The book of Colossians uniquely focuses on the “preeminence” or Christ (meaning his “first-ness”). The consequence of this is that Christ, and His word, are all anyone needs – not additional religious practices or Jewish rituals. We also look at the story of Cornelius, which makes a similar point as Colossians 3:11: “Here there is…

Philippians is a book (or letter) filled with encouragement. It’s also more approachable than Paul’s other books; he uses much simpler wording here. The church in Philippi started about a decade before this letter, in Acts 16. We look at one of those stories, where the jailer is converted.

Not requiring people to be circumcised is a hill that the apostle Paul would die on, apparently. He is very adamant in the book of Galatians about not binding the Law of Moses on Christians, and Gentile converts specifically (since Jews would already be circumcised). Related to this, we look at the story of Hagar,…

2 Corinthians deals with a power vacuum at the church in Corinth, where the men that started the congregation have left, and some there are turning to charismatic leaders that Paul calls false apostles. Paul instructs them what leadership really looks like. In connection with chapter 3, we also look at the story of Moses…

We learn a lot from 1 Corinthians about how a church should function, and how it can fall short. One topic in the book is church discipline, a concept that is not new but echoes stories like Achan’s Sin – which we also cover in this lesson.

An overview of the book of Romans, and looking at the story surrounding a key verse in Romans.

John’s account of Jesus focuses on different things than the “synoptic” gospels, including some memorable personal stories, like the woman at the well.