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84 illustrations — Lessons from history, biography, and world events
Critics who say 'Give me his ethics, keep his dogmas' commit a fatal severance that destroys both.
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Yet Maclaren observes that "as they abode together and worked at their trade, there would be many earnest talks about the Christ, and these ended in both husband and wife becoming disciples." The mundane labor of their craft became the...
The juxtaposition reveals the animating principle of New Testament morality itself: devotion to God is the indispensable basis of all practical helpfulness to man, and conversely, practical helpfulness to man is the expression and manifestation of devotion to God.
When Christ lived without sin, He exposed sin's nature.
First, as an intellectual gift, the Scriptures answer mankind's deepest inquiries about the origin and history of the world in ways that satisfy the reasoning mind.
Lyth, D.D., structures this comparison across three critical dimensions.
Yet he frames this through prophecy—Isaiah foretold both the sending and the incredulity.
This is no mere sentiment, but the living testimony of regeneration itself.
Only *sections* of these households became Christian; notably, the masters themselves remained outside the faith.
Bishop Beveridge identifies the structure with precision: the apostle Paul establishes that holiness is lived *because we are saved*, not *in order to be saved*.
Among the Roman Christians, fierce strife erupted over a trifle: whether believers could eat meat or must subsist on herbs alone.
Almighty God can and often does overrule evil actions toward His own glory and to cause bad means to conduce to a good end.
Paul "strived" to preach Christ where His name had never been spoken—a holy ambition rooted in Christian love and respect for others' labour.
If God be for us, who can be against us?
The 'stronger' believer—he who correctly judges that eating meat offered to idols involves no moral guilt—must nonetheless abstain if his eating becomes a *skandalon* (stumbling-block) or *proskamma* (occasion to fall) in another's path.
Exell's Victorian illustration captures this paradox through a striking nautical image: a boat that has sailed the salt ocean, battered by storms and half-filled with briny water, now navigates fresh river currents.
It is the shepherd's mark distinguishing the flock of the Lord Jesus from the rest of the world.
The gifts are not separate from grace; they are its direct offspring, its cognates.
The Apostle never visited Rome, possessed no established relationships with those believers, had never looked upon their faces—yet his heart went out toward them with undisguised yearning.
The term signifies the outward expression of exultation, especially in speech and declaration.
Love is not something we indulge when we feel generous toward the worthy and attractive.
Exell, in his 1887 *Biblical Illustrator*, offers a vivid comparison: as the thirsty man needs only be directed to water—"There's the water, drink"—so the anxious soul requires but one directive: "Faith cometh by hearing." Elaborate explanations about reservoirs and river...
The benefit of trials is entirely lost when we despise the Lord's chastening or faint under His rebuke.
He possessed dominion over all terrestrial creatures and stood in a state of perfect communion with his Maker.