Topic
How to read, interpret, and love the Bible as one unfolding story.
James says a spring cannot give both fresh water and bitter. If bitter words keep coming out of us, trying harder is not the whole answer. James traces the water to its source, and three verses later he names what is in it.
Clark Pickett·September 20, 2026·10 min read
ReadJames warns that teachers will be judged more strictly. He does not say what that stricter standard looks like. Paul's lists for elders are the nearest thing the New Testament gives us to an answer.
Clark Pickett·September 6, 2026·6 min read
ReadThree Greek words in Paul's list for elders have been read at least five different ways by sincere Christians. Sorting out what the phrase states from what readers have inferred is a lesson in how to handle a text.
Clark Pickett·September 6, 2026·7 min read
ReadThirty six verses use the verb our Bibles translate justified. God justifies sinners, people justify God, and wisdom is justified by her children. The range itself is the argument.
Clark Pickett·August 31, 2026·12 min read
ReadThey quote the same verse about the same man and reach opposite sounding conclusions. Here is how the major traditions have handled that, and where they actually disagree.
Clark Pickett·August 31, 2026·19 min read
ReadOur class is in the hardest paragraph James wrote. Nearly every move he makes in it, Jesus made first on the mountain, and the wisdom writers made before either of them.
Clark Pickett·August 31, 2026·10 min read
ReadThe 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.
Clark Pickett·August 1, 2026·6 min read
ReadA 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.
Clark Pickett·August 1, 2026·7 min read
ReadThe 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.
Clark Pickett·August 1, 2026·7 min read
ReadA 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.
Clark Pickett·July 15, 2026·9 min read
ReadJames 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.
Clark Pickett·July 7, 2026·6 min read
ReadWe 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?
Clark Pickett·June 24, 2026·4 min read
ReadWhen 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.
Clark Pickett·June 18, 2026·5 min read
ReadRead James slowly and you keep hearing two older voices: the wisdom of the Old Testament and the words of Jesus on the mountain.
Clark Pickett·June 18, 2026·6 min read
ReadThree New Testament letters, written by different hands to different people, that together show us how to understand, live in, and continue in our salvation.
Clark Pickett·June 18, 2026·6 min read
ReadBefore we read a single command in James, it helps to meet the man who wrote it and the scattered people he was writing to.
Clark Pickett·June 18, 2026·5 min read
ReadTwo colored pencils, a rainbow of markers, and one rule that changes everything: context. A simple, practical place to begin reading the Bible.
Clark & Kathy Pickett·June 17, 2026·3 min read
ReadJesus does not ask us to work harder for him. In John 15 he invites us into something deeper: to remain in him, the way a branch remains in the vine.
Clark Pickett·June 15, 2026·2 min read
ReadBiblical fear is not terror that drives us away from God. It is reverent awe that draws us near and makes us wise.
Clark Pickett·June 8, 2026·2 min read
ReadThe Bible is a library of sixty-six books, but it tells a single story. Learning to read it that way changes everything.
Clark Pickett·May 28, 2026·2 min read
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