather, the law had an intentionally temporary function: God gave it as a pedagogue leading up to Christ’s arrival (Gal 3:19–24; 4:1–7).

In fact, those who rely on Torah observance, far from receiving the inheritance, receive God’s curse. Those who fail to keep God’s law are cursed, and no one is able to keep it (Gal 3:10–14).

Thus, Abraham’s true children, the heirs of the promises made to him, are identified not by circumcision—not by flesh—but by faith. Those who share Abraham’s trust are his true offspring (Gal 3:7–9, 25–29).

So by the time Paul reaches Galatians 4:21–31, he has already laid the theological groundwork for this figurative application of Genesis 16 and 21. Paul’s “allegory” is not the basis of his argument so much as a climactic, homiletical expression of it.

Ishmael and Isaac represent two ways of pursuing the promise

Paul reads Sarah and Hagar and their production of offspring in Genesis 16 and 21 as representing two different covenantal ways of relating to God.

God’s redemptive promise to Abraham included the promise that God would multiply Abraham greatly and bless the world through Abraham’s offspring (Gen 12:1–3; 15:1–6). Thus, Abraham and Sarah’s childlessness was not merely a matter of an elderly couple’s infertility but a direct challenge to the fulfillment of God’s promise.

Paul appeals to Genesis 16 and 21 to contrast the means of Ishmael’s and Isaac’s births.

• Abraham and Sarah, faced with God’s not-yet-fulfilled promise, tried to secure the promised offspring by their own efforts. Hagar would step in as Sarah’s surrogate. In that sense, Ishmael was born “according to the flesh.” His birth represents a human attempt to bring about God’s purposes through fleshly means.
• Isaac’s birth, by contrast, came through God’s supernatural intervention. Sarah was barren, and she and Abraham were well beyond any natural age for childbearing. Isaac’s existence depended entirely on divine power and promise, not human ability. In that sense, Isaac was born “according to promise.” His birth represents receiving God’s promise through trust.

As Paul reads Genesis 16 and 21, then, he makes his case from this principle genuinely present in the narrative of Genesis itself. He identifies two ways of attempting to secure God’s promise blessing:

1. through fleshly efforts, or
2. through trust in God’s promise.

So too, Paul observes, the offspring of the slave woman (Hagar) are born into slavery, and thus not heirs of the promise, whereas the offspring of the free woman (Sarah) are full children and heirs of the inheritance (children of the promise).

The figural correspondences: covenants and their children

Paul then extrapolates these exegetically derived principles from Genesis and maps them onto other corresponding realities.

Paul compares the birth of Ishmael (“according to the flesh”) to those who rely on Sinai’s law-covenant as a means of attaining the promises. This stands in contrast to the principle behind Isaac’s birth, and with it the Abrahamic covenant, of receiving God’s promises purely by faith.

Paul then makes a shocking move: While the rival teachers certainly would have seen themselves as descendants of Sarah, the matriarch of the Jewish people, Paul maintains that those who rely on Torah observance and circumcision are actually (spiritually speaking) children of Hagar! Hagar corresponds to that covenant that bears children for slavery: Sinai. The path which these rival teachers assumed led to inheritance corresponds, it turns out, to slavery!

Therefore, Paul concludes, to submit to the law as the basis of covenant identity is not a step forward into fuller obedience. It is a step backward into slavery. As Paul has argued earlier, the law supervised God’s people for a time, but that time has ended with the coming of Christ. Those who cling to the Mosaic covenant now that Christ has come are not living in the freedom of God’s final redemptive act.

The Jerusalem above and Paul’s use of Isaiah 54:1

So too the Jerusalem in Paul’s day, as the center of Torah-based religion, corresponds to Hagar and her slavery. In contrast, Sarah’s offspring make up the citizenry of “the Jerusalem above.”

Paul reinforces this point by quoting Isaiah 54:1, a prophecy addressed to Jerusalem depicting a barren woman who will one day have many children. According to Paul, as the gospel goes to the nations, the eschatological Jerusalem receives countless new children. The desolate one is becoming abundantly fruitful.

David deSilva also observes how Isaiah 54:1 immediately follows the famous passage about the suffering servant in Isaiah 53. This likely links the expansion of God’s people among the nations to the saving work of YHWH’s servant. The new family of God is created through the death and resurrection of Christ.

Use the Important Passages section in Logos’s Guides to locate related texts to the one you’re studying. Start a free trial of Logos today.

The practical application of Paul’s allegory

Paul instructs the Galatians to take the words that Sarah spoke to Abraham, “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman” (Gal 4:30), and apply them to these false teachers. They must reject the rival teachers’ message because it threatens to undermine their inheritance in Christ.

Paul wants believers to experience the freedom they have in the Spirit, refusing to adopt a rule-based approach to following Christ. At the same time, Paul insists that this freedom ought not lead to unrighteousness, but to a holiness that arises from the Spirit’s work within us (see Gal 5:13–26).

Advice for teaching and preaching this passage

Kirk E. Miller urges preachers not to rush straight to Paul’s conclusions without helping hearers understand the exegetical logic behind them. If people only hear that Hagar equals Sinai and Sarah equals the Jerusalem above, but fail to understand how Paul arrives there, then the passage’s message will prove less compelling. Instead, teachers should explain the Genesis narrative and show how Paul is drawing his conclusions from it.

David adds that teachers don’t need to use the word “allegory” when preaching this passage. What matters most is helping people see the two contrasting ways of relating to God.

David also recommends teaching the passage in connection with the larger flow of Galatians (lectio continua). Paul’s argument in 4:21–31 carries much more force when readers have already absorbed Paul’s earlier claims about Abraham, promise, law, and inheritance. Approached in context, Galatians 4:21–31 functions less like an isolated proof text and more like a powerful flourish at the climax of Paul’s case.

Logos values thoughtful and engaging discussions on important biblical topics. However, the views and interpretations presented in this episode are those of the individuals speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Logos. We recognize that Christians may hold different perspectives on this passage, and we welcome diverse engagement and respectful dialogue.

Let us know what you think

How do you understand Paul’s use of Genesis? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

David deSilva’s recommended resources on Galatians

The Letter to the Galatians (New International Commentary on the New Testament | NICNT)

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The Epistle to the Galatians (Black’s New Testament Commentary | BNTC)

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Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture | ACCS)

Regular price: $24.99

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Galatians (The Story of God Bible Commentary | SGBC)

Regular price: $29.99

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Galatians (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament | BECNT)

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Galatians through the Centuries (Blackwell Bible Commentaries | BBC)

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Since the release of the annual report of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), I’ve been reflecting on the present state and future prospects of theological education. I noted three trends in theological education, along with some observations about why some schools are growing.

One critical-yet-frequently-overlooked trait of growing seminaries is that they tend to combine flexible delivery methods with a missionally oriented approach to education, i.e., one shaped by the actual ministry needs of the students. Let’s explore this further.

Flexible modes of delivery

It’s no secret that seminaries (and all schools) provide education in drastically different ways than they used to. Online education is booming, and growing seminaries often have significant online enrollment.

The explosion of online education (over the last fifteen years, especially) is one of the most significant shifts in the history of education, not to mention seminary training. To what extent a program is online (and which programs) varies widely. Some provide fully online programs while others offer hybrid options. Many provide online coursework paired with intensives, regional learning hubs, or modular cohort programs, like Biola’s new Talbot Embedded initiative. These approaches allow students to remain embedded in ministry while receiving theological training.

Online education presents a host of opportunities and challenges. Many students who apply for fully online programs find that relationships with fellow students and faculty develop much more slowly than for those in other formats. For example, students in hybrid programs can have intensives or other in-person meetings to aid in relational cohesion and enrichment of the learning experience.

But whatever a school’s approach to online education, one thing is clear: Online education is not going away any time soon. And with the growing influence of artificial intelligence on the learning process, schools will need to continue to prioritize innovation in this area while retaining academic rigor.

Join Ed Stetzer for an upcoming series presented by Logos on trends in theological education. Get access to exclusive interviews with institutional leaders to learn how to “future-proof” Christian higher ed.

Leaning into the moment

The decline of some schools has been accelerated by resistance to online education. Leaders of these schools explain that when faculty have been resistant and slow to adapt—even when students want to market the online option—the decline came quickly. Talbot’s own late entry into online theological education hurt us. Peer institutions have reported the same, with some citing delayed adoption of online models as a key reason they experienced some decline. Simply put, online education has been the growth engine for most schools, and almost all growing schools have such programs. 

As a long-time SBC “insider,” my mind goes to their large network of seminaries as an example. Some SBC seminary leaders vehemently said they would never do online education. (It’s not hard to find these statements online). Such modes of education were sometimes considered deficient for the kind of serious training ministry leaders need. But after seeing the market shift, the need to pivot became clear to many of these leaders.

And to their credit, they did pivot—and have seen tremendous growth in many cases! Midwestern even announced an online PhD. (I look forward to speaking with Midwestern’s President Jason Allen about their remarkable growth in our upcoming series on the future of higher education.) Observe, for instance, the ten-year growth pattern for the largest schools.

With all of that said, there’s a danger here that needs to be named. When we try to make a program cheap, fast, and accessible by any means necessary, we’ve entered a “race to the bottom.” Accessibility is good. Affordability is good. But if the only competitive advantage a school offers is convenience, the school has lost its way.

Formation requires more than information transfer. The seminaries that are growing through online delivery are doing so because they’ve figured out how to maintain relational depth, mentoring, and spiritual formation even in a digital environment. Those that treat online as merely a cost-saving measure will eventually find themselves in trouble.

From credentialing to equipping

But online learning isn’t the only change in flexible offerings. Instead of focusing primarily on ministry credentialing, many seminaries emphasize equipping students for ministry, even where those students don’t have a vocational ministry objective. Instead of come get a degree so you can be ordained, growing seminaries invite prospective students to come be equipped for leadership and ministry in the mission of God.

That missional framing resonates with church planters, missionaries, marketplace leaders, bivocational pastors, and local church lay persons who are simply looking to deepen their knowledge of the faith. It also explains the growth of programs in areas such as ministry leadership, counseling, apologetics, church planting, and spiritual formation. Training pastors remains a key part of the seminary’s role, but these varied programs often reach a broader range of students than just future pastors.

Does theological education still matter? Dr. Albert Mohler makes the case on Logos Live.

To meet these needs, seminaries have launched non-formal educational pathways, such as certificate programs and on-demand learning. These provide students opportunities for development, even when a full degree isn’t desired. Dallas Theological Seminary stands out as one compelling example among many. It’s the largest non-denominational seminary in the world, yet its reach extends well beyond its accredited education. DTS Global Institute offers free courses to over a million learners worldwide, making it the leading program of its kind and a natural role model for the rest of us.

These changes tend to be led by visionary leaders who meet the moment. Rather than merely maintaining inherited structures, these leaders demonstrate a willingness to stretch boundaries and consider possibilities. They think missionally and act entrepreneurially. From experimenting with new programs to pursuing creative partnerships, they’re reimagining how theological education can best serve the church in the present moment. And—whether training pastors for the Great Commission, equipping church planters, recovering historic Christian theology, or preparing Christian leaders for cultural engagement—they tell stories that draw students in.

Such innovation is essential where many academic institutions may otherwise struggle. Those who prioritize meeting the moment, though, will likely find fruit.

The added benefit is often a broader vision that theological education is for everyone, not just those preparing for vocational ministry. That vision shapes recruitment, marketing, donor engagement, and institutional strategy.

The purpose of theological education

Keeping an institution’s mission front and center catalyzes its leadership, positioning them to help churches grow in effectiveness. (For example, our Talbot Lead the Way tour has encouraged thousands and shown how Talbot can be a resource for those looking to dig even deeper.) When the purpose of theological education is equipping rather than mere credentialing, educational institutions can pursue flexible faithfulness rather than rigid patterns from a previous era.

At Talbot, for instance, we’re trying to balance the best of flexible, missionally oriented approaches to education with robust, time-tested, traditional forms. And it seems to be working, as Talbot is the fastest-growing seminary in terms of Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) enrollment among similar institutions.⁷²

Keeping the “why” front and center helps schools remain rooted in the things that should never change, while adapting when needed. We need to meet the moment, yet the moment we’re in doesn’t change the mission we’re on.

Moving forward together

There are plenty of things to be concerned about with the current state of theological education, but there are plenty of hopeful things happening, too. Many of those hopeful things are found in schools that are remaining faithful to the gospel and the mission while also leaning into the future.

And none of this happens in isolation. As someone relatively new to theological education, I’m personally indebted to many of them. At Wheaton, I pointed my team to Michael Duduit and the Clamp Divinity School at Anderson University as a model. At Talbot, it’s been Dallas and Asbury, specifically their former president, Tim Tennent, who helped us develop Talbot Embedded. Mark Yarbrough, Jason Allen, and David Dockery have all provided me counsel along the way. From Asbury to Westminster, we are, in the truest sense, in this together—partners in the gospel. I celebrate the important work happening across these institutions.

Together, we see that it is possible to lead well while also providing educational excellence. We don’t need to race to the bottom of high-convenience, low-cost, and (too often) lower-value options. Instead, we can remain both faithful and fruitful, trusting God and stewarding what he has entrusted to us. 

Share your thoughts

What does the future of theological education look like? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Related content

• 3 Pivotal Trends in Theological Education: The 2026 ATS Report
• Why Some Seminaries Grow While Others Don’t: 3 Key Traits
• The Importance of Theological Education | Albert Mohler
• 3 Ways This Seminary Embeds Its Core Values in Daily Life
• Developing a Teaching Philosophy: A Guide for Theological Educators

Resources for further reflection

Ecologies of Faith in a Digital Age: Spiritual Growth through Online Education

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Excellence in Online Education: Creating a Christian Community on Mission

Regular price: $14.99

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Faith, Life, and Learning Online: Promoting Mission Across Learning Modalities

Regular price: $13.75

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Theological Education: Principles and Practices of a Competency-Based Approach

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Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one of the treasures of the Christian church. Martin Luther likened his affection to this epistle to his love for his wife.⁷³ The letter played an outsized importance in the writings of the Protestant Reformers as they sought to reform the church according to Scripture. Galatians continues to resonate with Christian readers today in its passionate plea for the gospel of grace.

This letter richly rewards careful attention. To that end, this article will consider

1. Introductory elements of Galatians. What do we know about its author, its audience, and the circumstances of its composition? What were Paul’s aims for writing this letter in the way that he did?
2. The theology and themes of Galatians. We will reflect on the two great concerns of Galatians: (1) Paul’s defense of his apostleship, and (2) Paul’s defense of the gospel.
3. The abiding relevance of Galatians. Galatians remains as relevant to the church today as it did for the churches in Galatia two thousand years ago. It sends us back to biblical truths that serve as the foundation of the Christian life. If we want to live the Christian life well, then we need to hear what Paul has to say to the Galatians.

An overview of Galatians

Audience

The author of this letter is the Apostle Paul (Gal 1:1), and he is writing to “the churches of Galatia” (Gal 1:2). Galatia in antiquity was located in Asia Minor (today Turkey). Commentators debate whether these churches were located on the south-central coast of Asia Minor or farther north, in the interior.⁷⁴ It seems likelier that these churches were located in the urban centers of the coast, where we know that there were sizable Jewish communities, and where we know Paul ministered early in his missionary career (see Acts 13:13–14:28).

It was through Paul that these churches were founded (see Gal 4:12–20). He reflects with fondness on the way in which they received his ministry in spite of his evident physical weakness (see Gal 4:13–14).

These churches were largely comprised of gentiles, that is, non-Jewish believers (Gal 4:8–9), a point confirmed by the fact that Paul is writing this letter to persuade them not to receive circumcision.

Date

It is difficult to say for certain when Paul wrote this letter. If the meeting in Jerusalem that Paul describes in Galatians 2:1–10 is the meeting that Luke describes in Acts 15:1–29 (the so-called Jerusalem Council) then Paul wrote this letter in the latter part of his apostolic travels.⁷⁵

Jump into your study of Galatians with Logos’s Factbook. Start a free trial.

Occasion

More important to the letter’s message—and contested among some modern interpreters—are the specific details relating to the controversy that occasioned this letter.

Paul has a definite set of opponents in mind, although they lie in the shadows of the letter. The opponents appear to have come into the church from the outside. Paul distinguishes them from the Galatians (e.g., Gal 4:17). They have had a destabilizing effect on the church. They “trouble” (Gal 1:7; 5:10) and “unsettle” the church (Gal 5:12). Their ministry is oriented not toward Christ but toward themselves (Gal 4:17; 6:13). In fact, the Galatians’ reception of their ministry has prompted the apostle to say to them, “you are severed from Christ … You have fallen away from grace” (Gal 5:4).

We do not have transcripts of these opponents’ sermons or writings. But we can faithfully reconstruct their teaching through a careful reading of Paul’s letter. Paul’s opponents have come to Galatia in order to impose the totality of the Mosaic law upon the churches. They are urging these believers to adopt a Jewish lifestyle (cf. Gal 2:14; 4:10) in order to secure blessing from God. In particular, they are trying to persuade the Galatians to take the first step in this direction, which is to receive circumcision (Gal 5:2). They appear to have argued that circumcision was a standing biblical requirement: God instituted it for Abraham and his offspring as an “everlasting” ordinance (Gen 17:13). The path to Abrahamic blessing, they argued, required circumcision. Refusal to be circumcised meant that one was a covenant breaker and under the curse of God. From this perspective, Paul’s insistence that the Galatians not receive circumcision struck at the heart of the Old Testament’s teaching.

Paul’s opponents also claimed for themselves some connection with the apostles in Jerusalem. The opponents, in turn, represented Paul as someone whose authority and message were derived from the Jerusalem apostles, but whose message had fundamentally departed from Jerusalem orthodoxy. The opponents presented themselves in Galatia to set the record straight. Paul, then, was being attacked on two fronts. His authority and credentials as an apostle were being brought under a cloud of suspicion, and his gospel was being characterized as unorthodox, maverick, and dangerous.

As for the Galatians themselves, they had fallen under the spell of Paul’s opponents (Gal 3:1). But while Paul viewed the situation in Galatia as dire, he did not view it as hopeless. The Galatians were recoverable. As Paul tells them, “I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view” (Gal 5:10).

This letter is, then, an exercise in persuasion. Paul is appealing to their knowledge of the gospel that he had earlier preached to them. He is also appealing to the faith in Christ that they had professed when they had embraced that gospel.

The message of Galatians

How, then, does Paul set out to persuade the Galatians to return to the gospel of grace?

1. In the first two chapters, Paul primarily defends his credentials as an apostle of Christ.
2. In the remaining four chapters, Paul primarily defends his gospel.

We will look at each in turn.

A defense of Paul’s apostleship (Gal 1:1–2:14)

In the first two chapters of Galatians, Paul’s primary concern is to defend his apostleship as having come directly and immediately from God. He states this concern in the letter’s opening words: “Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Gal 1:1). Paul insists in Galatians 1:11–12 that the gospel he brought to the Galatians was given to him by “revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:12). He did not “receive it from any man, nor was [he] taught it” (Gal 1:12). Paul goes on to show that he did not receive the gospel from his early training in Judaism (Gal 1:13–14), but he received it from Christ, who converted him and called him on the road to Damascus to preach the gospel to the gentiles (Gal 1:15–16).

After his conversion and call, Paul details his comings and goings, particularly among the Jerusalem apostles (Gal 1:17–2:10). His goal here is twofold:

1. Paul wants to show that he did not receive his gospel from these other apostles.
2. He wants to show that he was not laboring at cross purposes with his apostolic colleagues.

On the one hand, these “pillars … added nothing to me” (Gal 2:9, 6). On the other hand, all of the apostles warmly extended to one another the “right hand of fellowship,” each ministering the same gospel within different God-assigned spheres (Gal 2:9). The great confrontation between Paul and Peter in Antioch (Gal 2:11–14) illustrates the point. When the “truth of the gospel” (Gal 2:14) was at stake, Paul was willing to call out even the Apostle Peter in the presence of the church.

What are the main themes of Galatians? Find resources and reliable answers with Logos’s Study Assistant. Start your free trial.

A defense of Paul’s gospel (Gal 2:15–6:18)

In Galatians 2:15–21, Paul advances the thesis of the letter. Having established his apostolic credentials—his apostleship and his gospel have come directly from God—Paul is now prepared to expound and to defend the gospel. At the heart of the gospel is justification by faith alone: A sinner is counted righteous solely on the basis of the righteousness of Christ, imputed to the sinner, and received by faith alone. What Paul calls “works of the law”—deeds done in keeping with the requirements of the Mosaic law—play no part in the sinner’s justifying righteousness. Paul here no less testifies to the believer’s consequent new life in Christ. She is united with Christ in his death and resurrection (Gal 2:19, 20). The Christian life is the life of faith, lived in grateful response to “the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).

In the next section of the letter (i.e., Gal 3:1–4:7), Paul presents three sets of arguments to defend and to explain these claims. First, he appeals to the experience of the Galatians (Gal 3:1–5). When the gospel first came to them, they received it and its blessings by faith and not by works of the law (Gal 3:2, 5).

Second, he appeals to the testimony of Scripture (Gal 3:6–14). The blessings that God promised to Abraham are the blessings that we have received in Christ. As Abraham received those blessings by faith, we do also (Gal 3:9). In fact, the Mosaic law itself testifies that the one who tries to keep its commandments for justifying righteousness will find only cursing (Gal 3:10). But Christ has “redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us,” and he has delivered to us the “blessing of Abraham,” that is, the Holy Spirit (Gal 3:13, 14).

Third, Paul appeals to the various covenants that God made with his people(Gal 3:15–4:7). The Mosaic covenant was never intended to nullify or alter the Abrahamic covenant (Gal 3:15–18). Its purpose was to prepare sinners for the coming of Jesus Christ. Now that Christ has come, the Mosaic covenant is no longer operative (Gal 3:19–29). Under the new covenant, we are in a better place than believers were under the Mosaic covenant: They were as sons who had not yet come into their inheritance, whereas we are now both “son[s]” and “heir[s] through God” (Gal 4:7).

Paul then makes a series of appeals to the Galatians (Gal 4:8–31). He rebukes them for their return to spiritual slavery (Gal 4:8–11). He reminds them of their previous affection for him (and of his affection for them) and their reception of the gospel that he first preached to them (Gal 4:12–20). In the final section (Gal 4:21–31), he stresses to the “children of promise” (Gal 4:28) that they must have nothing to do with spiritual enslavers.

The last two chapters of the book (Gal 5:1–6:18) take up the second half of the thesis: the justified believer’s new life in Christ. In brief, this life is the life of freedom (Gal 5:1, 13), and it is life lived in the Spirit (the “Spirit of his Son” whom God the Father has “sent … into our hearts” [Gal 4:6]). Thus, we “walk by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16), take up the “desires of the Spirit” (Gal 5:17), are “led by the Spirit” (Gal 5:18), bear the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22), “live by the Spirit,” “keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal 5:25), and “sow to the Spirit” (Gal 6:8).

This life is the life of “faith working by love” (Gal 5:6), a love that commits itself to “serve one another” (Gal 5:13; cf. 6:10). And, since love is the fulfillment of the law (Gal 5:14), believers gladly take up the law’s moral demands (Gal 6:2). We do not obey the law in order to be justified. But we gladly and necessarily obey the law as those who have already been justified.

Paul concludes the letter (Gal 6:11–18) by setting a stark choice before the Galatians. They may choose either circumcision or the cross, but they may not have both (Gal 6:11–14). Only the cross brings “a new creation,” “peace and mercy,” and “grace” (Gal 6:15, 16, 18).

How does Paul’s “allegory” of Sarah and Hagar advance his argument in Galatians? David deSilva joins to discuss on What in the Word?

The significance of Galatians

We conclude with two aspects of Paul’s teaching in Galatians that speak to the church today.

1. The authority of the gospel

The gospel carries authority as a message that has been directly revealed from God. It has been brought to the church by apostles called and commissioned by Christ. It is the same gospel that God’s people received and believed from the Old Testament.

As in Galatia, so today, there are any number of plausible imitations that rival the genuine gospel for our attention and affection. In saying yes to the Bible’s gospel of grace, we necessarily say no to any and every other “different gospel” (Gal 1:6).

2. The sufficiency of the gospel

The gospel brings us Christ, crucified and raised from the dead for the sinner’s salvation. The righteousness of Christ that justifies the sinner is complete, sufficient, and admits of no additions (and certainly not any good works that we might do). The gospel is therefore a message of grace. To add (or take away) from the gospel is to “nullify the grace of God” (Gal 2:21).

Only the gospel, furthermore, gives us the resources to live in a way that is pleasing to God. We are united to Christ, supplied by the Spirit, and granted the “faith that works by love” (Gal 5:6). Our leading motive to living this life is not dread of judgment but gratitude to the Savior who has loved us and given himself for us on the cross.

Conclusion

Doctrine matters, Paul tells the Galatians. What we believe about Christ and the gospel has wide-ranging implications for our life and the life of the church.

The passionate persuasion of this letter has gripped the minds and hearts of Christians throughout the history of the church for the simple reason that the good news is truly good news!

Share your thoughts

How do you interpret Galatians? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Guy Waters’s suggested resources for studying Galatians

• Look for Guy Waters’s commentary on Galatians in the Reformed Exegetical and Theological Commentary on Scripture series, published by Crossway.

Galatians (The Lectio Continua Expository Commentary | LCEC)

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The Message of Galatians (The Bible Speaks Today | BST)

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Galatians (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament | BECNT)

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Galatians (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament | ZECNT)

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A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament: The Gospel Realized

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Many pastors quietly avoid the imprecatory psalms. It’s understandable. We often don’t know what to do with them. Maybe we’ve even seen them weaponized.

But our avoidance is problematic. Paul’s charge is unambiguous: “Preach the Word” (2 Tim 4:2)—all of it, since “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable” (2 Tim 3:16–17; emphasis added). This includes the Psalms, even the imprecatory psalms.

So how do we preach without dodging the imprecatory psalms or weaponizing them?

What are imprecatory psalms?

Imprecatory psalms (from the Latin imprecatio) are those psalms that ask God to judge the wicked and vindicate his people.⁷⁶

Better yet, we should speak of imprecations in the Psalms instead of “imprecatory psalms,” since imprecations are really one aspect within a broader psalm. Strictly speaking, we’re often dealing with imprecations within laments.

Filter the psalms by type using Logos’s Psalms Explorer to locate imprecatory psalms. Start your free trial.

Should we really pray and preach the imprecatory psalms?

We need not read the Psalms for long before we encounter an imprecation.

• Psalm 1 describes the contrast between the “blessed” and the “wicked” (Ps 1:1).
• Psalm 2 quotes the Lord saying, “You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (Ps 2:9).
• In Psalm 3, David prays, “Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked” (Ps 3:7; emphasis mine).

What did Jesus and the apostles do with the imprecatory psalms? They kept them. They didn’t try to hide them or edit them from Israel’s prayer book.

Neither should we.

The New Testament assumes the Psalms are still the church’s Scripture and a fitting vocabulary for the people of God. The New Testament quotes Old Testament imprecations (e.g., Acts 1:20; cf. Pss 69:25; 109:8) and includes its own imprecatory prayers, such as the martyrs’ cry for justice in Revelation 6:10. Jesus himself used imprecations against the religious establishment of the scribes and Pharisees, pronouncing “woe” upon them (Matt 23). Even his actions were based on imprecatory psalms. For example, after cleansing the temple, John tells us that Christ’s “disciples remembered that it was written: ‘zeal for your house has consumed me’” (John 2:17; cf. Ps 69:9). The original line comes in the context of imprecations: “Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them” (Ps 69:24).

Imprecations in the Psalms are not an embarrassment to be managed. They are part of the Scriptures that “bear witness” to “the things concerning” Jesus (John 5:39; Luke 24:27; 24:44). If these prayers make us uncomfortable, that discomfort is no reason to avoid or edit them—it’s a reason to learn how to preach them. As Elizabeth Achtemeier said, “If we have some problem with a passage in the Old Testament, it is not the Bible’s problem. It is ours.”⁷⁷ The question is not whether Christians may pray for God’s justice, but how.

Are imprecatory psalms compatible with loving our enemies?

But are the imprecatory psalms compatible with Jesus’s teaching to love our enemies (Matt 5:44; cf. Lev 19:18)?

Some, such as C. S. Lewis, have argued that imprecatory psalms should not be used by Christians. Lewis called them “terrible,” “contemptible,” and full of “vindictive hatred” that is “festering, gloating, undisguised.”⁷⁸

Yet, as we’ll see, love of enemies and prayer for judgment aren’t incompatible if that judgment is entrusted to God rather than seized by us. Christians refuse personal vengeance (Rom 12:19) while still pleading for God to act justly. This appeal is further shaped by the cross (where mercy is offered) and a view to the final judgment (where evil is answered).

It’s not “sub-Christian” to pray imprecations. It’s possible to love our enemies while also praying for justice.

Why did God give imprecatory psalms?

To aid us as we preach these psalms, allow me to survey some overarching theological reasons why God gave them to us.

1. They hand vengeance to God

Importantly, the psalm’s imprecations are not sinners’ plans to take justice into their own hands. Rather, they are prayers that enable sufferers to hand vengeance over to our just and righteous God.

As Paul said, citing Deuteronomy, “Repay no one evil for evil … never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Rom 12:17, 19; cf. Deut 32:35). As well, in heaven, the martyrs and saints cry out, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Rev 6:10).

2. They teach the church to long for the kingdom

Imprecations are prayers that enable God’s people to express longing for the full coming of the kingdom.

We live in a fallen, futile, and frustrated world (Gen 3:14–19; Rom 8:18–24). Imprecations recognize that the world as it was intended to be is not the world we live in.

They give us graphic expressions of the longing entailed in the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Your kingdom come.” That’s an implied imprecation. It’s a plea for the manifestation of God’s kingdom on earth—that believers would reflect its character, sinners would be drawn into it, but also that its enemies would be opposed by its king.

Without these prayers of imprecation, we lose Scripture’s authorized language for justice, lament, and hope in a world that is not yet set right.

3. They form the whole person before God

The Psalms are a complete guide for spiritual life. Athanasius (AD 296–373) said, “I believe that the whole of human existence, both the dispositions of the soul and the movements of the thoughts, have been measured out and encompassed in those very words of the Psalter.”⁷⁹ John Calvin called the Psalms “an anatomy of all the parts of the soul,” for, as he said, “there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.”⁸⁰

So the Psalms’s imprecations enable God’s people to exercise all of their affections, emotions, and passions in relating with God. If we didn’t have these example prayers that asked God to be active in justice, bringing his kingdom, our spirituality would reduce him to “a spectator uninterested in this world.”⁸¹ As Trevor Laurence writes, “The psalms of wrath are not merely a permissible but indeed a necessary element in the church’s communion with God, prayers that carry an irreplaceable capacity to shape the body of Christ for healing, virtue, and witness in a world gone wrong.”⁸²

How should one preach imprecatory psalms?

With this said, how should one preach the imprecatory psalms responsibly, helping your congregation pray these difficult psalms without weaponizing them?

Let me offer some advice, using Psalm 137 as an example.

1. Name the offense

Start by telling the truth about the evil the psalm addresses. Don’t sanitize, sensationalize, or soften the text to make it “preachable.”

Psalm 137 locates the Lord’s people “by the waters of Babylon,” weeping in their exile (Ps 137:1–2). Jerusalem has fallen, and they’ve been carried off. Now, in cruel mockery of the very worship they destroyed, their captors demand, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” (Ps 137:3). Psalm 137’s imprecation is not a free-floating curse. This context helps us to hear it as a cry from the ashes.

Psalm 137 does not blush to name the Babylonians’ persecution as imperial oppression, humiliation, and desecration. This is not petty irritation or a gripe against one’s neighbor, but the voice of God’s people crushed by empire, cleaving to covenant identity, and calling for God’s justice and faithfulness. Preach this soberly. Let the text tell the truth about grief under tyranny.

2. Clarify the target

Psalm 137 is not a template for venting personal annoyances. It targets violent, covenant-destroying evil: Babylon’s brutality and the Edomites who complicitly cheered it on (Ps 137:7–8). This is the kind of wickedness that preys upon the weak and desecrates what is holy. It is satanic and sinful.

Make this concrete in the sermon. Tell your people what these texts are for: bringing real evil before the Judge of all the earth. Then make clear what these texts are not for: baptizing resentment, dehumanizing opponents, or settling private scores as “holy war.”

3. Distinguish prayer from retaliation

This brings us to the psalm’s most shocking statement: the call to repay Babylon by “dashing” its little ones “against the rock” (Ps 137:8–9).

Explain to your people what kind of speech this is. It is not a mandate or license for personal retaliation or vigilantism. It is lament. It is a prayer that hands the case to God: “Lord, you see what evil has done. Do not let it stand.”

This distinction is vital: Vengeance belongs to God, not to the worshiper. If your people leave with a sense of license to fantasize about retaliation, you’ve mishandled the psalm. If they leave having been called to entrust justice to God—even while they feel morally outraged by the world—you’ve preached the text faithfully. Imprecatory psalms do not teach us how to hate. They teach us how to lament when evil feels unbeatable.

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4. Preach in light of Christ

Psalm 137 must be read in the shadow of Christ’s cross and in the light of his coming judgment. Christ-centered preaching does not erase the horror. It reframes it.

To that end, read the imprecations in light of the following:

1. Christ is the righteous sufferer. Jesus knows exile-like grief, public mockery, and violent injustice. Psalm 137 gives language for those righteous by faith in him yet are crushed by the world and cannot “sing” on command. In him, the church can lament honestly without sinning in hatred.
2. Christ is the cursed one. The psalm’s demand for justice presses us toward the gospel. If God is truly just, none of us can stand on our own. Yet Christ bears the curse for repentant enemies—including us. That keeps the preacher from gloating and the congregation from self-righteous fury.
3. Christ is the coming Judge. The psalm’s longing for wrongs to be set right is ultimately eschatological. Christ will judge the nations and finally end the cycle of predation and tears. So, we can plead for justice now while refusing to become agents of vengeance ourselves.

This threefold frame is how you place justice, mercy, and hope in the same sermon without dodging Psalm 137’s edge or weaponizing it.

When we preach the imprecatory psalms, then, we are preaching about Jesus. How? Jesus is the embodiment of the imprecations. Christ is the righteous sufferer who can pray these words without sin, the Mediator who bears the curse his people deserve, and the coming Judge who will set all things right.

5. Explain what we learn from these psalms

In union with him, the church learns to pray for justice with humility, repentance, and hope—never with self-righteous rage.⁸³

1. Rather than taking vengeance in our own hands, we pray that Christ as Judge will set all things right. We don’t pray against our private enemies for personal vengeance. We pray for divine justice.
2. Since what we preach about are descriptions of what truly awaits impenitent sinners, we tremble as we consider God’s judgments against sin.⁸⁴
3. As we pray for God’s justice, we ask for both his mercy and judgment, either by rescuing the evildoer from sin through repentance or by stopping their schemes.
4. We learn to resist the temptations which habitually arise within our hearts in response to the prosperity of the wicked and the affliction of the godly.
5. We direct our prayers against Satan and the spiritual forces that war against us, all of which seek to desecrate our earthly temples by leading us to unfaithfulness.
6. We even pray these imprecations against our own sins, asking God to be ruthless in purging our hearts of all evil and temptation.
7. Finally, we look for God to be glorified and his church vindicated in his judgments against its enemies: the world, the flesh, and Satan.

Conclusion

Almost every psalm speaks of the spiritual warfare between the church and the world, the righteous and the unrighteous, and of all the sufferings the church goes through in this life.

Through the “vale of tears” (Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 27) of this present life, may the rays of eternity’s light inspire us to believe in, pray for, and preach the ultimate triumph of God’s cause.

Share your thoughts

How should we preach the imprecatory psalms? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Resources for further study

Commentary on the Book of Psalms (5 Vols.)

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War Psalms of the Prince of Peace: Lessons from the Imprecatory Psalms, 2nd ed.

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The Psalms as Christian Lament: A Historical Commentary

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Imprecations in the Psalms: Love for Enemies in Hard Places

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How to Read and Understand the Psalms

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The Psalter Reclaimed: Praying and Praising with the Psalms

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Preaching Hard Texts of the Old Testament

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In this episode of Logos Live, Kirk E. Miller speaks with Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. about the purpose, necessity, and enduring value of theological education.

Their conversation centers on a basic but increasingly important question: Why does the church still need seminaries? Along the way, Dr. Mohler reflects on the relationship between theological education and the local church, the dangers of neglecting doctrinal formation, the kind of pastors seminaries should aim to produce, and why faithful ministry requires lifelong study.

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Episode guest: Albert Mohler

Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. serves as president and Centennial Professor of Christian Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. A theologian and ordained minister, he holds a master of divinity and a doctor of philosophy in systematic and historical theology from SBTS. He is the editor of WORLD Opinions and the author of several books, having contributed to over a hundred published works. He hosts two podcasts, The Briefing and Thinking in Public.

Episode synopsis

What is theological education?

In one sense, theological education goes back as far as the apostles’ teaching in the early church. More formally, though, it arose from the medieval university model. In that setting, theology, law, and medicine stood as the three central faculties. Theology was even regarded as the “queen of the sciences.” From that standpoint, a theological school can be understood as something like a medical school or law school, but for the training of ministers of the gospel.

At its core, then, theological education refers to the disciplined preparation of pastors, preachers, ministers, etc.

Who is theological education for?

As Dr. Mohler explains, theological education is for anyone who wants to pursue theological study for the cause of Christ. Theological education ought not be a mere academic exercise indulging religious curiosity. Rather, it should exist for the service of Christ and his church.

Thus, the primary purpose of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, for instance, is to train those who aspire to preach and teach God’s Word. That is the institution’s most important work.

At the same time, theological education is not limited to future pastors. Seminaries also serve those preparing for other forms of ministry in the church and on the mission field. They can even serve laypeople who long to grow in their understanding of the Bible and theology.

Are seminaries necessary?

If the local church bears the primary responsibility for raising up future ministers, are seminaries necessary?

Mohler agrees that the local church is the most important educator of future pastors. Yet it is unrealistic to forgo the seminary if we truly believe that such pastors benefit from the highest quality instruction from experts in their disciplines. No single local church is likely to have multiple experts in the original languages, Bible interpretation, apologetics, church history, systematic theology, and the many other disciplines needed for a deep and durable preparation for ministry.

Most people would feel uncomfortable receiving care from a medical doctor who lacked formal education. The same is true of pastors. If the church wants pastors trained by real scholars in the above disciplines, then it cannot simultaneously deny the need for formal theological education.

Over the long run, if faithful seminaries were to disappear, faithful churches would become much harder to sustain. The seminary should never replace the church, but the seminary provides a vital service to the church.

For instance, even the books churches often use to train members, pastoral interns, and elder candidates are often written by seminary professors. So the seminary serves the church in more ways than one.

What is the role of theological education in the local church?

Mohler explains, “The most important theological education is called Christian worship, centered in the act of Christian preaching.” Beyond this, churches can offer serious theological instruction to its members, e.g., classes on doctrine, Bible interpretation, etc.

Every believer is called to maturity in Christ, not just pastors and elders. The church grows believers into maturity through faithful preaching, worship, and the ordinary means of grace within the life of the church. If a church is ordered by Scripture, faithfully preaches the gospel, addresses issues contextually through exposition, then the members of that church will grow in grace and doctrinal understanding.

How does the church benefit from the theological education of its pastors?

Pastors are central to this vision because they are responsible for the church’s teaching. If that pastoral work is not done skillfully, faithfully, and with conviction, the church suffers and the sheep will be underfed. So James 3:1 warns would-be teachers. Thus, a church benefits immensely from the theological education offered by seminaries, since the quality of pastors’ preaching ministries depends in large part on the quality of their preparation.

Conversely, when pastors lack theological education, the church is made vulnerable to error. For instance, theological education exposes ministers to the theological challenges the church has already faced, the ways Christians have learned to read Scripture over two millennia, and both faithful and unfaithful models of ministry to be emulated and avoided respectively.

How does theology relate to discipleship?

As Mohler explains, discipleship, missions, ethics, preaching, etc., are inherently theological. There is no church without theology. There is no preaching without theology. Whenever a pastor preaches, he is functioning as a theological educator. Whenever he teaches moral truth, he is engaging in theology. Theology saturates the whole of a church’s life. Without an increasing knowledge of God and the doctrines revealed in Scripture, “the congregation cannot move into faithfulness.”

Likewise, although seminaries often include a separate theology department alongside New Testament, ethics, homiletics, etc., theology actually infuses them all. Theology in “theological education” is shorthand for a whole range of disciplines and responsibilities that all ultimately serve the church’s knowledge of God and faithfulness to his Word.

What kind of seminarians should seminaries aim to produce?

Mohler envisions young men called to gospel ministry—not merely through an inward sense of calling but through the external affirmation of the church. He hopes to equip the best of such men for lifetimes of faithfulness in the pulpit, in the church, in ministry, and on the mission field.

Mohler insists that pastoral ministry is not a mere occupation. It is a holy calling. Seminaries, therefore, should not produce religious professionals. They should prepare theologically-serious, biblically-grounded, gospel-motivated men for a life of faithful service.

Is seminary training sufficient?

However, the seminary is not sufficient for this task. Mohler insists that the church and its faithful application of the ordinary means of grace is vital for raising up pastors and ministers.

Nonetheless, there are certain things future pastors must know, and seminary training meets this need. You want your doctor to know far more than the basics they learned in medical school. But you certainly don’t want your doctor to know less than what they learned in medical school. So too pastors and the seminary.

As Mohler explains, a seminary cannot offer a full lifetime of ministerial education within a normal degree program, but it can provide students a grasp of that knowledge which is indispensable for rightly interpreting and expositing Scripture. From here, though, pastors must continue to learn and grow.

Mohler admits: Seminaries do not teach enough theology, enough Greek, enough Hebrew, enough Old Testament, or enough New Testament. This is not a criticism of the curriculum so much as an acknowledgment of the vastness of the task: There’s always more to learn.

Thus, Mohler wants graduates to leave seminary with a ravenous appetite to keep learning. Yet the normal work of faithful pastoral ministry will make this ongoing education inevitable. In fact, pastoral ministry makes the burden to study all the more urgent. Every sermon is a test of faithfulness. Cultural issues and pastoral counseling situations raise the need for theological precision.

Graduation from seminary is not a finish line. It’s not the end of a pastor’s formation. It is merely the end of its beginning. And the rewards of that growth are not merely personal. They are for the sake of the flock. Pastors study to feed the church.

How Logos serves The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Logos has a partnership with The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, providing Logos to its students.

Mohler observes how valuable this partnership has been, especially for students spread around the world who may not have easy access to physical libraries. Having a robust digital theological library available at all times has strengthened the educational experience of Southern’s students.

Additionally, Logos aids ongoing formation after seminary, since students take Logos with them after graduation. As Mohler comments, students maintain access to a wealth of resources.

Finally, Mohler comments that in the specific task of preparing sermons, Logos seamlessly brings together all the necessary tools: original languages, commentaries, and more.

Conclusion

In summary, Mohler sees theological education as indispensable because the church needs pastors who can preach the Word faithfully, understand doctrine clearly, and shepherd God’s people wisely. Seminaries cannot replace the local church, and they must never imagine themselves as independent from it. The seminary on its own is insufficient to raise up pastors. But neither can the church casually dismiss the value of structured, confessional, academically serious theological training of its ministers.

God’s people need capable shepherds, and those shepherds do not arise by accident.

Share your thoughts

Do pastors need theological education? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Resources for further reflection

The Religious Life of the Theological Students

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A Theology for Christian Education

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Theology, Church, and Ministry: A Handbook for Theological Education

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The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

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Succeeding at Seminary: 12 Keys to Getting the Most out of Your Theological Education

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How to Stay Christian in Seminary

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Surviving and Thriving in Seminary: An Academic and Spiritual Handbook

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Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God

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Thinking. Loving. Doing.: A Call to Glorify God with Heart and Mind

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Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling

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A Little Book for New Theologians: Why and How to Study Theology (Little Books)

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A Little Exercise for Young Theologians

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Why was Moses’s striking the rock such a serious failure that God forbade him from entering the promised land? In this episode of What in the Word?, Michael Morales joins Kirk E. Miller to tackle one of the more perplexing passages in the Old Testament: Numbers 20. Together they unpack the text’s rich theological layers, explaining how Moses failed to “sanctify” God by publicly misrepresenting his character before the people.

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Episode guest: Michael Morales

Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He is author of Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus, Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption, and a two-volume commentary on Numbers in the Apollos series.

Episode synopsis

Why this passage is difficult

At first glance, Moses striking the rock might seem like a relatively minor failure, especially since in a comparable incident where the people were without water, God instructed Moses to strike a rock with a rod to bring forth water (Exod 17:1–7).

Admittedly, God specifically says, “Tell the rock,” not “strike the rock” (Num 20:8). Yet, given the parallels to this previous event (Exod 17:1–7), might this have been a simple misunderstanding or mistake on Moses’s part? In Exodus 17, God told Moses to use the staff he had previously used to strike the Nile to turn it to blood (Exod 17:5; cf. 7:20). So we see a pattern of Moses using a staff to strike objects in relation to water. Now in Numbers 20, God likewise instructs Moses to take a staff (Num 20:8–9) in connection with bringing water from a rock. Wouldn’t Moses’s striking the rock be a reasonable inference (or reflex) at this point?

Yet God’s response is incredibly severe: Moses and Aaron will not lead Israel into the promised land. Why was striking the rock sinful? And why the (seeming) disproportion between Moses’s action and God’s penalty? These questions have led to a wide variety of attempts to explain what exactly Moses did wrong.

Which generation we’re dealing with and why it matters

A major part of Dr. Michael Morales’s interpretation depends on recognizing where Numbers 20 falls in the story.

First, the opening verse tells us that these events happen in the first month (Num 20:1). Then Numbers 33, which rehearses Israel’s journey, clarifies that this refers to the first month of the fortieth year. This, contrary to many interpretations, means that we have reached the second generation.

After the first wilderness generation rebelled after the spies’ report, God consigned them to wander for forty years and eventually die in the wilderness. They were not to enter the promised land (Num 13–14). Now that generation has effectively died off. Numbers 20 provides an account of the death or judgment of the leaders of that first generation: Miriam dies, Aaron is sentenced and then dies, and Moses is judged.

Numbers 20 then is not another example of the first generation’s unbelief and rebellion. Rather, it concerns the subsequent generation, which is preparing to enter the promised land. The second generation seems to need new leadership, as we see Moses has become quite tainted from his experience with the previous generation.

How Numbers’s structure follows the camp of Israel

Second, the structure of the camp provides a pattern for the covenant community.

1. At the center is YHWH’s own dwelling.
2. Around that is the inner camp of the Levites, the tribe that served God’s dwelling and mediated it to the other tribes.
3. Then forming the outer camp, we have the remaining twelve tribes.

Michael observes how the narratives in Numbers correspond to this arrangement of Israel’s camp:

1. First we encounter the failure of the outer camp of twelve tribes (Num 11–15).
2. Next we review the failure of the inner camp of Levites (Num 16–18).
3. Here in Numbers 20 we reach the failure of Moses (and Aaron), which, following the pattern of the camp, comes to represent its very center, YHWH’s dwelling.

This pattern—moving from the outer camp to the inner camp—illuminates the nature of Moses’s sin. As Michael explains in his commentary,

It appears that each group’s failure was in relation to usurping the next level of authority: the princes, representing their respective tribes (the outer camp), attempted to usurp Moses’ prophetic authority (chs. 13–14); the Levites (the inner camp) attempted to usurp Aaron’s priestly authority (chs. 16–17); and, finally, Moses (the camp of the Shekhinah) attempted to usurp YHWH’s authority directly.⁸⁵

In other words, by the time we reach Numbers 20, the narrative’s focus concerns the center of the camp, that is, God himself. This is why holiness language features throughout the chapter. (Num 20:12, 13; even the location of these events, Kadesh, shares the same root as “holy” [Num 20:1, 14, 16, 22], and so seems to contribute to this theme.) Thus, by their actions, Moses and Aaron fail to rightly represent God’s holiness before the people.

Yet at each phase, we also see vindication:

1. God vindicates Moses’s prophetic role before those who failed to heed it.
2. God vindicates Aaron’s priesthood before those who challenged it.
3. Finally, in Numbers 20 God vindicates himself before those who misrepresented him (i.e., because Moses and Aaron did not “uphold [God] as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, … he showed himself holy” [Num 20:12–13]).

Varied attempts to explain Moses’s sin

Michael notes that commentators have proposed many interpretations of what exactly constitutes Moses’s sin. Some of the more popular include:

1. Moses sinned by lashing out at the people. This view finds additional support from Psalm 106:33, which says, “he spoke rashly with his lips.”
2. Moses tried to take credit for the miracle when he said, “Shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” (Num 20:10; emphasis added). However, against this interpretation, Moses’s words in Numbers 20:10 match what God instructed of him in Numbers 20:8: “So you shall bring water out of the rock” (emphasis added).
3. Moses should have struck the rock only once. Instead of striking the rock once, in anger Moses struck it a second time.
4. Moses doubted God’s power. This view cites Numbers 20:12 where God says Moses did not believe God. Yet this explanation is quite out of character for Moses who has witnessed God do many great things, including already bringing water from a rock (Exod 17). So why would Moses doubt God’s ability to do this?
5. Moses’s sin is simply unknown to us. Maybe Moses’s sin has been intentionally obscured to preserve Moses’s honor.

Michael admits there is truth in the first explanation: Moses did speak harshly to the people. But he does not believe it adequately explains the severity of God’s judgment and God’s description of Moses’s sin. A deeper issue is at play.

The passage’s descriptions of Moses’s sin

Namely, God describes Moses’s actions as a failure to demonstrate faith (or faithfulness) toward God so as to uphold God as holy (to sanctify him) before the people (Num 20:12). As the first generation failed to enter the land due to their unbelief (Num 14:11), now Moses will be denied entrance to the land for the same reason.

Whereas in Exodus 17, the text essentially reads, “And Moses did so [i.e., as God instructed]” (Exod 17:6), Numbers 20 provides a far more detailed account of Moses’s actions (Num 20:10–13). The need for this description indicates that Moses’s actions are far from obedient to what God instructed in Numbers 20:8.

In fact, Numbers 20:11 reads that Moses “lifted up his hand.” In Hebrew, this expression often conveys the idea of “high-handed sin,” that is, deliberate, defiant rebellion. So Morales argues that, by using this language, the text intends to evoke this category.

According to God, then, Moses’s sin was not a mere mistake or misunderstanding, but outright rebellion. Whereas Moses lambasted the people as rebels (Num 20:10), God identifies Moses as the actual rebel (Num 20:24). The one who accuses the people of rebellion is himself exposed to be a rebel.

The interpreter’s responsibility then is to understand how the details of the narrative justify God’s verdict of Moses, to learn to see the event as God sees it until the divine evaluation makes sense.

(For other references and descriptions of Moses’s sin in Scripture, see also Num 27:14; Deut 1:37; 3:23–27; 32:48–52; 34:1–5; and Ps 106:32–33.)

God’s kingly provision of water

In both Exodus 17 and Numbers 20, the people have a legitimate need: They lack water.

Michael points out that in the complaint narratives in the wilderness, whenever the people’s need is real, God responds compassionately even if the people complain sinfully. He does not rebuke or punish them but provides for them. This pattern matters since it shows God’s intention in Numbers 20, as well.

In Exodus 17, the water flows from the rock at Horeb (Exod 17:6), that is, Mount Sinai. The water will flow down from Mount Sinai as a way to prepare them for the Sinaitic covenant. The scene anticipates Sinai’s revelation as the source of life-giving instruction (like how the law of God is depicted as nourishing streams of water in Ps 1:3). So in Numbers 20, as God provides water, he provides another Sinai experience for this second generation.

In the ancient Near East, a major evidence of a good king was their ability to provide water for their people. So here, God instructs Moses to demonstrate his benevolent kingship before the people. This is to be a renewed presentation of God’s kingship before the second generation. The issue is not merely whether water will be supplied, but how Moses will represent God as the one who supplies it.

This connection of water with kingship fits a theme across Scripture where water, symbolizing God’s provision of life, flows from his holy habitation and throne (Ezek 47:1–12; Rev 22:1–2; etc.), which reflects the archetypal holy of holies, the garden of Eden (Gen 2:10–14).

When Moses asks, “Shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” (Num 20:10), Michael believes this rhetorical question expresses Moses’s refusal to bring forth water. Moses is angry with the people and spurns God’s mercy toward them. So Moses refrains from telling the rock to yield water, attempting to impede God’s generosity. Yet when he strikes the rock in anger, God overturns Moses’s refusal and provides water anyways (Num 20:11). Moses and Aaron failed to hallow God before the people, but God hallowed himself by meeting the people’s needs anyway (Num 20:12–13).

Which rod was Moses told to take?

Whereas in Exodus 17, God tells Moses to take the rod with which he struck the Nile (Exod 17:5; cf. 7:20), Michael contends that in Numbers 20, Moses grabs the rod of Aaron “from before the LORD” (Num 20:9; 17:2). “Before the LORD” is cultic language, referring to the sanctuary. Accordingly, this is not Moses’s ordinary staff, but Aaron’s rod which had budded and had been deposited in the sanctuary.

Recall the context:

1. God vindicated Moses’s prophetic office (his speech) in Numbers 11–15.
2. God vindicated Aaron’s high priesthood in Numbers 16–18 through Aaron’s blooming rod.

In this case, God’s specific instructions to Moses intend to bring together two important lessons for this second generation:

1. Moses is to speak to the rock, demonstrating his prophetic office and that he speaks on behalf of God.
2. Aaron is to hold his budded rod, representing his priestly office and that he is the chosen mediator where the people can find life with God.

Thus, Moses’s and Aaron’s sins involve using the emblems of their divinely vindicated offices to misrepresent God to the people.

Interestingly, when Moses takes Aaron’s staff, the text says this was “as [God] commanded him” (Num 20:9). Michael contends that this statement of approval early on in the narrative, instead of after all the events, indicates that what Moses does hereafter was disobedient, not “as [God] commanded him.”

Thus, Moses obediently takes Aaron’s rod, but when the decisive moment comes, instead of speaking to the rock, he takes up his own staff—the one associated with judgment, such as in the plagues on Egypt (Exod 17:5; cf. 7:20)—and strikes the rock. This is not an innocent confusion. It is a symbolic misrepresentation that would have conveyed God’s judgment and displeasure, when in fact God meant to communicate his graciousness.

Why Moses’s punishment is so severe

The gravity of Moses’s office explains the severity of his punishment. As God’s prophet, Moses functioned as the authoritative mediator of divine revelation. What Moses spoke, Israel was to receive as the word of God. Earlier in Numbers 16, God vindicated Moses by causing the earth to swallow up those who challenged that Moses truly had been sent by the Lord.

That background helps us see what is at stake in Numbers 20. If Moses can misrepresent God, then it would call into question the integrity of God’s revelation through Moses elsewhere. So by severely judging Moses, God publicly marks that occasion where Moses fails to represent God accurately. This judgment then preserves the reliability of Moses’s prophetic ministry elsewhere. Precisely because God responds so strongly, Israel can trust that Moses’s wider ministry remains true and authoritative.

In other words, Numbers 20 is about more than a jaded Moses losing his temper. It concerns the holiness of God, specifically the trustworthiness of God’s revelation.

The Edom episode as an interpolation

Sandwiched between Moses’s sin (Num 20:10–13) and Aaron’s death (Num 20:22–29) is a scene involving Israel’s interaction with Edom.

A. Moses’s sin in response to Israel’s quarreling (Num 20:1–13)
B. Edom’s refusal to allow Israel to pass through its territory (Num 20:14–21)
A’. The death of Aaron, the high priest (Num 20:22–29)

At first, this central episode may seem unrelated to the outer episodes. Yet Michael suggests this middle section functions to hold up a mirror to Moses. In his appeal to the king of Edom, Moses is able to recount Israel’s plight sympathetically, asking for compassion. Yet moments earlier, he himself had responded harshly, with impatience, to Israel’s thirst. So too Edom, their family member (ancestral cousins), harshly refuses Moses’s request.

Yet this episode also shows the second generation’s eagerness to enter the land. This is not the old generation that shrank back in unbelief.

Finally, Aaron’s death fulfills the judgment pronounced in Numbers 20:12 that he and Moses would not enter the promised land. So the chapter is bookended by Miriam’s (Num 20:1) and Aaron’s deaths (Num 20:22–29), signaling the completed judgment upon the first generation (Moses excepted) and with it:

Israel’s release from the wilderness and from God’s judgement. The period of wandering is over and may now give way to Israel’s purposeful journey to inherit the land. In this sense, hope may be found in Aaron’s death.⁸⁶

The practical significance of this passage

First, Michael reflects on Numbers 20’s striking display of God’s mercy. Despite the people’s complaints and despite Moses’s rebellion, God provides abundant water. God is not stingy. He is compassionate, patient, and generous even in the face of human failure. We can be assured, God remains faithful to the needs of his people, notwithstanding the failures of their leaders.

The chapter’s severe warning should not obscure this comfort. The same God who judges Moses also sustains the congregation.

Second, this passage teaches with seriousness that all God’s people—but especially spiritual leaders—must represent God faithfully. Moses misrepresented God, bearing God’s name in vain (Exod 20:7). By speaking harshly to the people and striking the rock twice, Moses endangered causing the people to perceive God as irritated and harsh instead of generous and merciful—and God judged him severely for it.

In this way, Numbers 20 strongly rebukes spiritual abuse. Those in positions of spiritual authority wield an authority that affects how people view God. Thus, when spiritual leaders mistreat those under their care, they offer a distorted view of God. Numbers 20 shows that when they do so, they commit a serious offense—one that God does not take lightly.

Advice for teaching and preaching Numbers 20

Michael calls preachers and teachers to maintain God as just. Do not minimize Moses’s sin in a way that makes God seem overreactive or unfair. When sin is treated lightly, God’s judgment appears arbitrary.

Instead, help listeners see the weight of Moses’s offense so God’s mercy shines bright.

Logos values thoughtful and engaging discussions on important biblical topics. However, the views and interpretations presented in this episode are those of the individuals speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Logos. We recognize that Christians may hold different perspectives on this passage, and we welcome diverse engagement and respectful dialogue.

Let us know what you think

What do you think was Moses’s sin? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Michael Morales’s recommended resources

Numbers, 2 vols. (Apollos Old Testament Commentary | ApOTC)

Regular price: $70.99

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Numbers (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries | TOTC)

Regular price: $15.99

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Additional commentaries on Numbers

Best Numbers Commentaries (7 vols.)

Regular price: $180.99

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Numbers (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Pentateuch)

Regular price: $59.99

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Genesis–Numbers (ESV Expository Commentary, Vol. 1 | ESVEC)

Regular price: $47.99

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Numbers (The JPS Torah Commentary | JPSTC)

Regular price: $47.99

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Numbers (The New American Commentary | NAC)

Regular price: $25.99

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The Book of Numbers, 2nd ed. (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament | NICOT)

Regular price: $60.00

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Numbers (The Story of God Bible Commentary | SGBC)

Regular price: $31.99

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Bible study is a daily rhythm. But the “daily” part is often the hardest.

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Highlights at a glance

1. Author Filtering in Study Assistant: Research based on the voices you trust most
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1. Conduct research using specific authors

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Many Christians are surprised to discover that bonafide and respected Christians hold not only competing views on eternal conscious punishment but also outright alternatives to it. For example,

• N. T. Wright argues that the damned will indeed suffer in hell forever but will become less and less human until they no longer bear the image of God—something like the transformation of Sméagol into Gollum in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.⁸⁷
• Shawn Bawulski also affirms eternal torment, yet he maintains that the lost will in some sense be reconciled to God, submitting to him and ceasing to sin.⁸⁸

Others have reconsidered the doctrine more dramatically.

• Preston Sprinkle recently abandoned eternal torment altogether after publishing a widely read defense of it only a few years earlier.⁸⁹
• Around the same time, Terrance Tiessen also left the traditional view behind, despite having defended it not long before in a respected academic theological dictionary.⁹⁰

Names like these—and they are just a sampling—demonstrate that faithful Christian theologians disagree with one another when it comes to the nature and duration of hell, even if the average Christ-follower in the pews doesn’t know it.

In this article, we’ll survey the terrain of this fiery (pun intended) yet in-house debate. We’ll explore

1. Common misconceptions and key biblical terms
2. The three views on hell across church history
3. The exegetical and theological arguments for each view
4. Answers to frequent questions and objections to hell
   Conclusion

Afterlife and life thereafter: hell vs. the intermediate state

Many Christians seem to think that hell is where an unsaved person goes immediately after dying, but it’s not. The church has always affirmed that one day all the dead will be resurrected. Only then will the lost be sentenced to hell as final punishment.⁹¹ So, hell is where the unsaved are sent after being raised back to life from the dead.

By contrast, theologians use the phrase “intermediate state” for the time between death and resurrection. Most Christians have believed the righteous and unrighteous dead are nevertheless conscious as disembodied souls, and this is what the term afterlife typically refers to.⁹² But the hell debate concerns life thereafter, following the resurrection of the dead.

The KJV translation of the Bible may explain why many Christians confuse hell with the intermediate state. Its translators chose to render multiple distinct words, referring to different concepts, using the single English word “hell.” However, recognizing the distinctions between these words and concepts is critical for navigating the hell debate.

Sheol (שְׁאוֹל) or Hades (ᾅδης)

The words Sheol and Hades refer to the place of the dead in Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek, respectively. The KJV thus translates the first several occurrences of Sheol as “grave,” like when Jacob, thinking his son Joseph has been killed, refuses to be comforted and says, “I will go down into the grave [שְׁאוֹל, Sheol] unto my son mourning” (Gen 37:35 KJV; see also Gen 42:38; 44:29, 31). The Septuagint (LXX)—the Greek translation of the Hebrew OT completed in the third and second centuries BC—renders this with the Greek word Hades, so NT figures and authors followed suit. In his psalm, David says God will not abandon the Messiah in “Sheol” (Ps 16:10), which Peter translates as “Hades” at Pentecost: “you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead [ᾅδης, Hades]” (Acts 2:27 NIV).

Use Logos to find every instance of Sheol (שְׁאוֹל) and Hades (ᾅδης) in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint (LXX), and the Greek New Testament, respectively.

Whether humans are conscious while dead in Sheol/Hades is the subject of a separate debate, but it is not where final divine punishment is meted out—that is, hell. In John’s prophetic vision of final punishment, he sees Sheol/Hades emptied of its dead in their resurrection, and it is thrown empty into the lake of fire before the resurrected lost subsequently join it there (Rev 20:13–15). Jesus’s story of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19–31), which is explicitly set in Hades (Luke 16:23) while the dead rich man’s brothers are still going about life as usual (Luke 16:28), therefore has little if any bearing on the hell debate. It says nothing about what awaits the rich man after he is raised for judgment.

Tartarus (τάρταρος)

In 2 Peter 2:4, the verb translated “cast them down to hell” by the KJV is ταρταρόω, which points to the present, ongoing imprisonment of fallen angels until their final punishment. The verb literally means, “to cast into or to cause to remain in Tartarus.”⁹³

In Greek mythology, Tartarus was a place of punishment distinct from and far below Hades. Humans generally went to Hades after death, while Tartarus is where divine beings like the Titans were punished.⁹⁴ Peter appears to co-opt the name of this place to say it’s where divine beings in Jewish theology—angels—are currently held in “chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment” (emphasis added). Like Sheol and Hades, then, Tartarus is a sort of intermediate state, but for divine rather than human beings. It is not hell, the place of final punishment.

Gehenna (γέεννα) and the lake of fire

Translating the aforementioned terms “hell” causes confusion, because they’re not about the final judgment. “Hell” should be reserved for Gehenna and for the lake of fire in Revelation.

The toponym Gehenna (γέεννα) transliterates the name of the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom (גֵּי בֶן־הִנֹּם), a valley outside of Jerusalem that serves in the OT as the setting of future divine punishment (e.g., Jer 7:30–34). Contrary to popular notions, the valley was not a garbage dump, nor was its name commonly used to refer to final divine punishment by Jews before the time of Jesus, who instead appears to have popularized its use as such.⁹⁵ For example, when he quotes the prophet Isaiah’s description of future divine punishment (Isa 66:24) in the context of the new heavens and new earth (Isa 65:17), Jesus locates it in Gehenna (Mark 9:47–48).

The lake of fire also refers to hell and final punishment in the book of Revelation, albeit symbolically. Many Christians misunderstand the nature of prophetic visions of the future in Scripture, thinking seers were shown future events as they would literally unfold. They were not. Rather, seers were shown vivid symbols that represented future events, and these were often so perplexing they had to be explained by supernaturally gifted interpreters. Joseph, for example, has to explain to Pharaoh that, in his vision, fat cows being devoured by emaciated ones symbolize upcoming years of abundance followed by famine in Egypt (Gen 41). Likewise, an angel has to explain to John the Revelator that, in his vision, a monstrous beast’s seven heads symbolize a succession of seven kings, the sixth of which is alive at the time (Rev 17:10). As for the lake of fire, it symbolizes the final fate of all God’s enemies, including death itself (Rev 20:10–15).

A matter of life and death: 3 views of hell

This brings us to the topic at hand, to the three basic views of hell embraced among Christians through history. We’ve seen that this intramural debate does not concern the intermediate state between death and resurrection (Sheol and Hades), but rather the future and final punishment of the resurrected lost (Gehenna) and fallen angels presently imprisoned until then (Tartarus).

• But what is the nature of this final punishment?
• How long will it last?
• Can those sent to hell be saved at some point thereafter?

Theologians propose a wide range of ways to understand hell, but they are all variations of three basic views. Each affirms something denied by the other two.⁹⁶

1. Eternal conscious torment (or traditionalism)

Most Christians have believed in the doctrine of eternal torment or eternal conscious punishment, which is why it is often called traditionalism. This historically dominant view says that when the dead are resurrected—saved and lost alike—their risen bodies will all be rendered immortal, and they will live forever thereafter. The saved will go on to enjoy the blissful presence of God and the fellowship of the redeemed for all eternity, but the lost will live and suffer in hell forever, apart from God and his kingdom. Hell, then, is not a place where disembodied spirits or souls suffer forever. It is where resurrected immortals will live everlastingly in a miserable condition called “death.”

Traditionalists differ on many of the details of hell.

• Those who believe in separationism argue that hell is self-imposed—locked from the inside—its torments largely psychospiritual and self-induced.⁹⁷
• Those who espouse belief in reconciliationism think everyone will be reconciled to God, but for the lost this means only that they willingly submit to God and accept their unending punishment.⁹⁸
• The dehumanization view suggests the damned will grow less and less human, eventually ceasing to bear the image of God but remaining consciously separated from him forever.⁹⁹

Notwithstanding such differences, these variations of eternal torment all include belief that the risen lost will be immortal and live forever in hell.

This belief in the universal immortality of resurrected humanity enjoys extremely historic pedigree among both Jews and Christians. It wasn’t the universal ancient Jewish report, but it is found in some writings prior to Christ.

• Written in the second century BC, the book of Judith says of the damned that God “will send fire and worms into their flesh; they shall weep in pain forever” (Jdt 16:17).
• And in the first or second century AD, the book of 4 Maccabees warns of “eternal torment by fire” (4 Macc 9:9) and “unceasing torments” (4 Macc 10:11).

Among Christian writers, eternal conscious torment appears as early as the second century.

• Tatian of Adiabene assures readers that, after death, humans “receive the immortal with enjoyment, or the painful with immortality.”¹⁰⁰
• Athenagoras of Athens applies 1 Corinthians 15:54, with its language of resurrected immortality, to the saved and unsaved alike.¹⁰¹
• Two and a half centuries later, Augustine of Hippo says the quality of immortality, characteristic of the immaterial soul, will also be exhibited by the resurrected bodies of the damned.¹⁰²

In the wake of Augustine, eternal conscious torment has dominated Christian thought when it comes to hell.

• In the medieval period, Anselm of Canterbury insists it is irrational to think guilty souls could ever die.¹⁰³
• Like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas thinks the soul’s immortality will be communicated to the risen bodies of both the good and the evil.¹⁰⁴
• Three hundred years later, the Reformer John Calvin denies that the risen wicked will ever die.¹⁰⁵
  Jonathan Edwards does likewise two centuries later.¹⁰⁶
• In the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Spurgeon says the lost are “condemned to live forever in hell.”¹⁰⁷
• In the modern era, traditionalists from C. S. Lewis to Wayne Grudem all teach that the resurrected lost will “live forever” in hell.¹⁰⁸

This collective testimony, from these and many others of the brightest Christian thinkers throughout church history, should surely give doubters pause.

2. Annihilationism (or conditional immortality)

Conditional immortality (or conditionalism) is the view that only those who meet the condition of being saved will be raised immortal and live forever. The lost, in contrast, will be raised mortal and, as the consequence of their sin, die in hell, in both body and soul, never to live or experience anything ever again—an eternal capital punishment. If humans have non-physical spirits or souls that remain conscious after the first death, those of the lost will be slain and destroyed with their risen bodies in the second death, therefore entailing a complete end to their conscious existence. For this reason, conditional immortality is sometimes called annihilationism.

Conditionalists disagree with each other concerning some of the particulars, though.

• Some prefer the phrase terminal punishment (rather than conditional immortality or annihilationism) as best reflecting their view.¹⁰⁹
• Some see death as the punishment meted out in hell, thinking any torment experienced by the damned will be caused by the means of their execution.¹¹⁰
• Others locate final punishment in the torment itself and think a just proportion thereof will eventually terminate in death.¹¹¹
• Though most conditionalists believe the devil and his angels will be destroyed in hell along with unredeemed humanity, a view one might call partial conditionalism holds that demonic beings (but not human ones) will instead be tormented forever.¹¹²

Like eternal conscious torment, conditional immortality was believed among the Jews in the time of Jesus. It may have even been the majority report.

• In the book of Jubilees, final judgment is characterized as being “rooted out of the land of the living” (Jub 36:9) by a “devouring fire” resembling that which slew the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (Jub 36:10).
• The Dead Sea Scroll known as the Community Rule curses the wicked unto “the gloom of everlasting fire” (1QS II, 7–8) and “an abundance of afflictions” (Rule 4:12–13) until their ultimate “destruction” (Rule 2:6; 4:13–14), the Hebrew word כָּלָה meaning “complete destruction, annihilation.”¹¹³
• Wisdom of Solomon insists the unrighteous “will become dishonored corpses” (Wis 4:18); though “the righteous live forever” (Wis 5:15), “the hope of the ungodly is like … smoke before the wind” (Wis 5:14).
• Tobit 14:7 promises that saved Israelites will “live in safety forever” while “those who commit sin and injustice will vanish from all the earth.”
• The Psalms of Solomon (13:11) sing that “the life of the righteous goes on for ever,” but “sinners shall be taken away to destruction, and no memory of them will ever be found,” for they will be excluded from participation in the resurrection (Ps Sol 3:11–12).

The expectation that only the righteous will live forever, and that the unrighteous will finally be destroyed, is found in much of the intertestamental literature.

Conditionalists admit that their view has been in the extreme minority since the time of Augustine, but they argue that the earliest Church Fathers taught it.

• A half-century before Tatian and Athenagoras, Clement of Rome identifies immortality as a divine gift promised only to God’s people.¹¹⁴
• A contemporary of Clement, Ignatius of Antioch teaches that Christ died to secure immortality for his people, urging readers not to perish and forsake this gift.¹¹⁵
• Also predating Tatian and Athenagoras, the Didache instructs catechumens to thank God for “immortality, which Thou madest known to us through Jesus.”¹¹⁶
• Irenaeus of Lyons, a contemporary of Tatian and Athenagoras, says the unsaved reject God’s gift of “continuance” and “length of days for ever and ever.”¹¹⁷

Conditionalists therefore think they are following in the footsteps of the Protestant Reformers, willing to slough off what they see as centuries of unbiblical tradition accumulated since the time of the earliest Church Fathers.

To the chagrin of conditionalists, their view appears to be unrepresented among Christians from the time of Augustine to the Protestant Reformation, but it has enjoyed degrees of popularity since then. It was extremely popular, in fact, among Protestants of various denominations in the nineteenth century. As the Baptist conditionalist Jacob Blain wrote in the middle of that century, “the number who now hold the view is so large, and so decided in spreading light, that all efforts to stop its progress must be vain.”¹¹⁸

Such efforts were not in vain, and conditional immortality faded largely into obscurity in the late 1800s and into the 1900s, but it did not disappear altogether. Conditionalism persisted among some British evangelicals, including John Wenham, Stephen Travis, Michael Green, and even John Stott. To their ranks have since been added many other diverse thinkers: Clark Pinnock, John Stackhouse, Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, David Powys, Preston Sprinkle, Terrance Tiessen, and more.

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3. Christian universalism (or apokatastasis)

Variously known as universalism, universal salvation, and universal reconciliation, this view of hell posits that everyone will ultimately be rescued from hell or will avoid it entirely. The Greek term apokatastasis, meaning a “restoration,” is also sometimes used of this view specifically, but believers in all three views affirm what they think the Bible means when it promises a “restoring” (ἀποκατάστασις) of all things in, for example, Acts 3:21.

1. Universalists share with traditionalists a belief in the universal immortality of resurrected humanity, for the risen lost will live as long as it takes to be saved, and forever thereafter.
2. However, universalists believe with conditionalists that all suffering will end and all evil will be eradicated—albeit by means of conversion rather than annihilation.
3. Contrary to both eternal conscious torment and conditional immortality, universalists deny that the punishment of hell will be everlasting.

Universalism is often unfairly associated with liberalism and equated with outright pluralism. Some universalists are indeed liberals or pluralists and seem to think everyone will go to heaven when they die, regardless of what they did or believed in life. But self-identifying evangelical universalists typically argue that those who do not embrace Christ and receive salvation in the here and now will have the opportunity to do so on the Day of Judgment or thereafter in hell, and everyone will eventually do so, becoming saved and joining the community of God’s redeemed people.¹¹⁹ This sort of universalism, in which salvation is through faith in Christ alone, appears to be neither liberal nor pluralistic.

An evangelical universalism is somewhat similar to the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, but they should not be confused with one another. In Catholicism, purgatory is not a view of hell at all, for it is not the final punishment of unbelievers. Rather, it is where believers, already united to Christ, are purged and purified of their sins through temporal punishments, rendering them fit to enter heaven.¹²⁰ By contrast, an evangelical universalist believes hell is where resurrected unbelievers are sent, having not (yet) been united to Christ. But their punishment in hell is neither everlasting nor purely retributive: It is remedial, intended to purge and purify the damned of their sin and turn them to Christ in faith and repentance for their salvation. And this it will do to everyone sent to hell, eventually.

Unlike eternal conscious torment and conditional immortality, universalism cannot be found among Jews before and in the time of Jesus, but some Christians embraced it very early on in church history and have done so since.

• Clement of Alexandria and Origen of Alexandria, writing around AD 200, taught that hell will compel sinners to repent and be saved, purifying and cleansing them.¹²¹
• A couple hundred years later, the influential Trinitarian Gregory of Nyssa echoes Clement and Origen in affirming a purgatorial hell.¹²²
• The nineteenth-century Congregationalist George MacDonald does likewise, identifying the sinful nature of the damned as that which is destroyed by their punishment in hell.¹²³

Today, Christian philosophers like Thomas Talbott and Eric Reitan, and theologians like Robin Parry, bear the universalist torch of Clement and Origen.¹²⁴

“Come now, let us reason together”: exegetical and theological arguments

We turn now to a survey of the exegetical and theological evidence offered in support of each of the three views of hell. Historical and philosophical concerns are not irrelevant, of course. Many traditionalists point to the overwhelming dominance of their view through most of church history, and many universalists lean on sophisticated philosophical arguments. However, we must always subject these to the greater authority of Scripture.

1. Fire, smoke, and suffering: the case for eternal conscious torment

The exegetical case for eternal torment predominantly relies on NT texts, but two passages in the OT are typically cited for its support, as well.

1. Daniel predicts that the unrighteous will rise “to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan 12:2). Traditionalists argue that this prophecy of the general resurrection requires the risen wicked to remain alive forever thereafter, or else they could not experience contempt everlastingly.
2. Isaiah describes a scene of final divine judgment, saying of those who rebel against God, “their worm shall not die, [and] their fire shall not be quenched” (Isa 66:24; cf. Mark 9:48). Many traditionalists maintain this means these rebels will forever provide the worm and the fire with food and fuel. They will never be completely consumed.

Three NT texts are cited most frequently as evidence for eternal conscious punishment.

1. At the end of Jesus’s description of final judgment, the wicked are told, “depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt 25:41). Many traditionalists understand this to be fire that burns forever because it never depletes those who fuel it. Christ concludes by saying they “will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt 25:46). Since both the punishment and life to come are called “eternal,” the damned must consciously endure as long as the righteous do—so the argument goes.
2. In his apocalyptic vision, John hears an angel proclaim that those who worship the beast “will be tormented with fire and sulfur.” Importantly, the smoke from their torment rises “forever,” and they have “no rest day or night” (John 14:9–11). Were their torment to end, it would cease to produce rising smoke. They must therefore suffer forever, which explains their unending restlessness.
3. Later John sees the devil “thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur,” where the beast and its prophet were thrown a thousand years prior, and together the trio is “tormented day and night forever and ever” (John 20:10). Soon thereafter, the resurrected lost are thrown into the lake to join them (John 20:15), presumably facing the same unending fate there.

Traditionalists point to a few additional NT texts as support for their view.

• That the fire of hell is called “unquenchable” (Matt 3:12; Mark 9:43; Luke 3:17) is taken to mean it will never die out, again suggesting the damned continue to fuel it throughout eternity.
• According to Jesus, “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28) are characteristic of hell, which would be strange if those consigned to it weep and gnash only for a short time before dying.
• And Paul says the wicked “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thess 1:9). If destruction is just annihilation, the adjective “eternal” would be redundant, and it makes little sense to speak of people who no longer exist as being “away from” God.

Traditionalists are convinced that these and other texts are interpreted most faithfully as supporting the doctrine of eternal torment in hell.

Theologically, many traditionalists argue from the infinitude of God and Christ’s substitutionary atonement. Because God is of limitless and inestimable greatness, any sin against him therefore merits an infinite penalty. And since a finite creature cannot suffer an infinite penalty in a finite span of time, the damned must suffer eternally. God thus became man to suffer the infinite consequences of sin that no ordinary human could exhaust in his or her own suffering. Besides, the condemned will not stop sinning just because they are in hell. Their continued rebelliousness in hell will merit continued punishment.

Meanwhile, if the damned will be destroyed such that they cease to exist altogether, Jesus could not have borne that penalty in place of sinners without temporarily ceasing to exist himself. This would render the Trinity a binity or rend asunder the hypostatic union of his human and divine natures, with either alternative violating creedal orthodoxy. If Jesus did not bear that fate, though, then that cannot be what awaits the damned who obstinately refuse to appropriate his atoning work as substitute. Only everlasting conscious punishment, according to traditionalists, is therefore compatible with the work of Jesus as substitute.

2. Life, death, and immortality: the case for annihilationism (conditional immortality)

The exegetical case for conditional immortality (or annihilationism) includes OT texts that they contend traditionalists overlook. If a student of Scripture looks in the OT for descriptions of endless afterlife torment, one will struggle to find it. But if one instead asks more open-endedly what the OT says about the fate of the unrighteous, many texts seem to offer an answer. For example, the psalms promise that the wicked will be slain (Ps 34:21); they’ll wither like vegetation, be cut off, perish, and vanish like smoke (Ps 37:2, 9, 20); God will bathe his feet in their blood (Ps 58:10). Yet countless wicked people prosper in the here and now, dying peacefully in the lap of luxury and in the esteem of many. If they are to be exposed and punished with ignominious death, the psalms must be taken to indicate that the wicked must rise to face such a judgment in hell. Conditionalists also point out that in OT proof texts for eternal conscious torment, only the righteous rise unto eternal life (Dan 12:2), while the unrighteous are instead reduced to corpses (Isa 66:24).

The NT, however, is where conditional immortality finds its greatest exegetical support.

• Only the citizens of the New Jerusalem are depicted as having access in eternity to the tree of life (Rev 22:2), apart from which humans are doomed to die (Gen 3:22).
• John says the Son was given “that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16). In context, this seems to refer to life and death literally; it comes right after Jesus compares himself to the serpentine statue that literally saved the lives of Israelites from fatally venomous snakes (John 3:14; cf. Num 21:9).
• Paul writes, “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23), and his very next words suggest he means life and death literally, for he says that when a husband dies, his living widow is free to remarry (Rom 7:1–2).
• Jesus could not be clearer, conditionalists insist, when he warns his disciples to “fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt 10:28), using “destroy” to mean “slay” or “kill” (cf. Matt 2:13; 12:14; 21:41; 27:20; Mark 3:6; 9:22; Luke 6:9).

Importantly, the NT promises immortality in the resurrection only to the saved, and it implicitly denies the unsaved will receive it.

• Immortality must be sought, and God must grant it (Rom 2:7).
• He will grant it to those who belong to Christ (1 Cor 15:23), who will receive immortality and incorruptibility as prerequisites for inheriting the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50–55).
• Whereas Israelites “ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died,” Jesus says he “is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die” (John 6:49–50; emphasis added).
• And when he is asked by the Sadducees about the resurrection, he says the risen saints will be unable to die because they are sons of God (Luke 20:35–36), implying those raised unto judgment apart from Christ will remain mortal.

Because of the texts above and others, some conditionalists insist that the Bible teaches their view as clearly as it does just about anything else.¹²⁵

Turning to theology, conditionalists appeal to the holiness of God and to the substitutionary, atoning work of Christ. In conditional immortality, God is so holy and he hates sin so much that he will obliterate it forever in hell, finally killing and destroying those who stubbornly persist in it. Conditionalists point out that, in contrast, the traditional view of hell has God supernaturally guaranteeing sin exists forever by raising the lost with immortal bodies in which they never stop sinning.

As for the atonement, Jesus did not cease to exist when he died on the cross, but he did die. Importantly, the Bible seems to identify his substitutionary work primarily with his death (e.g., Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45; John 10:11; Rom 5:8), not his pain. Consequently, conditionalists contend that death must be the fate awaiting the damned in hell, not immortality and enduring life. In the estimation of conditionalists, the punishment traditionally thought to await the damned in hell could not be more unlike the death Jesus bore in the place of sinners.

3. Adam, Christ, and all things: the case for Christian universalism (apokatastasis)

Though it will come as a surprise to some, evangelical universalism is motivated not only by philosophy and sentiment but also by a genuine desire to affirm the teaching of Scripture. Even the staunchest critic of universalism must admit that some passages sound initially and at face value like support for universalism.

This is perhaps most true of texts comparing Jesus to Adam, in which both the words and logic initially seem like those of a universalist.

• Paul compares the respective impact of the first Adam and second, saying, “as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men” (Rom 5:18; emphasis added). Universalists maintain that the prepositional phrase “for all men” means the same thing on both sides of the comparison. Since Adam’s sin affected humankind universally, universalists argue that the saving work of Christ affects humankind universally.
• Similarly, Paul writes, “as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22; emphasis added). Once again, the universalist wants “all” to mean the same thing in both clauses.

Other texts featuring words like “all” and “every” appear to offer prima facie support for universalism:

• Christ “gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:5–6), Paul writes.
• God “is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe” (1 Tim 4:10).
• God exalts his risen Son “so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow … and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil 2:9–10).

The translation “all things” features in several passages that seem on the surface to indicate absolutely everyone and everything will be redeemed by God.

• He will “restore” all things (Matt 17:11; Mark 9:12; Acts 3:20–21).
• He will “unite” all things (Eph 1:9–10).
• He will “reconcile” all things (Col 1:19–20).

As for theology, universalism is heavily motivated by God’s nature as love. “God is love, John writes (1 John 4:8, 16; emphasis added)—not merely loving, but love itself. Of course, God’s attributes are not limited to love. A biblically derived view of hell will also account for his holiness and wrath. Nevertheless, even some traditionalists argue that this means every act of God toward someone must be an act of love toward that person, at least in some way and to some degree.¹²⁶ Intuitively, neither eternally tormenting the damned nor annihilating them seems like an act of divine love for them. But it would certainly be loving of God to endlessly pursue their affection and salvation until they all embrace him and are thereby rescued from hell.

The rubber meets the road: FAQs

Before we close, let’s briefly consider how one might navigate some common questions about hell, especially in light of our survey above.

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1. Why would a loving God send people to hell—especially if he created people knowing they’d end up there?

When it comes to questions like this, the answers that are intuitive to some will be irreconcilable with what others find to be the intuitive answers to different questions:

• How could a just God let the unrepentant victimization of others go unpunished?
• Would a good God force people into heaven against their will?
• Why would God withhold the dignity and pleasures of life from people (by not creating them in the first place) simply because he knows they’ll ultimately reject him?

It’s okay to ponder questions like these, but if we’re genuinely seeking the truth, we’ve got to be careful not to fixate on some questions to the exclusion of others.

God is not only love. He is also holy and just—and his love extends beyond those he sends to hell. For instance, we think poorly of people who are apathetic to those suffering at the hands of others. We criticize people who refuse to execute justice on those who perpetrate evil. Well, hell is proof that God cares about victims, for he will use his power to bring justice to their oppressors. Indeed, he will do so because he loves those victims. To do otherwise would be unloving toward them.

This wouldn’t account, of course, for anyone sent to hell who hasn’t victimized others. But the reality is we finite mortals can’t possibly know what a maximally loving, holy, and just God would do—apart from him telling us.

2. How can those who go to heaven be happy if people they love end up in hell?

This question faces defenders of all three views of hell, and each view provides different resources for answering the question.

• Eternal conscious torment might say that when we’re resurrected and glorified, we’ll be sinless and see things from God’s perspective. We’ll see the perfect justice in the suffering of our lost loved ones in hell, and it won’t interrupt our eternal bliss.
• Annihilationism (conditional immortality) might say that when we lose a loved one in the here and now, we grieve to varying lengths and degrees, but our grief fades over time and we’re able to enjoy life. So, too, will our grief fade in the unending years after our lost loved ones finally perish in hell.
• Christian universalism (apokatastasis) might say that we’ll grieve for some time, knowing our lost loved ones are suffering in hell. But the knowledge they’ll one day willingly join us in heaven will keep us going as we look forward to when they do, and our grief is no more.

Of course, such answers will not fully satisfy everyone, but they can lead to further fruitful conversation.

3. What about the immature, those with cognitive disabilities, or people who have never heard the gospel? Will God send them to hell?

Each of the three views of hell has latitude within it for debating questions like these.

Believers in all three views can agree that, apart from Jesus Christ, no mature, able-minded human being is so good as to be without sin and merit eternal life. But perhaps a person can die too young and immature, or too lacking in cognitive/intellectual capacity, to be held justly accountable.

Maybe someone who has never heard the gospel, and is therefore unaware of how to be forgiven of their sin, will be shown mercy. Possibly, people in these categories will, on the Day of Judgment, be rendered capable of making a meaningful choice and be given a final opportunity to repent in faith and be saved. Possibilities like these and others have been perennially explored and debated by Christians for ages, regardless of which of the three views of hell they accept. But even if none of them is actually the case (as I suspect), no one will be sent to hell unjustly. God can be trusted to do what is right.

4. Is hell fair? Is its punishment fair and proportionate?

Several factors are often minimized, dismissed, or overlooked entirely by those who object that hell is unfair.

• For one thing, what people think is fair is heavily influenced by their culture, and cultural intuitions change with every generation.
• For another thing, we are sure to underestimate the gravity of sin. We are sinners ourselves, and with our finite capacities, we can’t confidently determine the full impact of one’s sin on oneself, on others, and on creation more broadly.
• Besides, people can’t even agree on the fair and proportionate punishment for crimes in the here and now. Ask ten people what the sentence should be for this or that crime, and you’ll probably get a multitude of answers.

Any judgments we make concerning the fairness of hell should be held with an open hand and a gigantic grain of salt.

Some views of hell might make answering these questions easier than others do, but ultimately, each view can defend the fairness of hell.

1. Eternity of conscious punishment may seem disproportionate to a finite lifetime of sin, but crimes that only take moments to commit are often met with punishment that lasts far longer. No one objects when a spontaneous murder is punished with years of prison time. And sins committed while being punished may merit further punishment.
2. Annihilationism (conditional immortality), or eternal capital punishment, may seem unfair to opponents of the death penalty, but half or more of all people support it.¹²⁷ Besides, God could secure the death of the damned by simply withholding immortality from them. Surely, they are not owed immortality and eternal life.
3. Christian universalism (apokatastasis), where the punishment of hell is both remedial and finite in duration, can certainly be understood in ways that make it fair and proportionate to sin.

5. Does the threat of hell make faith coerced instead of voluntary?

No, the threat of hell doesn’t coerce faith, because hell isn’t punishment for refusing to believe. It’s punishment for sins.

The government prohibits many activities and threatens punishment for them. Sometimes, it offers clemency to those found guilty of such crimes, provided they meet certain conditions (e.g., leaving the jurisdiction and never returning). Such criminals have already merited their just punishment. So if pardon is offered to one willing to meet certain conditions, the punishment for failing to meet those conditions isn’t a threat enacted to coerce them to do so (even if it feels that way). Rather, the punishment is simply what they would already have deserved.

Likewise, according to the worldview of Scripture, all mature and able-minded people have already sinned and merited their just punishment in hell. A pardon is offered to anyone willing to embrace Jesus Christ in saving faith. But the punishment of hell isn’t a threat to coerce one to believe. It’s what one already rightly deserves. People are free to reject the offer and face the punishment already coming to them, or to accept the offer and be pardoned through faith in Jesus.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, Christian debate over hell isn’t about what happens when the lost die. That’s the intermediate state. Rather, it’s about what happens when the lost are resurrected and subsequently judged. According to eternal conscious torment, the resurrected lost will be immortal and live forever in hell, where their punishment will be everlasting misery of some sort. In conditional immortality, they’ll remain mortal and be slain in hell, both body and soul, their punishment consisting in the everlasting privation of their lives. And in evangelical universalism, they’ll be immortal and live forever, but their eternal lives will only begin in hell, which will purge and purify them of their sinfulness and rebelliousness until they repent and turn in saving faith to Jesus.

This has been a mere introduction to the kinds of difficult questions Christ-followers should be thinking about and prepared to address. All three views enjoy at least prima facie exegetical support and theological justification. So I invite you to deeper and humbler study with fellow Christians in prayerful submission to the Holy Spirit.

Share your thoughts

What is your view of hell? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Chris Date’s recommended resources for further study

• Copan, Paul, and Chris Date. Concerning Hell: The Doctrine in Theological, Philosophical, Historical, and Biblical Dialogue. InterVarsity Academic, forthcoming.

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I have a confession: I enjoy prepping lectures. I like researching, analyzing, and organizing material. I like synthesizing ideas and crafting a class session that feels clear and coherent. I even enjoy delivering it and watching discussion unfold, seeing light bulbs go off. That joy is part of why I became a professor in the first place.

The problem is that I like it too much.

Preparing the perfect lecture can expand to fill every available hour. And like most faculty, I don’t only teach. There are committees and emails, as well as advising, writing, grading, and my personal life outside of the institution. Add to that a nagging uncertainty: Did it land? Did they actually understand? Or did they sit politely while I performed?

Now we’re teaching in an AI-saturated world. Students can generate summaries, explanations, and even outlines in seconds. Information is no longer scarce. Presence is. Attention is. Real engagement is.

In that environment, it’s tempting to believe the solution requires even more preparation—more polish, more content, more effort. But that path isn’t sustainable.

What has changed my teaching more than anything recently wasn’t better content or smarter tools—it was better live feedback.

Why increased lesson prep still feels insufficient

One of the quiet frustrations of teaching is that the goal is rarely as clear as we pretend. When students begin an assignment without knowing how it will be evaluated, they hesitate. They second-guess. They try to cover everything, just in case. In many ways, lecturing operates under the same conditions. There is no rubric for a class session. No immediate grading guide. No precise measure that tells us, “You hit the target.”

So we try to compensate.

When there is no clear feedback loop, preparation expands to fill the uncertainty. We add more examples. More illustrations. More clarification. More slides. If teaching is a basketball game, it can begin to feel like playing without a hoop. We just keep shooting, hoping something scores.

In the absence of real feedback, we rely on substitutes. A few raised hands. A lively comment or two. A vague intuition about how the room felt. End-of-term evaluations that arrive months too late to help. Often, we mistake the confidence of a few vocal students for broad comprehension.

When you don’t know what students understood, for many of us this creates more preparation. And over time, that strategy becomes exhausting.

My exit ticket experiment: a small—but significant—change

I have to admit that the solution I’m about to describe is not revolutionary. I had heard about exit tickets before. I had even sat through faculty workshops where someone enthusiastically recommended them. At the time, I nodded politely and went back to doing what I had always done. It took a combination of fatigue and curiosity to finally try it for myself.

The original motivation was modest. Like many instructors, I needed a fair and consistent way to assign participation points. I had tried student sign-in, discussion tracking, and informal impressions. None felt quite right. So, I decided to experiment with something simple: At the end of every class, students would submit a brief exit ticket to earn participation credit.

The format was straightforward. Two questions:

1. What was the most interesting idea or fact today?
2. What was least clear or still confusing?

That was it.

Each student received full credit for a good-faith response. There were no “right” answers. It wasn’t an assessment. It wasn’t surveillance. It wasn’t a gimmick. It was a structured moment of reflection—and a structured opportunity for me to listen.

I expected it to solve a participation problem. I did not expect it to reshape my preparation, my teaching, and my understanding of what my students were actually experiencing in class.

2 ways this improved student learning

The change was small. The effects were not.

The first benefit was cognitive. When students pause at the end of class to articulate what they learned, something changes. A lecture that might otherwise remain a monologue becomes a kind of dialogue. Students must find their own words. They must connect new material to what they already knew before walking into the room. They begin to notice what was added, clarified, or unsettled.

That brief act of reflection consolidates learning. Research on formative assessment consistently shows that frequent, low-stakes feedback strengthens engagement and improves retention because it surfaces understanding in real time rather than weeks later.¹²⁸ Exit tickets function as a simple but powerful version of that principle: They reveal what connected and what did not, whether because I moved too quickly, assumed background knowledge, or simply missed a moment.

The second benefit was equity. For the first time, I wasn’t just hearing from the fastest or loudest students: I was hearing from everyone. Every professor knows that some of the brightest students are quiet. (Thomas Aquinas himself was nicknamed the “Dumb Ox” by classmates who mistook his silence for ignorance—a story recounted in early Dominican accounts of his life.)¹²⁹ Many students need time to process before speaking. Others are hesitant to risk public confusion. A briefly written reflection lowers those barriers. It dignifies reflective thinkers and surfaces confusion that would otherwise remain hidden.

In two short questions, the classroom became more honest and more inclusive.

2 ways this reduced my prep time, while improving my lectures

I wasn’t only searching for ways to improve student learning. In all honesty, I also needed to reduce my prep time. The exit ticket did both because it replaced guesswork with evidence.

First, I stopped preparing for imaginary problems. Like many instructors, some of my lecture preparation wandered into rabbit trails—interesting, but not essential. Without clear feedback, it is easy to over-explain, over-illustrate, or anticipate objections students never actually have.

The unfiltered honesty of the exit tickets exposed this. Students would write, “I think I understand the definition, but I’m not sure why it matters” or “We spent too much time on this part.” Their comments weren’t hostile, they were clarifying. They revealed what truly helped them understand the material and what did not.

Second, the structure forced focus. Because I begin each class by addressing responses from the previous exit tickets, I effectively surrender five to ten minutes of lecture time. That constraint sharpened my preparation. When I revisited old lecture notes, I saw sections I could cut without sacrificing learning. Some material was informative but unnecessary. Some explanations were redundant.

Over a fifteen-week semester, meeting twice a week, those minutes accumulate into three to five reclaimed hours of core lecture time. And because preparation expands to match lecture length, prep time shrinks accordingly.

Formative assessment research consistently shows that timely insight into student understanding allows instruction to become more targeted and efficient.¹³⁰ I experienced that reality firsthand. Better feedback didn’t make me care less—it made me care more precisely.

Human engagement in an AI-saturated classroom

We are teaching in a moment when students can generate explanations, summaries, and outlines in seconds. Information scarcity is gone. A student can generate a polished paragraph without ever grappling with the underlying idea. A student can sound informed without ever wrestling with the material. In that environment, the instructor’s value shifts. Our task is no longer primarily to produce explanations, but to discern what students actually experienced and understood.

This is precisely where the exit ticket proves its worth. AI is asynchronous, it operates after the fact. Exit tickets are synchronous. They capture understanding before students leave the room. AI can summarize content, but exit tickets surface meaning, confusion, and curiosity. They reveal what connected, what did not, and what requires attention now—not next week.

Research on AI in education increasingly notes the limits of automated feedback: It often lacks contextual nuance, relational awareness, and instructional judgment. The exit ticket does something simple but powerful in this environment: It asks students to think before AI thinks for them. In doing so, it preserves what is most human about teaching: shared presence, honest reflection, and responsive instruction.

A powerful but sustainable teaching workflow

Over time, this practice settled into a rhythm. At the end of each class, students will submit their exit ticket—formerly on paper, now through a short online form. The platform is secondary. What matters is consistency.

Before the next class session, I skim the responses, highlight a handful of representative comments, and look for patterns.

• Where was there clarity?
• Where was there confusion?
• What surprised them?

I begin the next class by reading several responses aloud—always anonymously, always verbatim. It is one of my favorite moments. Students walk in with a quiet anticipation: I wonder if my words will be read? The class becomes highly personalized. Their insights, questions, and even frustrations become the opening conversation. What might have been a routine recap instead becomes a targeted refresher and a bridge into new material.

The structure is the same every time. There is no reinvention, no elaborate grading, no additional cognitive load. The feedback shapes emphasis, not just content. And once the feedback loop is in place, other preparation tools, whether digital libraries, research software, or lecture notes, become more efficient because they are guided by evidence rather than guesswork.

Care measured by attentiveness, not volume

I did not set out to redesign my pedagogy. I set out to solve a practical problem: participation points and limited time. What I discovered was not a trick, but a shift.

A small practice created a feedback loop. That feedback loop sharpened my preparation, strengthened student learning, and restored a measure of sustainability to my work.

In a profession where preparation can quietly consume every available hour, it is easy to believe that caring more means preparing more. But care is not measured in volume. It is measured in attentiveness. The exit ticket did not reduce my standards, it clarified them. It did not lower my expectations, it focused them.

In an AI-saturated classroom, where information is abundant but attention is fragile, this kind of live human feedback matters even more. It asks students to reflect before outsourcing their thinking. It shifts teaching from performance to discernment.

For me, two simple questions at the end of class created a win-win: Students learned more and I prepared less. Not because I cared less, but because I finally knew where my care belonged.

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