Thoughts for the Day

Take, eat this is my body.                               Matthew 26:26 What we remember as ‘the Last Supper’ must have come as quite a shock to the disciples.  After Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his dramatic displays in the temple, his successful rebuttal of every question put to him by the Jewish elders, here they were, the favoured…

Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer   Mark 8:31 Matthew, Mark and Luke all record how Jesus began to teach his disciples that he must suffer, be rejected, be killed and rise on the third day.  It signals a turning point in the gospels as he sets his sights…

Look, the lamb of God!                      John 1:36 Reference to Jesus as the Lamb of God is of enormous significance.  From our vantage point this side of the Cross, it connects the death of Jesus to that of the Passover lamb, and thereby to the entire, elaborate system of animal sacrifices under the Levitical priesthood.  In…

‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross               1 Peter 2:24 As we draw progressively closer to the Cross through this week, we leave behind us the ‘Did God really say?’ scriptures and the somewhat thorny topics that came with them.  We also move from the question of why Jesus came (to…

[those excluded] will go away to eternal punishment           Matthew 25:46 Speaking to Nicodemus just before the famous John 3:16 passage, Jesus said to him “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?”  It tells us we are in…

… but the righteous to eternal life.                Matthew 25:46 My latest Bible search for the phrase ‘eternal life’ found it 44 times in the New Testament.  That’s not surprising, it is a phrase packed with such extravagant promise and potential, and it is of course one that Jesus himself used.   John uses the phrase where…

… where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.                      Matthew 25:30 Isn’t this such an evocative phrase?  Even more so in the King James version’s “wailing and gnashing of teeth”.  I’ve only come across it in the Bible, where it is spoken only by Jesus, six times in Matthew’s gospel and once in…

…rise to live … rise to be condemned                        John 5:29 Today’s scripture again picks up the theme of Jesus returning as judge, this time from John’s gospel.  John’s language can seem convoluted, but there is no question that Jesus is the judge in question, and his judgement is clear too.  “… a time is coming,”…

… be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.            Matthew 10:28 Jesus is preparing the disciples for their first taste of mission without him.  He sends them out in pairs with an exciting message, a good deal of practical instruction and warnings of unpleasant things they can expect to…

When the Son of Man comes in his glory,                 Matthew 25:31 Did God really say that Jesus will come back?   Did God really say that there will be a Judgement?  From what is recorded in the Bible, the answer to both questions is, “Yes, lots of times!”  I’m not aware of any Christian denomination that…