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David Peterson commenting on Hebrews 10:24-25: It may be suggested from the syntax of Hebrews 10:25 that encouragement can be given to other Christians at the most basic level by not abandoning the assembly. Looking more positively at the benefits of Christian assembly, F.F. Bruce asserts that “every opportunity of coming together and enjoying their fellowship in faith and hope must be welcomed and used for mutual encouragement.” [F.F...

The next usage of “gathering language” in the Book of Acts is found in Acts 11:26. Here is the verse in context: Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of...

Last weekend, someone mentioned Markus Barth’s (son of Karl Barth) commentary on Ephesians. During the conversation, I remembered this great paragraph concerning Ephesians 4:16 - (1) It is Christ, the head, alone “from whom” the body derives unity, nourishment, growth – but Christ’s monarchy and monopoly do not exclude but rather create the activity of a church engaged in “its own” growth and upbuilding. (2) All that the body is...

Felicity at “Simple Church” wrote a very succinct, but thought-provoking post called “The One Key Skill in Simple Church.” She begins with this: One of the main paradigm shifts within this movement of simple churches is the belief that ordinary men and women hear God.  They can be entrusted with the affairs of the Kingdom.  It does not need specially trained people to manage the church.  The Holy Spirit is able to ru...

In my previous post “Justification and the Church Meeting,” I discussed how the doctrine of justification should intersect our ecclesiology (the study of the church) and even influence how we act when the church gathers together. Today, I want to think about a similar doctrine: sanctification. There are two ways to understand sanctification which are somewhat related. “Sanctification” refers to the idea that some things ha...

Art from “Church Task Force” left the following as a comment on my post “The weaker are indispensable“: At what great cost have we gained so little. We have ruled out 95% of the life of a family in our formality and in our quest to keep up appearances that meet the world’s approval. I think we need to look past sizing up the importance of contributions–and the methods of these contributions–based on how they make us ...

A few years ago, some friends gave me a copy of The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (by Ronald E. Heine, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). They give me this book for two reasons: 1) They knew that I loved Ephesians and 2) They wanted to give me something written by someone as old as me. (Thanks again Maël and Cindy… I think.) Occasionally, as I’m reading through this commentary, I f...

Last week, I wrote a short post concerning 1 Corinthians 12:22-25 called “The weaker are indispensable” in which I concluded with the following questions: Who are the people with “weaker” gifts, and how do we demonstrate that they are indispensable and worthy of greater honor? Now, Andy at “aBowden Blog” has written a similar post called “Unequally equal?” in which he considers how some people are “gi...

I was surprised to find that three posts on the topic of “preaching” were my most read posts for the month of January 2010. I rarely write about preaching, so I thought I would take the opportunity to clear up some possible misconceptions. First, I do not make a distinction between “worship services” (church meetings) and smaller subgroups (i.e. Bible studies, Sunday School classes) when it comes to speaking to the church....

Dave Black wrote this on his blog today concerning Hebrews 10:24-25: Wow! Does this not suggest the character of our church meetings? Does this not teach us that we are to come together for the purpose of mutual edification? Does this not challenge our deeply entrenched views about “worship”? Should we not suspect The Message of a bit of eisegesis when it renders “let us not neglect our meeting together” as “not avoi...