The first of a series drawn from David Pawson's teaching on Revelation. Some Christians avoid the book and others become fascinated with charts. Pawson argued that neither response reflects why God gave it.
A popular teaching says logos means the written Bible and rhema means a personal word spoken to you. It is a useful devotional picture, but it is not what the New Testament vocabulary actually requires.
The same Greek root stands behind righteousness, righteous, and justify. Paul and James both reach for that family of words, and they use it to answer two different questions.
A survey of the Greek word family behind our English word righteousness, the five distinct senses that emerged from reading all 86 occurrences, and why the closer I looked, the less willing I was to force every verse into a single category.
James calls us to lay aside sin, humbly receive the word God has planted in us, and then do it, because the Word was never meant to be information only.
We teach that context is everything. So what do we make of the apostles, who sometimes lift an Old Testament verse beyond its first meaning and use it rightly anyway?
When you do not know what to do, James points you to a generous God who gives wisdom freely, and to a wisdom that looks like peace and mercy rather than ambition.
Three New Testament letters, written by different hands to different people, that together show us how to understand, live in, and continue in our salvation.