Few topics make modern Christians more uncomfortable than slavery in Scripture. We rush past those passages or explain them away. But if we're honest with the text, and honest with history, there's something far more radical happening than most of us realize. The World Paul Was Writing Into To understand Paul's household codes in Ephesians and Colossians, we have to understand the world that produced them. In Aristotle's framework, which shaped the entire Greco-Roman social i

Your parents probably gave a lot of advice growing up. Some of it held up, some of it didn't. Waiting 30 minutes after eating before swimming? Busted. Sitting too close to the TV ruining your eyesight? Also busted. "You are who you hang out with"? Confirmed. Studies back it up: your personality is largely the sum of your five closest relationships. But one piece of parental wisdom I keep coming back to is this: you can't get the toothpaste back in the tube. Some things cannot

There is an ongoing debate, one I'd call unserious at best, about whether Jesus and Paul actually taught the same things. Some claim Paul's letters don't fully align with the Gospels, or even outright contradict them. The more provocative version of this argument is that Paul essentially invented Christianity as its own religion, something largely separated from the actual ministry of Jesus. Makes me wonder if these folks have ever really sat down with Paul's letters. Jesus i

What does it actually mean to live differently as a follower of Jesus? Paul had a city full of very different people - and a surprisingly practical answer. When you walk into the ruins of ancient Ephesus, the first thing you notice is what used to be there: the Temple of Artemis, once one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Today it's just a handful of columns. But the city itself, the library, the marketplace, the enormous amphitheater that seated tens of thousands -

What the Seven Ones of Ephesians 4 Have to Do with Ancient Christian Unity Maybe you remember it from youth camp. Arms around each other, swaying gently in the firelight, singing: "We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord... and they'll know we are Christians by our love." It's a beautiful sentiment. But have you ever really stopped to consider what you're declaring? We are one. Not "we should probably try to get along." Not "we agree on most of the major stuff." We a

from Ephesians 3 Imagine writing one of the most encouraging letters of your life from a prison cell. That's exactly what Paul did when he wrote to the church in Ephesus. He was locked up; the Roman Empire was at the height of its power; and the Christians he was writing to were scattered in small house churches throughout one of the busiest, most cosmopolitan cities in the ancient world. They were worried. Their founder was behind bars. The odds were stacked against them. Th

Introduction: The Exhaustion of Autonomy We live in a secular age that commodifies the Spirit, often treating the divine as a mere ergonomic adjustment for the self-made life. We are told to be the relentless optimizers of our own existence—the architects of our success and the captains of our own salvation. Yet, this drive for total autonomy is fundamentally exhausting. It leaves us in a recursive loop of self-improvement that never quite reaches the finish line of "enough."