John Mark Hicks

The focus of Paul’s prayer is not that the Ephesians would be filled with information (though Paul does want them to understand the mystery of Christ and live with wisdom) but that they might be filled with the fullness of God. He prays that through the Spirit strengthening their inner persons and Christ dwelling in […]

Texts: Romans 9:4-5; Psalm 19:7-10; Romans 3:1-2 Days 20-22 in Around the Bible in Eighty Days. God chose Israel from among the nations as God’s own firstborn. As firstborn, Israel was tasked with blessing the nations through their obedience to God (as a light among the nations) and the promises made to Abraham. God equipped […]

If the ministry of the new covenant mediates the glory of God in the face of Jesus the Messiah, why is Paul’s ministry so filled with suffering? The gospel, epitomized in the death and resurrection of Jesus, calls its ministers—all believers—to give themselves for the sake of others. When we follow Jesus into his ministry, […]

The ministry of the new covenant—the ministry of reconciliation—is worth the struggle, heartache, and conflict as long as we have renounced deceitful and manipulative practices and focused on the proclamation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Therefore, “we do not lose heart” but rest in the work of God who […]

Paul’s “new covenant” ministry is life-giving, hopeful, and glorious. This contrasts with the glory of Moses’ “old covenant” ministry which was hidden to Israel in the wilderness but is fully revealed in Christ. The movement from “old covenant” to “new covenant” is not so much an abolition of the “old covenant,” or a sense that […]

Haggai’s second oracle comes to Judah on the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles, the next to the last day, on October 17, 520 B.C.E. The seventh month is a particularly busy one in Israel’s calendar. Besides the New Moon festival which began every month, the seventh month included both the Day of Atonement […]

The most heartfelt and gut-wrenching expression of Paul’s love for his own nation, his own people, for Israel is found in Romans 9:1-5. Israel, though gifted by God with wondrous privileges, had rejected God’s Messiah. Paul was heartbroken as he listed the gifts in an overflow of praise for God’s grace toward Israel. Gift one: […]

Imbibing the theodrama by reading Scripture is critical to the development of our theological sensitivities. One of the more important dimensions of this maturing understanding of the theodrama is the concept of redemptive-historical movement within the drama itself. The theodrama is progressive; it is telos-oriented or goal-oriented. Watching the movement of the drama toward the […]

As part of a pre-conference gathering entitled “Theology in the Service of the Church” in conjunction with the 1996 Christian Scholars Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, I presented a paper entitled “The Doctrine of God.”  The presentations at this pre-conference were published in Leaven 8.3 (2000). Some of these themes (providence, pneumatology, etc.) are pursued in my Kingdom […]

In my first post in the series on Arminianism and Calvinism, I suggested that at the heart of Calvinist theology is the desire to preserve the glory of God as the sole cause of salvation and that the heart of Arminian theology is the desire to preserve the faithfulness of God to his own relentless […]