What Happens If They Stop?

3 November 2026

“Whoever believes in Me has everlasting life.” That’s what Jesus said (John 6:47). So if you believe–follow me closely here–you have everlasting life. Have – present tense. It doesn’t say that if you believe now, everlasting life will be shipped to you at a later date. Everlasting life doesn’t start when you die; it starts the minute you believe.

“But what if I stopped believing?” someone wants to know. If we’re going to approach this biblically, then our very first answer should be “Let’s not find out! Why would you wanna do a dumb thing like that?” There’s just no good excuse for abandoning the Lord who bought you.

But some people do. For a lot of us, this is not just a theoretical question. We have friends and loved ones who have walked away from the faith. How do we think about that?

One common position is that the promise applies to believers; stop believing, and the promise no longer applies to you. In fact, they say, if you stop believing, then you move from John 3:16 (“whoever believes in me”) to John 3:18 (“he who does not believe is condemned already”).

The idea has some common-sense curb appeal, doesn’t it? It’s not salvation by works simpliciter; the factor that matters is not your works, but your faith. If you believe, you have life; if you never believed, you never had life; if you once believed but don’t anymore, then you once had life but you don’t anymore. As simple and appealing as some folks find this line of thought, it’s not what John actually teaches, as a careful look will reveal.

The first point I’d make here is in the saying of Jesus we’ve already been looking at: “Whoever believes in Me has everlasting life.” How long does “everlasting life” last? There’s an argument to be had here over the translation of αἰώνιος, the Greek word translated “everlasting” (or “eternal,” depending on your translation), but I think any reasonable translation ultimately leads back to this point. Even if you read it as “the life of the age to come,” the age to come lasts forever. It never ends and there’s no death there. The life of the age to come lasts forever. Well, friend, if it lasts forever, and you already have it now, how long are you gonna have it for? Forever. Q.E.D.

But there’s more to say than that. The claim that if you stop believing, “whoever believes in Him” no longer applies to you over-reads the present-tense force of the expression. In other words, this claim wants to read it as “whoever keeps believing and never stops” as opposed to “whoever believes now, regardless of what happens later.” (For the Greek readers among us, this is an argument about how to interpret the present participle; by all means check the examples below for yourself.)

One way of testing a hypothesis like this one is to read other places where the same grammar appears, and see if our preferred way of interpreting renders those instances absurd. With the “you have to keep believing or the promise doesn’t apply to you” hypothesis, absurdities certainly result. Consider the following examples (the verbs in bold italics are all present participles in Greek):

  • Mt. 2:20 – “those who seek the life of the child are dead” – being dead, they’ve certainly stopped seeking the child’s life, haven’t they? It’s not talking about what they’re continually doing forever, but what they were doing once, and yet it’s a present participle, just like “whoever believes on Him.”
  • Mt. 5:32 – “whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery” – again, talking about an event that happens at a point in time.
  • Mt. 15:4 – “the one who curses father or mother will surely be put to death” – Imagine cursing your mother, being hauled into court on charges, and your defense is “But I’ve stopped cursing her now, so the penalty no longer applies to me!” Do you think that’s going to work?
  • Jn 4:13 – “everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again” – the picture isn’t that they sit by the well drinking forever. It’s a prediction of the future about someone who drinks the water in the present: they drink, and go away, and get thirsty. Similarly, see John 3:16 for a prediction: “whoever believes in Me…will not perish.” In both cases, present participle.
  • Jn 11:26 “whoever lives and believes in Me shall not die in eternity” isn’t much of a promise if you have to keep staying alive for the conditions to apply to you.

There are more examples, but these will do. The point is that the same grammar is operating in John 6:47, the passage we’ve been considering. It’s the same, famously, in 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

But what of the person who is condemned? How does that happen? We only need to keep reading. Two verses later, in John 3:18, we find John’s own explanation: “The one who does not believe is condemned already,” John says. Well and good; isn’t that the same present participle we’ve been talking about? Yes, it certainly is. But why does John say this person is condemned? He continues: “…because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” Not “because he is not presently believing” but because “he has not believed.” John’s own account of the unbeliever’s condemnation directly points at the unbeliever’s history, not just his present. (Perfect tense, for the Greek readers.)

If you don’t read Greek, feel free to skip this paragraph and go on to the next one, but for the Greek readers among us, see Wallace for an extended discussion of time in participles. Wallace’s own evidence makes the case well that the present participle used as a substantive is generally functioning as an agency noun, as in “a sower went out to sow” (Mt. 13:3) or “fear fell on all the hearers” (Ac. 5:11). In my view, he special-pleads his way back out of that for—of all things—πιστεύω in soteriological contexts in particular, and then tries to read his special pleading back into his view of the participle. It’s an interesting case study in losing your nerve on the verge of the grammar forcing you to change your theology. Go thou, and do un-likewise! But as I say, that’s my interpretation. He would say that the present participle can lose its aspectual force if the context requires it (about which, see below, because the context does, in fact, require it.)

Let’s look a little more closely at what John teaches us about everlasting life, and what happens when someone acquires it. For this, we go to John 5:24: “The one who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and will not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” Don’t miss the historical and future facts that John plainly spells out here. The person who hears and believes: certain things are now true of that person. He has passed (Gk. perfect tense) from death to life. That’s his history; it’s already done. He will not come into judgment; that’s his future. What if he believed, but now he doesn’t? Can that change the historical fact that he already passed from death into life? No. Does it empty Jesus’ promise that he will not come into judgment? How could it? The notion that changing the present somehow changes the past is positively Orwellian, and entirely foreign to Scripture (not to mention being full-throated logical nonsense).

To be fair, I want to admit that this feels weird for a lot of people. “Do you really mean to say that some guy can have a moment when he’s 9 years old where he believes the gospel in Sunday School, and then grow up and live like the devil himself, and somehow that guy is saved?”

That does seem weird, doesn’t it? There are two reasons it seems weird, one good and the other not. On the good side of the ledger, the incongruity makes us uncomfortable: if this guy’s really a child of God, then he oughta live like one! He ought to act like it, and look like it. Amen! So he should. The incongruity ought to make you uncomfortable, and it will make the person in question uncomfortable, because he’s made in the image of God and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who is hard at work in his heart even if you can’t see it. Quenching the Spirit is a tragic reality, and it really is incongruous. But the way we resolve that incongruity is by bringing the lost sheep back to the fold, not by airily deciding that if he was really a sheep, he never would have wandered off to start with. That is the reasoning of the lazy and stupid hireling, not the Good Shepherd. Let’s don’t be that guy.

The second reason it seems weird is because the freeness of God’s grace offends our sensibilities. We’re supposed to be past this, but many Christians aren’t. We’re ok with God forgiving us our sins and failures, but the minute He goes and forgives someone who’s “worse” than we are (whatever highly idiosyncratic definition of “worse” we’re using at the moment), we get offended. How is it possible that this guy gets away with that sin? It can’t be! But this is just self-righteous claptrap. It’s the reasoning of the Devil himself, accusing the brethren before the throne night and day. Don’t do his job for him. Trust in the grace of God; it’s there the ones that need it most.

…that’s us, by the way.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

“He Lifts Up”

13 October 2026

“Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He lifts up; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. (John 15:2)

I know your translation doesn’t say “lifts up.” It probably says something like “takes away,” which is a valid translation of αἴρω, the Greek word that’s used there. The word means to lift up or to take away; context has to determine which meaning makes more sense in a specific instance. The problem here is that your Bible translators, while excellent at Greek, don’t generally know beans about agriculture, and so don’t understand the work the passage is rather plainly talking about.

Taken in its agricultural context, John 15:2 is happening in the spring. That’s when you prune the vines, so they don’t overproduce (about which more in a moment). This isn’t a threat to throw you away if you don’t perform; it’s a promise that if you’ve fallen into the dirt, God the Father will lift you off the ground, away from pests and rot, in order to bring about good fruit in your life. (I took this photo at Stoned Fruit Orchard, Palisade, CO. Obviously it’s not a grape vine, but the same principle is at work. Buy their stuff; it’s all organic, perfectly tree-ripened, and wonderful!)

Someone will say, “But Tim, what about the branches getting burned in v. 6?” Great question! Two things to know here: First, note the different criteria at work: v. 2 talks about a branch that simply lacks fruit, while v. 6 talks about a branch that is not connected to the vine, which is a very different problem. Second, we’re talking about two different points in the year. The work described in v. 2 happens in the spring, to support the growing season. The work described in v. 6 happens in the fall, after all the fruit is harvested. At that point, you go through the vineyard (or orchard) and gather up all the dead wood.

At a pastoral level, these two things add up to a very different approach to life than the common “spiritual hustle culture.” The command here is not to bear fruit in order to be connected to the vine, or in order to certify your connection to suspicious fruit inspectors. The core command in the passage is not actually about fruit at all; it’s to abide in the vine. Jesus chose His analogy well; we should follow it all the way through. A branch doesn’t bear fruit in order to connect to the vine; that’s just not how plants work. It has to be connected to the vine first in order to have any hope of producing fruit.

Being connected to the vine doesn’t mean the branch can have no problems. A connected branch might be overproducing; when that happens, it’s trying to sprout more fruit than it can support. Left untended, an overproducing branch will make low-quality fruit because the nutrients will be spread too thin. The solution is to prune it back: cut off perfectly good stems and young fruit, so that what remains can be strong and healthy. That’s hard for us to take; we tend to want to cling to things the Father is telling us He will no longer support. But the right answer is to submit to the pruning and pour our effort into what He wants us to focus on.

A connected branch can also have the opposite problem: it can fall into the dirt, where it is vulnerable to rot and pests, and won’t produce fruit. The solution here is to take the branch and lift it up, just as v. 2 says. Propped up into the air and sunlight, away from moisture, dirt, and pests, the branch will be able to produce as it should.

As you can see from the picture above, these are very normal, solvable problems; addressing them is the routine business of farming. A branch that is not connected to the vine is an entirely different matter. That branch can’t produce fruit; can’t do anything but wither and die, in fact. The conclusion Jesus is steering us toward is simply this: abiding is the key thing; fruit is the result! The primary thing we aim for is not production but abiding in Christ. Apart from Him we die; drawing our life from Him, we live, and our Father tends us to bring forth fruit.

(For further reflections on this passage, see Being Lifted Up. For further scholarly work, see Gary Derickson, “Viticulture and John 15:1-6” Bibliotheca Sacra 153:609 (Jan 1996) and Derickson & Radmacher, The Disciplemaker: What Matters Most to Jesus Salem, OR: Charis, 2001)

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Hope in Edom

1 September 2026

This week we’ll read Genesis 36. Go on and read it; I’ll wait.

What are we to do with this passage? Let’s be honest: if you finished Genesis 35 and skipped right to the beginning of 37, you would never miss the chapter you’d left out. It doesn’t seem to further the plot at all. What’s it even doing here?

Three things: faithfulness, blessing, and hope.

Faithfulness

God is faithful to His promises. He promised Abram that He would make his name great, and that nations would come from him. Part of that promise was fulfilled in Abram’s lifetime. God did indeed make him great, and Abraham got to see the fulfillment of that promise well before he died. But making him the father of nations, as his new name claimed? Isaac, Ishmael, and the sons of Keturah were well launched, but nations? Ishmael maybe — at least a starter nation, but the time Abraham died — but Isaac still had a long way to go.

God had made similar promises to Isaac and Rebekah: “Two nations are in your womb.” As with Isaac, Jacob is greatly blessed, but “nation” is a bit aspirational. With twelve sons, you can see where it could become a nation, at least. Outside the seed line, though, we get to see God delivering on His promises already. Ishmael’s sons were “twelve princes according to their nations” (Gen. 25:12-18). Here in Genesis 36, we again get to see God Delivering on his promises to Abraham and Isaac. Esau’s grandsons become chiefs, and their descendants grow to the point that they have kings well before Israel develops a monarchy.

As readers, we should take this as a downpayment on the promises to Isaac and Jacob. Be patient; the line of promised seed will also become a nation in due time.

Blessing

There’s a kind of Tale of Two Esaus in the story here: the Esau we encounter before Jacob goes up to Laban, and the Esau we encounter when he comes back. Jacob isn’t the only one that has matured some over that 20-year gap. The first Esau is a knucklehead. He’s not weak or soft; he’s not that kind of spoiled rich kid. He’s a man of the field. But all he cares about is being out in the field, hunting. He cares so little about legacy that he gives up his birthright for a bowl of soup.

Older Esau is a different guy entirely. He’s strategically intermarried with the Horites, settled in Seir, and building a kingdom. His grandsons are chieftains, and they in turn spawn kings. This Esau is no longer a hunting-camp bum; he’s a nation-builder. What happened?

There’s a lot we don’t know. The narrative follows Jacob for his 20 years with Laban, and doesn’t tell us much about what happened to Esau during that time. But the last thing we saw before Esau disappeared from the story for a while was Jacob blessing him to be sustained by the land, live by the sword, and become independent of his brother. All these things have happened by the time we meet older Esau.

What we are seeing here is the power of a father’s blessing. We can talk about the ethics of this particular blessing some other time–“blessing” your sons with civil war is maybe not the best idea ever–but the point for our purposes today is that Esau took Isaac’s blessing to heart. He has come to embody everything his father envisioned for him. Fathers, take a lesson from Isaac here: launch your children into the world with a blessing.

Hope

There’s a note inserted in the Septuagint text about the Edomite kings; it tells us that Bela, the first king, is Balaam, and that Jobab, the second king, is Job. We can’t establish either of these identities with absolute certainty, but we can establish that both Job and his friend Eliphaz are Edomites, and it’s likely that Balaam is Edomite as well. This should incline us to hope.

In the biblical Story, the Edomites are not the good guys. They are a thorn in Israel’s side, oppressing them periodically through the Old Testament and on into the New–Herod the Great, the man who had the infants of Bethlehem slaughtered, was an Idumean (Edomite). So when we find that even among the bad guys, there are people like Job, that should incline us to hope. God is at work even among the bad guys. And while, taking one thing with another, we have no right to be surprised that the bad guys act like bad guys, we shouldn’t be too surprised to find among them the occasional stinker who nonetheless knows God (Balaam), the occasional godly man who’s making an honest misjudgment (Eliphaz), and even the occasional righteous man where even God says “there is none like him in all the earth.” (How many Israelites did God ever say that about?)

It isn’t fair. Job’s not a member of the club. And anyway, if he’s so good, what’s he doing with them?

He’s where God put him. And don’t they need the witness more than you do? Just be thankful he’s there.

Application

Coming out of this chapter, be encouraged that God makes good on His promises–always has, always will, no matter what. Remember that “life and death are in the power of the tongue” and use your voice for blessing, especially with your kids. Look for people who know God in unexpected places, even among the bad guys. You may be surprised what you find.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Dinah Debacle

25 August 2026

This week, we read Genesis 34. Go and read it; I’ll wait.

There’s two things to talk about here: the set of lessons the text teaches, and our response to the text as God gave it to us.

The Hebrew description makes it seem likely that this is a rape rather than a seduction, but it’s not certain. This presents us with the first big problem in our response: we need to know! Was she raped, or wasn’t she? As moderns, we need to know the answer to that so we know how to feel about the story. For us, bit of mutually consensual fooling around is one thing; a rape is something else entirely, because to us her consent is the biggest factor. That the story seems not to see it that way feels to us like a devaluation of consent, a weak view of rape. Actually, it’s a robust view of the destructiveness of fornication; so robust a view that we’re deeply uncomfortable with it. From the point of view of the story, the issue is that either way, Shechem has humiliated and defiled Dinah. We viscerally reject the idea that she could be humiliated and defiled by exercising her bodily autonomy and sexual agency…but it’s true nonetheless. And that defilement creates a situation that’s very difficult to put right.

Remember where and when we are in this story. In preindustrial culture, nobody survived alone for long; we lived in groups because we had to. The group’s survival depended on a large amount of heavy manual labor, which men are far more capable of enduring than women. For both men and women, ability to perform the physical tasks necessary for survival diminishes severely with age, so they needed to have a lot of children, particularly sons, who could care for them as they got older. A young woman’s immediate survival depended on her father and brothers, and her long-term prospects depended on getting married and producing offspring who could care for her in her age.

This to say, Dinah needed to get married. Finding a husband for Dinah was undoubtedly already on Jacob’s to-do list. Given his own wealth and power, he would have been looking to marry her to someone powerful and well placed. However, in the culture of the time, a woman who is not a virgin for any reason, including rape, has greatly diminished prospects for marriage. Put simply, no one will want her. As a result, in this one act, Shechem has ruined her whole life–a terrible thing to do to a young woman even if, in the heat of the moment, she consents. “She agreed to it” is a poor excuse for destroying a teenage girl’s entire life.

Now, for some men in that time and place, that destruction would be the entire point of the act, whether a rape or a seduction. The act of taking her virginity, however accomplished, greatly reduces the competition for her as a wife. Other men will no longer be interested, and his bargaining power with her father and brothers goes up enormously. Jacob and his sons had to expect that Shechem would be up to something like that…if he was even interested in marrying her at all. But the story makes it very clear that Shechem is doing no such thing, and he is at pains to assure them of his honorable intentions. He isn’t haggling for a discount; he’s eager to step up to whatever they ask of him in order to marry Dinah.

Difficult as it is for us to grasp, the Bible presents Shechem as genuinely caring for Dinah. It may help us to remember Abimelech’s complaint about Rebekah: “One of the people might soon have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt on us.” (Gen. 26:10) Presumably Rebekah would have objected; Abimelech assumes that her objections wouldn’t have prevented one of his men from taking her anyway. In the custom of the land, rape is commonplace; appalling as it is, rape-for-marriage would be too. In a Romans 1, universal-law sense, it would not be entirely fair to say that people do not know better, but the worst we can say about Shechem is that he has followed the customs of his people, and the text itself says he is “more honorable than all his father’s house.”

This brings us to the second big problem we have with the story, which is the way in which they plan to put the situation right: turn it into a marriage. Now, I trust we’re all on the same page that it’s overkill to respond to a rape by murdering the entire city’s men and enslaving all the women and children. But let’s be honest, if Simeon and Levi had staked Shechem to an anthill, and then after a decent interval of 15 hours or so they cut off his head, we’d probably be ok with that, wouldn’t we?

…which is to say, we are more like Simeon and Levi than we think: we would rather see a satisfying revenge than see Dinah taken care of; we just lack the ruthlessness to take things as far as they did. If we focus on revenge and murder the only man now willing to marry Dinah, where does that leave her? We’d all be satisfied that justice was served, but what’s she going to do in her old age? Who’s going to take care of her?

Jacob disagrees with us; he takes the long view. Shechem is willing–eager, in fact–to marry her, and the truth is, he should be taking responsibility for her well-being now, since he’s the one who violated her. So Jacob says ok, and means it. Simeon and Levi say ok, and are planning to betray the city. Here’s a detail frequently missed in telling this story: the marriage actually happened. Shechem circumcised himself immediately, and apparently it took more time to convince everybody else. When the slaughter was over, Simeon and Levi took Dinah from Shechem’s house. They didn’t pretend they were going to marry her to Shechem; they actually went through with it, and then murdered their sister’s new husband and took her back–first defiled and humiliated, now a widow as well, and still with nobody to care for her in her age.

Before we go any further, let’s get clear on what circumcision means here. This isn’t just removing some flesh from the foreskin; it’s the sign of the covenant with Abraham. What they’re telling Shechem is “You all have to convert.” They all do; they join themselves to the God of Abraham. It’s a great evangelistic moment; an entire city comes to know God. The new covenant equivalent would be the whole city professing faith in Christ and getting baptized…right before we murder them all. After Simeon and Levi have accomplished the slaughter, their other brothers descend on the city and plunder it. They don’t just take all the stuff; they enslave all the women and children.

At this point, Jacob is right to be afraid. Nomads and sedentary societies always have a bit of a tense relationship, and his sons have just violated the most sacred treaty there is. These people literally joined their family, and the sons of Jacob still murdered them. If they’ll do that, what treaty would they not break? Jacob is now in a position where there’s no promise he can make, no guarantee he can offer, that anybody around him will believe. He’s entirely too dangerous to have as a neighbor; he may be a decent enough guy, but there’s no telling when his boys are going to murder you all. The most natural thing for the Caananites to do is exactly what Jacob says: band together and exterminate the threat.

Do Simeon and Levi have an answer for this problem? Nope. The strategically correct answer to Jacob’s objection would be something like “Yeah, we thought about that, but here’s our plan for dealing with it….” They don’t seem to have even thought about it. They were mad, they killed a bunch of people, end of story. This is why, later on, Jacob will pass over them for the ruling blessing. Treacherous, murderous, and impulsive in ways that are apt to get the whole family killed, they’re simply not fit to lead.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Fire on Every Head

24 May 2026

This post is officially my 800th since the beginning of this blog back on May 15, 2008. It’s been a privilege to serve you all! If this has been a blessing to you, consider supporting me.

Today at Jason Park in Englewood, Colorado, three churches will gather to worship God, reflect on His Word, and share a meal together. Why do we take time out of our regular routines to do this?

When God called Moses out of the Midianite desert to free His people from slavery in Egypt, He revealed Himself to Moses in fire—a bush that burned, but was not consumed. When Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, God stood between His people and the Egyptian army all night in an impassable cyclone of fire. He led them to Sinai, where He came upon the mountain in fire and storm. From that mountain, He spoke the Law, and on that mountain, He showed Moses the heavenly tabernacle, of which Moses made an earthly copy, a place for God’s special presence on earth. When Aaron began priestly ministry at that copy, fire came out of the sanctuary and devoured the sacrifices on the altar, signalling God’s acceptance of their work and His continued intention to dwell among His people. A pillar of fire remained over the tabernacle, and led them through the wilderness. When Solomon dedicated the Temple as a permanent dwelling to replace the portable Tabernacle, fire came down from heaven itself and consumed the sacrifices on the altar, again signalling God’s intention to dwell there, that His people should be a light to the Gentiles and a place where the world could draw near to Him.

To that nation, the custodians of His special presence on earth, God sent His prophets. Some they ignored, some they persecuted, some they killed, until finally He sent His Son—the Way, the Truth, and the Life—whom they took with lawless hands and murdered outside the city. But since it is not possible for Life Himself to be contained by death, Jesus was raised, showed Himself to His people, ascended to the right hand of power, and from Heaven sent His Holy Spirit. At Pentecost as at Sinai, the Spirit came upon His people in storm—a mighty rushing wind—and fire. But with a difference: the fire did not reside on a place or an altar, but on every head. From that day to this, the fire of God rests on the people His Spirit indwells. Jerusalem remains special to Him, and may God grant her peace! but He means to do it by provoking her to jealousy through the Gentiles, in all the different nations and cultures of the ends of the earth to which our people have carried the gospel, running like Samson’s foxes through the Gentile fields, setting everything ablaze as we go.

We come together today, two millennia later, to remember that the fire does not dwell only in Jerusalem, nor only at Christ the Anchor, or Lighthouse, or The Cord, but on every head, uniting us as Jesus prayed to the Father: “May they be one, even as We are one.” We will one day stand all together, every tribe, tongue, and nation assembled before God’s throne, and in this present earthly shadow of our heavenly future, whichever nation, culture, or family you come from, if you belong to Jesus, you belong to us, and we to you, and we are eager to meet the Holy Spirit manifested in each other.

Welcome to Pentecost!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Wrath?

28 April 2026

Does God’s wrath fall on believers? Most Christians think the answer is obvious. The problem is, there are at least two common “obvious” answers:

  1. Of course it does! God’s wrath is against all sin; if you commit sin, you face God’s wrath in this life, even if you eventually escape it in heaven.
  2. Of course not! God’s wrath against sin was poured out on Christ at the cross. While discipline for our correction and sanctification continues to happen for our good, no believer will ever face God’s wrath.

So which is it? Or are both answers missing something?

Faced with a question like this, I turn to Scripture. It’s usually the case that there’s no single passage that decisively vindicates one side or the other. A surprising amount of some folks’ doctrine is supported by little more than innuendo and a conspiracy-theory-esque stitching together of passages that don’t quite say what they’re claimed to say. What passages actually, pointedly speak to the matter? What, exactly, do those passages say? Equally important, what don’t they say?

  • Ephesians 5:6-7//Col.3:5-7 comes to mind, but what it actually says is that believers should not do these things because God’s wrath falls on unbelievers for them. It doesn’t quite clearly say that believers also experience God’s wrath for them. You could read verse 7 that way: “Therefore do not be partakers (of wrath) with them.” But “Do not be partakers (of these sins) with them” is also a live option. It’s clear on what we’re supposed to do, but tantalizingly ambiguous on the question of wrath.
  • Romans 12:19, 13:4 also come to mind as places that might allow for a believer to experience wrath. 1:18 has already clearly said that God’s wrath stands against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, and “saved from wrath” is much more than justification (5:9) and appears to be conditional (10:9-10)
  • Psalm 95//Heb. 3:11, 4:3 point to exclusion from rest as an expression of wrath, and 4:11 calls for believers to be diligent to enter and holds out failure as a real possibility.

But I gotta say, it’s curiously difficult to find a direct statement that God’s wrath falls on believers, while at the same time multiple passages are suggestive in that direction. What’s interesting about that is that it doesn’t really fit with either of the “obvious” takes that we started this post with. If #1 is true, you’d expect there to be some pretty direct threats. If #2 is true, then you would think the biblical authors would be at pains not to say things that sound like believers might experience wrath after all. The fact that the Bible doesn’t speak the way that we would means that we’re missing something.

Wonder what it is?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

An Introduction to Romans

24 February 2026

A couple months ago, I had the opportunity to cover the introduction to the book of Romans in some detail. Enjoy!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The “Higher Standard” is Bunk

10 February 2026

What 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.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Saved Like Paul

2 September 2025

How 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 2025

Do 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

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