A couple months ago, I had the opportunity to cover the introduction to the book of Romans in some detail. Enjoy!
An Introduction to Romans
24 February 2026
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Posted by Tim Nichols
The “Higher Standard” is Bunk
10 February 2026What does it mean when James says that teachers will face “a stricter judgment”? Most people interpret that to mean that teachers are held to a higher standard than “ordinary” Christians, but if you think about it a little bit, there are major problems with that idea.
First problem: the idea that there are two different moral standards in Christianity is fundamentally incoherent. Jesus is the standard; every Christian is called to be like Him. So if every Christian is already called to be like Jesus, who is the perfect moral standard, what is this allegedly higher standard teachers are supposed to reach? Or are we going the other way and saying that teachers really do have to be like Jesus, but “ordinary” Christians can slack a bit, and it’s ok?
Second problem: the idea that there are two different standards doesn’t really make sense in James. James’ own summary of the book is in 1:19-20: “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” The “swift to hear” section starts in 1:21 and runs through chapter 2. The “slow to speak” section is chapter 3. The “slow to wrath” section begins with chapter 4 and runs into 5.
All three of these sections lay out demands that James makes of “every man.” It does not seem coherent to say that the “slow to speak” section — a duty required of every man — turns around and says that some men have to meet a lower standard than others. But if it doesn’t mean that, what does it mean?
Notice that James doesn’t actually say that there’s a higher standard, either in other people’s eyes, or in God’s eyes. He says that teachers face a stricter judgment. What might “stricter judgment” mean, if not different standards? Well, perhaps we can see this more clearly by looking at how James himself explains his statement. What he does say is that the tongue is particularly difficult to control and particularly dangerous when it gets out of hand.
So “stricter judgment” in this context doesn’t mean two different standards. It means that teachers are called into an arena where failure is particularly likely and greatly consequential. A teacher’s job is to do neurosurgery on a guy who was just airlifted out of a 6-car pileup. This is not like being a pizza driver. When the neurosurgeon messes up, the patient dies, or maybe is damaged for life. When the pizza driver messes up, the pizza is a few minutes late — not good, as anybody who’s had to entertain a hungry crowd of 6-year-olds for an extra 10 minutes can attest — but nobody dies of it. Now, a pizza driver can also make a mistake that kills someone in the course of his work, and if he does, he’ll find that he’s held to the same standard as the neurosurgeon. But there’s a key difference: the pizza driver’s job is to avoid situations where someone could easily get killed; the neurosurgeon’s job is to get into situations where someone could easily get killed.
To put it a little more in James’ terms, the teacher’s job is to go into a California forest in the third straight year of drought and host a bonfire. There’s a lot that can go wrong, and when it does, as it sometimes will, we face judgment for it. Our judgment is stricter not because standards are higher, but because the stakes are. When we mess up, we damage people, sometimes for life. There’s a reckoning for that, and there should be.
Is this stricter judgment from men, or from God? Yes! As a teacher, I’ve certainly faced consequences from men when I’ve screwed up. No doubt there will be conversations on the last day as well.
Leave a Comment » | Exegesis | Tagged: James, James 3, stricter judgment, teaching | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols
Saved Like Paul
2 September 2025How is it possible to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling?” And is that even compatible with assurance? That question came up this past week; let’s dig into it.
As to assurance, the answer is yes. You were never meant to even consider how to work out your salvation without already having full assurance. How do I know? Because that’s how Paul presented it. Read the whole context starting in 1:1. 1:1-7 present the assurance with which you are meant to read the rest of the book.
Paul himself is assured of his own salvation, as you will see in 1:19 — some translations render it “deliverance,” but it’s the same word as in 1:28 and the passage we’re discussing (2:12). The problem with the translation “deliverance” is it obscures Paul’s meaning later in the book. Note that as he elaborates in v. 20, he adds “by life or by death,” which means that he’s not actually talking about being delivered from tribulation. No, for him, “salvation” is a much bigger picture than getting out of jail. He ultimately concludes that for the present, he’d rather live and minister to them, which moves him into challenging them to also live worthy of the gospel, which–if one has eyes to see–is a demonstration of their salvation (1:28). He then challenges them to one-mindedness, following the sacrificial example of Christ, who laid aside divine prerogatives in order to give Himself for us, with the result that the Father enthroned Him over everything.
Having laid the foundation of assurance, set himself forth as an example of things working out for his salvation, and then transitioned to Jesus as the ultimate model of how these things should go, Paul now challenges the Philippians. “Work out your own salvation,” he says, because God is at work in them (as he’s been saying since the beginning of the book).
Many interpreters play games with “work out.” I remember as a kid being taught that God “works your salvation in,” and then it’s your job to “work it out,” as though salvation were a bit of food coloring dropped into a lump of dough or something. The Greek word there is κατεργάζομαι, and it means “accomplish.” Accomplish your salvation, because God is at work in you.
What does that even mean? If God is at work in them, then why are they supposed to accomplish it? And how it is possible for any Christian to accomplish their own salvation?
Good questions. In order to answer them, we need to pose one more question: What does “salvation” mean here? The Greek word is σωτηρία (soteria), and it’s usually translated “salvation” or “deliverance,” but that’s not actually all it means. Koine Greek often used the word to mean something closer to “prosperity,” “wellbeing,” or “peace.” Consider this example from the Greek Old Testament: “Then they arose early in the morning and swore an oath with one another; and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace.” (Gen. 26:31) The word translated “peace” there is the Hebrew shalom, and when they were rendering it into Greek, they used soteria. Can you imagine translating that “…they departed from him in salvation”?
Of course not. You’ll see similar uses of soteria in Genesis 28:21 and 44:17. The Greek is translating the Hebrew shalom, which means “peace,” but in a really rich way — whole books have been written on the meaning of shalom. It’s not just the absence of conflict, but the active presence of wellbeing.
Hear it that way: “But I know that things will work out for my peace and wellbeing.” (1:19) “Which is to them proof of perdition, but to you of peace and wellbeing, and that from God.” (1:28) “Work out your own peace and wellbeing with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to do for His good pleasure.” (2:12-13)
Makes more sense, doesn’t it?
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Posted by Tim Nichols
Preach the Word!
26 August 2025Do we preach in church? No.
But isn’t that what Paul tells Timothy to do? “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season….” No. The word translated “preach” there is kerusso. It means public announcement, not private commentary to an in-group. (Check the lexicon; do the word study in Scripture; expand the word study to the secular literature – all the evidence points the same way, as I’ve argued elsewhere.) It’s not something you do with an in-group in a home; it’s something you do in the marketplace at the top of your lungs for anybody in earshot. That’s just what the word means throughout the literature (notwithstanding our English misappropriation of it).
2 Timothy 4:2 is not an exception to the general usage of kerusso. Absent a compelling contextual reason to read the Sunday meeting into the passage — and it isn’t there — Timothy would have heard the word in its ordinary sense. The only reason we don’t hear it that way is because we’re imposing our usage of “preach” on the passage. Public proclamation was a mainstay of Paul’s ministry, and it’s not exactly a surprise that he charges Timothy to carry on this aspect of his work. The inclusio with “do the work of an evangelist” in v. 5 clinches it, if we needed additional evidence of its public-facing meaning.
Should we thunder the Word from the pulpit? Absolutely. Arguably, that falls under the biblical headings of teaching and prophecy, but in any case there’s not much exegetical case for calling it “preaching.”
But let’s look more closely at the context here. In chapter 1, Paul addresses Timothy’s qualifications and his inner life/personal prerequisites for ministry. He continues that theme in 2:1-13, challenging Timothy to endure hardship for the sake of God’s chosen people. 2:14 forward specifically addresses the way Timothy should minister to those people within the church community, and then (3:1ff) begins to address the hazardous people Timothy will face in that endeavor. Beginning in 3:10, Paul returns his focus to Timothy, contrasting him to the people in 3:1-9 and challenging him to continue in what he’s been taught, knowing that the God-breathed Scriptures themselves will fully equip him.
4:1 begins Paul’s final charge to Timothy, and here he begins with a command that specifically means public announcement and concludes in v.5 with “do the work of an evangelist.” As with his instructions for Timothy’s conduct within the church in 2:14-3:17, Paul leads off with the command (2:14//4:1-2), follows with a warning that it’s likely to be ill-received (3:1-9//4:3-4), and returns to Timothy with “But you…” (3:10ff//4:5). He follows the same pattern of instruction as when he was talking about Timothy’s ministry within the church, but this time, he’s talking about how Timothy faces the world.
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Posted by Tim Nichols
An Overview of Hebrews
26 March 2025Most of you are aware of the series I’ve been doing with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries. The overview episode is now available. Check it out!
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Posted by Tim Nichols
Lessons on Worship
25 February 2025
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Posted by Tim Nichols
A Fuller Fulfillment
11 February 2025When we talk about “fulfilled prophecy,” what we usually mean is a straightforward prediction along the lines of Micah 5:2, which says that Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Matthew shows how the prophecy was fulfilled. But that’s not the only thing that “fulfilled” can mean.
“Fulfill” has a fuller sense (if you’ll pardon the expression) than just the Micah 5:2 predictive prophecy meaning. In the Hosea 11//Matthew 2 usage, the original sense in Hosea is critical to Matthew’s meaning. Knowing that Israel is God’s son is necessary to understanding the points that Matthew is making: first, that Jesus is Israel (in exactly what sense is a question Matthew will spend the whole book exploring), and second, that the land of Israel has become spiritual Egypt.
Don’t miss that latter point. Matthew invokes “out of Egypt I called My Son” not when Jesus leaves literal Egypt, but when Jesus flees Judea. Judea is the “Egypt” Jesus is fleeing, and Herod is the baby-boy-slaughtering “Pharaoh.” John the Baptist will later reinforce this same point by calling repentant Israelites to come out into the desert to pass through water, a new Exodus forming a new people of God (Jesus joins the new people of God “to fulfill all righteousness”). John the evangelist will much later make the point explicit in Revelation 11:8.
We don’t want to read something into the text that isn’t there, but neither do we want to miss something that is there—and the NT shows us repeatedly that there’s a LOT more there than one might think at first glance. From Jesus Himself proving the resurrection by exegeting a verb tense in Genesis (Matt. 22:32) to the fulfillments of the first few chapters of Matthew to the dizzying displays of Hebrews, the NT shows us a way of reading the OT that we perhaps wouldn’t have come up with on our own, but that’s ok. God is revealing it to us in the way He handles His own revelation.
In conservative circles, we have gotten our hermeneutics from the Book of Nature (mostly as read by E. D. Hirsch), which is very useful as far as it goes. But if that’s all we have, then our hermeneutic will force us to condemn the Holy Spirit’s exegesis of His own work. There has to be something wrong with that picture. What is it? Easy: the Book of Nature isn’t all we have. The Book of Scripture also has something to teach us about how to read.
5 Comments | Exegesis, Hermeneutics, Speaking as God Speaks | Tagged: Bible, Christianity, god, Jesus, prophecy | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols
The Hall of Faith
26 November 2024This week, I noticed that this will be the 700th post on Full Contact Christianity. It’s been a privilege to serve y’all here for the past 16 years. Thank you for reading!
A lot has changed since that first post in May of 2008. I still teach exegesis, but no longer in a seminary. I still serve a house church, but I also spend Saturday evenings with my homeless neighbors. I practice a trade — bodywork — alongside my ministry these days. A lot has changed in our world, too. Among the many changes, podcasts have become a thing.
Of recent, I got a chance to discuss Hebrews 11 with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries and 2 Peter 3 with Joe Anderson of The Anchor Drop podcast. Hope they’re helpful to you!
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Posted by Tim Nichols
Second Part of the Lesson
12 November 2024In Deuteronomy 8, Moses is preparing the generation that is about to enter Canaan. Other than Joshua and Caleb, the oldest of them are just shy of 60. They are now facing the challenges their fathers balked at, all the reasons that they have been wandering in the desert these past 40 years. At this crucial juncture in their lives, Moses reminds them of the lessons they have learned during their years of maturation in the desert.
“So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD.” (Deuteronomy 8:3)
You got hungry in the desert, Moses reminds them. This is not idle wishing for luxuries; food is a legitimate need. Their legitimate need was going unmet. Fathers had nothing to feed their crying children. Mothers with nursing infants had nothing to eat themselves; how would they feed the baby? This was no accident, Moses says. It was not poor logistical planning on God’s part. He knew exactly what He was doing. God could have fed you at any moment; he could have made sure you never missed a meal. He could have made sure you had enough food for breakfast and second breakfast and elevensies, and lunch, and afternoon tea, and….
God allowed you to be hungry. That’s the first part of the lesson. Then what? “…and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know.” When you were days into the desert with nothing edible in sight, your belly gnawing at your backbone…food miraculously fell out of the sky. And not just any food; something you’d never seen before, something so unexpected that you named it “What is it?” (That’s what “manna” literally means in Hebrew.) When you asked God for food, you had something in mind–a loaf of bread, a cucumber, whatever–but this wasn’t it. This…this is entirely different than anything you imagined. Reflecting on this moment, Asaph will later write:
“He had commanded the clouds above,
And opened the doors of heaven,
Had rained down manna on them to eat,
And given them of the bread of heaven.
Men ate angels’ food;
He sent them food to the full.”
(Psalm 78:23-25)
Angels’ food. I was talking through this passage with my daughter yesterday, and she said, “I wonder what the nutrition facts are on manna?” It had to be pretty nourishing, since it seems that at times they had nothing else to eat. And it tasted “like wafers made with honey” according to Exodus 16:31. That’s pretty good for health food! That’s the second part of the lesson: God meets your needs, miraculously, in a way you never imagined.
Now comes the punchline. Why would God choose to do it this way? Why not just feed them to start with? “…that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD.” God is not teaching you that you don’t really need bread; you do, actually. He’s teaching you that in the end, you can’t just live on bread. You need Him! And not just a little of Him: every word that comes from His mouth. You need food, make no mistake–but you need the food He is going to provide. Nothing else will do.
In other words, you need to humbly depend on God, which is how Moses introduced the thought to start with: “He humbled you….”
Now fast-forward to Jesus’ day. After His baptism, Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days of fasting. We often imagine that Jesus spends the fast in serene communion with the Father, and then faces three temptations at the end, but no. Luke records that Jesus was “being tempted for 40 days by the devil.” The three temptations recorded at the end of the fast are the grand finale, the crescendo of 40 solid days of spiritual attack.
In a masterpiece of biblical understatement, both Matthew and Luke record that at the end of the fast, “He was hungry.” Imagine you’d found Jesus in the desert just at the halfway point, 20 days into His fast. He’s had nothing to eat for almost 3 weeks. He’s already going to be looking gaunt and emaciated, yes? What would you say that He needed at that point? Food, of course! And you wouldn’t be wrong–somebody who hasn’t eaten in nearly 3 weeks desperately needs a meal.
What is God doing about Jesus’ legitimate need? He’s waiting. He’s humbling Jesus, allowing Him to be hungry. At the pinnacle of that hunger, the devil hits him with “If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”
We’ve talked about this temptation elsewhere, so I won’t repeat all that here. But I saw something new in my most recent pass through this passage, and I think it’s worth pointing out. Jesus quotes from Moses’ speech in Deuteronomy: “Man does not live by bread alone; but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” He’s drawing on the narrative resources of His people to read the situation He’s in; that much I knew. But Jesus hasn’t experienced the second part of the lesson yet. He’s still in part one, literally starving in the wilderness. Because Jesus knows the story of His people, He has learned from their experience. Knowing where He is in the story, He can anticipate what will come next. The angels’ food is just around the corner. So He hits the devil with the punchline, and when He has triumphed over all the temptations, Matthew tells us, “angels came and ministered to Him.”
What do you think they brought Him to eat?
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Posted by Tim Nichols
Reading Both Books
29 October 2024Read the first few chapters of Matthew, and take note of the Old Testament prophecies he cites. When Matthew cites Micah 5:2, the meaning is very clear. God made a predictive prophecy about where the Messiah would be born, and that prophecy is fulfilled when Jesus is born in that exact town. But that’s not the only thing “fulfill” means here.
Consider “Out of Egypt I called My son.” The son in question in Hosea 11 is Israel—not just the man Jacob (although he’s included) but the whole nation that came from him. “When Israel was a child I loved him” might refer to the man Jacob, but “out of Egypt I called My son” can’t mean just that one guy, because that guy died in Egypt, and what was called out of Egypt was not that one man, but all his descendants, 400 years later. So “Out of Egypt I called My son” is the utterance of a prophet, but it’s not a predictive prophecy; it’s a comment on Israel’s history. In what sense can it be “fulfilled”?
In order to grasp Matthew’s point here, we must first pay careful attention to the meaning of Hosea. Knowing that Israel is God’s son, Matthew shows how Jesus walks in the steps of Israel. He’s making two points: first, that Jesus is Israel (in a meaningful sense that Matthew will spend the whole book exploring), and second, that the land of Israel has become spiritual Egypt—a point that would be reinforced by John the Baptist when he calls the remnant out into the desert to pass through water. Jesus adds to Hosea; we can’t read Hosea 11 anymore without also thinking of Jesus’ flight from Herod as well as the Exodus. The words of the prophet have been “fulfilled,” made more full than they were before.
We don’t want to read something into the text that isn’t there. At the same time, we don’t want to miss something that is there—and the New Testament writers show us repeatedly that there’s a lot more there than one might think at first glance. From Jesus Himself proving the resurrection by exegeting a verb tense in Genesis to the fulfillments of the first few chapters of Matthew to the dizzying displays of Hebrews, the New Testament authors show us a way of reading the Old Testament that we wouldn’t have come up with on our own. It had to be revealed to us.
In theologically conservative circles, we have gotten our hermeneutics from the Book of Nature (mostly as read by E. D. Hirsch), which is very useful as far as it goes. But there’s two books, and the Book of Scripture also has something to teach us about how to read. We should read both books.
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Posted by Tim Nichols
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