I want to talk about the difference between two important but distinct Christian doctrines: the doctrine of original sin and the doctrine of ancestral sin. Ancestral sin might a term you haven’t heard before, but it is very likely the doctrine you already believe.

The Trinity is one of those ideas we tend to take for granted if we’ve been around the Christian story for any length of time. But here’s the thing—the Trinity isn’t an explicitly biblical idea. It emerged after centuries of wrestling with deeply complex passages like John 14, where Jesus identifies himself with the Father, then brings in the Spirit to describe how he will remain present even after he’s gone.

Let’s explore how Isaac becomes a type of Christ not because God requires blood, but because God interrupts the very idea of sacrifice. And how Jesus, in his death and resurrection, brings that interruption to its fullness. If Isaac is where God stops the knife, Jesus is where God ends sacrifice for good.

The Bible tells many stories—of kings, prophets, and nations—but underneath it all is a bigger narrative arc. One that has always been leading us toward Jesus. In this sermon, Jeremy Duncan explores the road to Emmaus, the layers of scripture, and why Jesus is our clearest picture of God.

In Colossians 1:24, Paul writes that he is "filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions." It's not the flashiest controversy, but it has certainly stumped more than a few theologians over the centuries.

Is Paul really suggesting that Jesus didn’t finish the job? That somehow his own suffering is required to complete Christ’s work? Let’s dig in.

Colossians 1:15-20 is breathtaking. Poetic, sweeping, and theologically rich, this passage stands among the most compelling articulations of Christ in the New Testament. But its grandeur can also obscure its meaning if we’re not paying attention.

These verses are often referred to as a hymn—possibly an early Christian song, maybe written by Paul, maybe not.

Many Christians have been taught to see Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) as the only way to understand the cross. Isaiah 53 — the “Song of the Suffering Servant” — is often quoted as proof. But what if this passage offers something richer than just a legal transfer of penalty?

As a pastor, one of the most common questions I hear is: “How do we know who is saved and who isn’t?” Let’s explore why the traditional categories may not reflect the deep, expansive nature of grace as taught by Jesus.

Recently, I brought up this big, beautiful Greek word: apocatastasis. It's the conviction that somehow, in the end, all things will be reconciled to Christ. Just as Paul writes in Colossians 1:20, "Through Christ, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things... by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross."

Aionios does not mean eternal... at least not all the time.

In the Tanakh, 1 and 2 Kings are part of the Nevi'im, or the prophets. That's why they go together with 1 and 2 Samuel. But 1 and 2 Chronicles, those come at the very end of an entirely different section of the Bible called the Ketuvim, or the writings. In fact, they're the very last books of the Hebrew Bible. And that's because Jewish people understood them as much later books that were looking back and trying to clean things up.

In Ezekiel 37, the prophet writes about a valley of dry bones. What kind of valley is this? I'm going to say I don't think it's a real valley at all. It's a metaphor. However, I do think this valley is meant to invoke one of, or perhaps both of, two very real, very significant valleys in the Hebrew story. Those are the valleys of Hinnom and the valley of Megiddo.

The narrative in 1 Samuel 13 reminds us that rules in faith are not arbitrary restrictions but safeguards against the misuse of religion for political gain. When Saul offers the sacrifice, he's not just breaking a ceremonial rule – he's attempting to manipulate divine favor for his own agenda. This moment serves as a cautionary tale about the perils of intertwining religion and politics.

Satan is an interesting term. It's okay if you think devil, but that's not necessarily what's going on in Jesus' mind. Throughout most of the Hebrew scriptures, Satan or Hasatan was not necessarily a person or a being. It's better to think of it more like a title. So the adversary or the one who opposes the accuser is a good translation of Hasatan. There's even a passage in the book of Numbers where God opposes a man named Balaam and the Hebrew literally says that Yahweh stood in his way as an adversary, literally his Satan. Now it's also true that by the time of the New Testament, a lot of Hebrew ideas are getting mixed in with Greek ideas and Hasatan was being used to translate the Greek word diabolos or devil, and you get this Satan devil character that emerges and that lines up with some of the ways that Hasatan is used in the Hebrew scriptures. You just need to know that every time Hasatan appears, it's not necessarily being used to talk about a personified devil. It might also just being used in the normal sense of an adversary.

We took a bit of a side quest together, because the big question when reading Genesis 18 is what's up with these three guys called Yahweh? Well, Christians often unsurprisingly see Trinity here, three figures that, at least on the surface, are collectively called by the divine name. That must be father, son and spirit, and that's not an unreasonable conjecture at all. However, it's also like almost certainly not what the writer of this story had in mind at all.

At the end of the day what God cares about most is not that you follow all the rules it's who you become over time. How you learn to treat the people near you the love that flows out of you steadily always. And so Jesus says nothing that goes into you, nothing anyone does to you, nothing anyone could ever say to you, no circumstance in your life, none of this could ever diminish you in the eyes of God. But how you choose to live and how you choose to treat people, how you move through the world in the choices that you make that can, if you let it, make you very very ordinary. Because that's the thing, this word defilement that's what it means.

For many who are most familiar with evangelical expressions of Christianity, Penal Substitutionary Atonement (or PSA) is the only way they have heard the idea of the cross articulated. Like all metaphors, however, this law court image breaks if stretched too far.

In a recent video, I claimed that the foundational nature of God, above all other descriptors, is love. So in this video, let's talk about where that claim comes from by looking at the concept of the Trinity and then a very brief introduction to Process Theology and thought.

The framework for original sin that most of us are familiar with comes from a bad interpretation of a bad translation of one verse in one letter from Pual. Unfortunately, however, it has all kinds of implications for we think about ourselves and God. So let's talk about it.

As people deconstruct and reconstruct their faith in more progressive ways there are a few questions that keep coming up. They tend to be variations on three commons themes.