There's an old English proverb that says, 'When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own' – when criminals are busy robbing each other, honest people can get on with their lives.

The 1647 Westminster Confession defines God as being 'without body, parts or passions', but that's more of a philosophical statement. In the Hebrew Bible he is very passionate indeed: loving, sad, angry, regretful, and sometimes downri...

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the rhythms of life.

When some of the Gentiles (or non-Jewish people) began believing in Christ, some of the Jewish believers insisted that they had to observe Jewish customs such as circumcision in order to be saved.

After Paul and Silas released a slave girl from a demonic spirit, her owners, who were exploiting her, had Paul and Silas arrested. During their incarceration they were heavily guarded and locked in stocks – a pretty dismal situation.

In Acts 17, Paul travels to Athens and while in the Aeropagus he notices a dedication 'To an Unknown God'. What he then proclaims to his hearers is that the God he knows is a personal one, who wasn’t made by human hands.

Reading of Paul's adventures in Jerusalem we're struck by his courage and resourcefulness. He survives an attempted lynching, and faces the mob down. He uses Roman law to escape a potentially lethal flogging (22.25).

This chapter relates Paul's first appearance before the Roman governor, Felix. Accused by the lawyer Tertullus (verse 1) of riot and defiling the Temple, he defends himself clearly and factually: he is simply not guilty, he says.

The Romans were in many ways a horrifyingly brutal people, but they were, much of the time at least, committed to the rule of law. A new governor, Festus, has inherited the problem of Paul from his predecessor Felix; again, the Jewish leaders were ba...

King Agrippa, before whom Paul defends himself in this chapter, was a client king of the Romans and had been brought up at the Emperor Claudius's court. He was Jewish in faith, though, and was more receptive to Paul's testimony than the tho...

This is one of the 'we' sections of Acts; Luke writes in the first person, because he was there. It's a fine adventure story – anyone who likes tales of the sea will enjoy this – but it also speaks to us about deeper things.

Romans is Paul's most purely 'theological' letter. He had not yet visited the church there, though he knows several of its members. The letter seems to have been written to outline what he believes as a way of introducing himself. It&#...

At first glance, it looks as though Paul is accusing the entire Roman church of being wicked sinners. That isn't quite what he means. He is warning these Jewish believers against relying on their Jewishness to be right with God, and thinking tha...

In this chapter Paul continues his argument that Jews and Gentiles are on level ground. Jews, he says, have been entrusted with God's message (verse 2) but they are in no better or worse condition than Gentiles (verse 9); we are all 'under ...

In Romans 4 Paul continues his attack on the idea that it's by 'works of the Law' that people are made right with God. That can't be true, he says, because Abraham was accepted by God as 'righteous' before he was circumc...

There's a clear theme in this chapter, though – like the rest of Romans – it is dense and rich in argument. Paul is overwhelmed with a sense of the scope and scale of salvation. It's not enough for God to have forgiven us – it was �...

Paul has thought deeply about what the death of Christ means. Death is an ending; it cancels everything about a person's life. If we are baptised into union with Christ and 'share' in that death (verse 4), our old life is gone; and �...

In Ephesus there was a temple dedicated to the Roman goddess Artemis, and visitors would buy silver idols to take home. Because Paul’s Christian ministry was so successful, the idol makers’ business was suffering, leading them to riot.

In Acts 21 Paul travels to Jerusalem, despite the prophecy warning he would be bound up and mistreated there. Sure enough, when he comes to Jerusalem he is accused of teaching that Jews should give up following the Jewish laws and customs. This wasn&...

The Bible Society of Mali has asked for prayer following the military coup that saw its president resign and parliament dissolved.