Concepts

The Hebrew word that opens Psalm 1 — less "happy feeling" than a declaration that someone is on the right, flourishing path: "How fortunate is the one who…"

Adoption is God making believers his own children — bringing rebels and strangers into his family with full rights as heirs.

Atonement is how God deals with sin to restore relationship — supremely through the death of Christ in our place.

A washing with water marking repentance, cleansing, and union with Christ in his death and resurrection.

A crisis of faith often comes with a private terror: what if I don't really believe, or could lose it all? Scripture offers grounded assurance — anchored not in the strength of our grip on God but in the strength of his grip on us.

A covenant is a binding, relational bond God establishes with his people — promises and obligations that make them his and him theirs.

Christianity stands or falls here. Setting aside whether miracles are possible, a striking set of facts — the empty tomb, the appearances, the transformation of the disciples — is acknowledged by most historians and is hard to explain without a real resurrection.

Faith is trusting God — taking him at his word and resting in his promises, supremely in Christ.

Do faith and science conflict? On the big questions — why there is something rather than nothing, the fine-tuning of the universe — they often point the same way. On Genesis and evolution, faithful Christians hold a range of views; the Bible's "how" was never the point.

Doubt is not the opposite of faith — unbelief is. Scripture is full of honest doubters whom God did not reject but met. Doubt can be the growing pain of a faith moving from secondhand to firsthand.

Hell is God's final "yes" to a freely chosen "no" — the sober reality that those who refuse him forever are finally given what they want: life apart from him. Christians hold it in awe, not glee, and debate its exact nature.

Has the text been changed? Is it full of contradictions? Was it invented later? On manuscripts, dating, and apparent contradictions, the Bible turns out to be far better attested than most people are told.

Justification is God declaring a sinner righteous — not guilty — for the sake of Christ, received through faith.

Propitiation is the turning away of God's righteous wrath against sin — accomplished by Christ's sacrifice in our place.

Redemption is being bought back and set free — God paying the price to release his people from slavery to sin and death.

Repentance is a change of mind and direction — turning from sin and turning back to God.

Resurrection is God raising the dead to bodily, deathless life — begun in Jesus and promised to all who are his.

Sanctification is being made holy — set apart for God and progressively transformed into the likeness of Christ.

Shalom is wholeness — not merely the absence of conflict but the flourishing of all things rightly related to God.

Sin is falling short of God's glory — rebellion against his rule that fractures our relationship with him, others, and creation.

Hesed is God's loyal, covenant love — a steadfast kindness that keeps its promises no matter what.

The dark, formless waters over which God's Spirit hovers in Genesis 1:2 — the picture of unordered chaos that God shapes into a habitable world.

Not cringing terror but reverent awe — taking God so seriously that it reorders how you live. Proverbs calls it "the beginning of knowledge."

God's glory is the radiant weight of his presence and worth — the visible splendour of who he is.

Is the God who commands the conquest of Canaan a "moral monster"? The hardest texts in Scripture deserve an honest look — neither explained away nor used to caricature a God whose self-revelation climaxes in Christ.

The gospel is the announcement that God has acted in Jesus — his life, death, and resurrection — to save sinners and restore his world.

To be made "in the image of God" means humans are made to represent and reflect God — to rule creation on his behalf and relate to him — giving every person inherent dignity.

The remnant is the faithful few God preserves through judgment — the seed from which he keeps his promises alive.

The seventh-day rest rooted in creation (Gen 2) and the Ten Commandments — a rhythm of rest, worship, and trust that God, not our work, sustains us.

Isn't it arrogant to say Christ is the only way? And what about those who never heard? The exclusivity of Christ is real, but it is the exclusivity of a rescue freely offered to all — and Scripture leaves the fate of the unreached in the hands of a just and merciful God.

Few things shake faith like praying desperately and hearing nothing. Scripture neither denies the pain nor offers magic — it reframes prayer as relationship with a wise Father, not a vending machine, and insists no honest prayer is wasted.

The hardest question there is: if God is all-good and all-powerful, why is there evil? Christianity's answer is not a tidy formula but a crucified God — one who does not explain suffering from a distance but enters it.

If God made everything good, where did sin come from? Scripture roots it not in God but in the misuse of a real freedom — a good creation choosing against its Maker — and insists evil is a corruption of good, never a thing God made.

Many in crisis don't doubt God's existence so much as feel his absence: if he is real and loving, why is he so hidden? Scripture treats this not as a fatal objection but as a recognized, even faithful, experience.