December 2025 – Snapshots

Our Authority

The concept of Church Authority is significant because it frames how we engage with God and with truth itself. Does God give church leaders authority over our spiritual lives? If so, what kind of authority? How do we engage with church authority when we disagree?

Clearly, God does entrust church leaders with authority. (He 13:7, 17) The Apostle Paul himself claimed to have direct spiritual authority from God (2Co 10:8) and literally threatened those in the churches who persisted in rebelling against it. (2Co 13:2-4)

However, there’s no indication in Scripture that this authority has anything to do with controlling our spiritual beliefs, as if God gave the apostles the right to tell others what to believe or how to interpret scripture. No apostle is recorded saying, “God gave us authority to tell you what to believe.”

Apostolic teaching was always derived from a plain reading of Scripture in a way that was easily perceived to be authentic and honest with the text (2Co 4:2); they didn’t make it up as they went – they invited everyone to inspect the scripture references for themselves to verify apostolic claims. (Ac 17:11) No apostle ever had dominion over anyone else’s faith. (2Co 1:24) If that is the case for the apostles, who were discipled personally by Christ Himself, it certainly holds for bishops and elders.

Scripture is clear that the head of every man is Christ (1Co 11:3), implying each brother answers directly to Him for their beliefs and behavior. (Ro 14:4) Bishops rule in the church much as they do in their own houses (1Ti 3:5), where they can’t force anyone to believe anything or rightly discipline them merely for disagreeing. (1Co 7:12) “We ought to obey God rather than men,” (Ac 5:29) applies even to those who err in their understanding; we must all be allowed to live according to our own consciences (Ac 24:16), rightly dividing the Word of Truth for ourselves as best we can. (2Ti 2:15)

When bishops and elders are watching over and caring for our souls as they ought, they don’t demand we check our brains at the door and believe whatever they insist; they gently offer instruction, trusting God will open our understanding and give us repentance to the acknowledging of the truth as He wills. (2Ti 2:25-26)

Believers are well-equipped to discern the truth through the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit within them (1Jn 2:27); we must each lay hold on eternal life (1Ti 6:12) by prayerfully searching the scriptures (Jn 5:39); it is entirely inappropriate to try to control the beliefs of those in the church from the top down.

When key differences relating to the Person and/or work of Christ creep into the brotherhood, straining meaningful fellowship (Ga 2:5), and remain unresolved, separate communions should be established aligning along these critical doctrines. (1Jn 2:18-19) God will sort out the false from the true as He sees fit (1Co 11:19), and discerning believers should seek fellowship aligned with their personal understanding of these core concepts. This is how Christ keeps His church pure (Mt 16:18), not by demanding blind allegiance to a doctrinal statement.

Proper spiritual authority provides biblical instruction to the unlearned who are interested, confidently answers those teaching harmful doctrines with sound scripture exegesis (Ti 1:9-11), offers wisdom and counsel in extra-biblical matters where God has not spoken clearly (1Co 7:12), and helps us navigate complexities related Torah observance in non-Torah-observant cultures (Ro 14:1), inter-personal conflicts and social responsibilities, etc.

Deferring to the recommendations of those given responsibility to care for the church (1Ti 3:5) is the rule unless it’s violating our conscience. Yet even in such matters it’s clear the brotherhood has the final say, not bishops or elders. (Mt 18:17) So, appealing to the brotherhood if a leader is invasive, meddling, or trying to control us is perfectly natural and godly. For the time being, in this present age, spiritual authority is ultimately grounded in brotherly consensus in Christ-centered local churches, and nowhere else. (1Ti 3:15)

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Husbands, Love

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Biblical teaching on marriage is straightforward and clear: wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord (Ep 5:22); husbands love your wives, as Christ loves the Church. (25)

Seems simple enough, on the surface anyway, but as most anyone who’s been married for any length of time will confess, it ain’t so easy. Men and women are VERY different in how we communicate and how our minds and hearts work. This definitely complicates matters significantly, but it’s actually by design, and it’s a very good one. (Ge 2:18)

Though the biblical pattern always addresses the wife’s role first, this doesn’t imply her role is more important, or that the husband’s duty is secondary. We know from experience everything rises and falls on leadership; the home is no exception.

So, beyond the obvious … being kind, gentle, patient, humble, thoughtful, respectful, considerate, selfless (1Co 13:4-7), honest, hard-working and a man of my word, how do I actually love my wife in an effective and meaningful way? I’ve found I can be a veritable paragon of virtue and still fail miserably. In spite of all of the instruction I’ve had, and the tons of scripture I’ve memorized, I’ve evidently been missing something very basic that might make all the difference.

It’s embedded in the very word husband or husbandman, which actually refers to a farmer, one who cares for animals and crops for a living. (Ge 9:20, Ze 13:5, Jn 15:1, Ja 5:7) How do successful farmers actually do this?

They pay attention to their animals and crops, constantly monitoring their health and safety, with an informed knowledge of what they need, when they need it, and what makes them thrive. Farmers do this because plants and animals don’t advertise; they don’t cry out when they’re in trouble. The husbandman must carefully and diligently and proactively and systematically inspect everything under his care to preemptively discover issues and take care of them before they fester and get out of hand. (Pr 27:23) It is a full-time job: there are many variables … and many adversaries.

The simple farming metaphor suggests a marriage is much like a farm which must be tenderly and wisely cared for and nourished; but the reality is that a wife is obviously not so simple to take care of. Farmers struggle in their marriages just like the rest of us. (1Co 7:28)

The fact of the matter is that Woman is a bewilderingly complex creature, defying ultimate description. She’s more like an exotic, extravagant military grade radar/sonar device, extremely fine-tuned to pick up subtle cues, processing, filtering and distilling millions of signals from her universe.

She’s designed to do so, under the safe, loving, stable protection of her husband. When something moves her, and many things will, she may not immediately understand what it is, why it moves her, or what to do about it, any more than a radar can interpret all of the signals it receives on its own.

She needs to process what she’s thinking and feeling; she needs for her husband to explore, discover, ask, probe and listen with genuine interest and concern: she, in all of her beauty and complexity, is his to husband. This is primarily how he loves her.

And as with any farm, the husband can’t indiscriminately check out and neglect his duty any more than a farmer can take off for a season and expect everything to take care of itself, or military intelligence officials may disregard the constant flow of radar signals and keep their country safe. The husband must check in regularly with his wife and monitor her spiritual, emotional and physical state, listening, observing, studying, noticing and genuinely caring.

This seems to be what the Bible means when it calls husbands to dwell with their wives according to knowledge. (1Pe 3:7) This evidently isn’t merely a general knowledge of the wife’s history and general character, which is clearly important, but an active awareness of her present condition: a compassionate and intentional understanding of her current spiritual, emotional and physical state. This is an essential prerequisite to effectively leading and caring for our wives; it is intrinsic to cleaving to them (Ge 2:24), natural to being one flesh with them. We husbands cannot properly love our wives apart from this.

There is, as we should come to expect from Father’s brilliant design in Creation, an exquisite synergy within this intricate dynamic. The husband’s logical, methodical, compartmentalizing, problem-solving mindset often misses the big picture, oblivious to intangible threats and callous to the sensitivities of the young and vulnerable. The wife, synthesizing the familial and societal chaos around them within her emotional framework, is thus the husband’s eyes and ears in an unseen world, alerting him to imbalances and pathological trends he might never notice. When they harmonize together, they’re a formidable force in an unforgiving world, accomplishing what neither one of them ever could on their own. And this mysterious, powerful, mystical union is grounded in agape: selfless love.

There are many ways to express love in a marriage; we each have one or more love languages, ways we more easily receive and experience love (Quality Time, Acts of Service, Gifts, Words of Affirmation, (Non-sexual) Physical Touch, etc.), but if a husband does not care, if he’s not actively trying to understand his wife, consistently noting where she’s at, how she’s doing and what she’s feeling, asking her questions about herself and listening to her, engaging with her about herself, other expressions of his love will likely be diminished in their effectiveness. Obviously, this depends on the circumstances, the wife’s general frame and disposition, their history together, and many other variables, but active listening seems to be fundamental to it all.

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Restore the Joy

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Depression afflicts millions of souls around the world and it’s a growing problem. Medication, therapy, busy-ness and distractions … it doesn’t really set us free. Very few find ultimate, sustainable victory. What exactly is depression? What causes it? How do we overcome?

We can define depression as a season of joylessness, ingratitude, heaviness, hopelessness, despair, being cast down and despondent. Depression can incapacitate us, rendering us socially awkward and unproductive, alienating us from the life of God, from our families and community. It sounds like the work of the enemy, the thief who steals, kills and destroys (Jn 10:10a), because it is. Depression isn’t God’s will for us, not even for a moment. (10b)

To say depression is a sin may be a stretch, and a cruel one at that; we’re all sinners, and shaming one who’s already depressed isn’t the least bit helpful. A better way to think of it is a state of spiritual captivity resulting from an incomplete, inaccurate perspective. (Jn 8:32) Prisoners of war need to be rescued, not lectured and reprimanded.

We get depressed when we believe lies about God in the midst of our suffering, then we get our focus on the wrong thing and it blows up all out of proportion, and then we literally get in our own way, opposing ourselves. This is how the devil ensnares us and takes us prisoner. (2Ti 2:25-26)

Overcoming depression is simply a matter of re-focusing, getting our perspective more aligned with God’s. (Ps 42:5) It’s a journey, and easier said than done, of course; we can’t do this all on our own. God must give us repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, a fundamental change in our thinking, to set us free. (2Ti 2:25)

Medication and counseling may indeed help give us an edge to jump-start the healing process; spiritual problems can be inseparably intertwined with our physiological and emotional states. We should treat depression holistically, without dismissing its spiritual roots.

Similarly, proper rest, diet and exercise are all part of a healthy mind, soul and spirit. (3Jn 2) We can’t function as we’re designed while we habitually neglect and abuse ourselves; self-hatred isn’t Love — it displeases God because He is Love. (1Jn 4:8)

Yet such external remedies are ultimately superficial, band aids for broken bones, dealing with symptoms rather than the deeper core issues: the root cause of depression is a corruption in our relationship with God. At the root is the lie that God is not good, that He cannot be trusted, that there is no hope in Him. One who is in love with God, who knows the goodness, power and love of God experientially (Ep 3:19), who implicitly trusts God in all their suffering and calamity (Ps 119:75), knowing all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Ro 8:28), who are continually abounding in thanksgiving to God (Co 2:7), praising God for His lovingkindness and tender mercies (Ps 63:3), who are delighting in the nature and character of God (Php 4:4, Ps 104:34), who are feeding in the majesty and strength of God (Mi 5:2), who are meditating in the treasures of His Word night and day (Ps 119:97), who are rejoicing in eternal salvation and in the heavenly glory that awaits them (1Pe 1:4-6) … no, they are not depressed: they cannot be.

So, what should we do when we find ourselves trapped in a season of depression?

First thing is we stop lying to ourselves: we admit we’re depressed and angry and bitter and resentful and despondent and that we have lost all hope. We confess we don’t like the way God is treating us and that we feel like we’re suffering unjustly and that God has left us. We pour out our hearts before Him (Ps 62:8); He can handle it; He already knows. (Mt 6:8) But it’s good for us to admit where we’re at: to cry out to God and admit our weakness, our inability to help ourselves, and confess our infirmity. (Ps 77:10)

Once we get real with our own hearts we can begin to heal, to identify the lies behind every one of these beliefs, attitudes and feelings. We go to God’s Word, the living Sword of the Spirit, and let it pierce down into the deepest places of our heart (He 13:8), and lay ourselves out bare and naked before God. (He 13:9)

We identify a wound, a hurt, a bitterness, a disappointment, and ask God to show us the lie underpinning it, the deception holding us captive in depression. (Ps 139:23-24) Then we ask Him to show us what parts of His Word to focus on to correct this lie. (Mt 4:4) Then we hide these texts in our heart, memorizing them, meditating on them and praying over them, asking God to quicken us and help us believe (Mk 9:24), until the lie is broken and we’re set free in that area. (Ps 119:11)

One by one we cast down these imaginations, these broken perceptions, these twisted beliefs which exalt themselves against the knowledge of God, and bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. (2Co 10:5) We are rooting out and pulling down the enemy’s strongholds in the battlefield of our hearts, neutralizing them one at a time by the power of God. (2Co 10:4)

We know we are getting free as we experience more joy in God (Ps 51:12), more gratitude, more peace, more trust, more satisfaction in Him. (Is 26:3)

This isn’t a quick fix, certainly, but it actually works, and in the end, I think it’s the only one that does.

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Lay Hold on Eternal Life

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Getting the Everlasting Gospel right (Re 14:6) — understanding it, accepting it, internalizing it and living it out (1Co 15:1-2) — is how we lay hold on eternal life. (1Ti 6:19)

Yet Satan relentlessly and cleverly corrupts and distorts the Gospel to hide the truth from us; his counterfeits abound and they’re appealing. (2Co 11:13-15) So, we have a sobering challenge before us, the ultimate life-and-death struggle – the fight of all fights: to lay hold on the true Gospel for ourselves. (1Ti 6:12) Little if anything is more important than this, and very few of us will get it right. (Mt 7:13-14)

The Apostle Paul claims he was taught the Gospel directly and personally by Jesus Christ Himself (Ga 1:11-12), and then proclaims an eternal curse upon anyone, including himself or any other apostle, or even an angel from Heaven, preaching a different gospel than what he had already preached. (Ga 1:8) We may derive several practical truths from his remarkable claim.

By pronouncing an eternal curse upon anyone modifying the Gospel, Paul implies the Gospel message was already sufficiently clear to be correctly and fully understood by anyone presenting the Gospel; Paul effectively expected all those in the Galatian churches to understand his prior teaching for themselves and compare all Gospel proclamations with that particular expression of the Gospel.

This implies that the true Gospel message can be understood by anyone carefully considering the scriptures, particularly the writings of Paul, and searching out the truth for themselves. (2Ti 3:15) Therefore, any claim that the true gospel was merely hidden “in seed form” within Paul’s message, only to be revealed later through subsequent developments, may be confidently rejected.

Paul’s sense of urgency in presenting the Gospel correctly, in its pure form, in the midst of counterfeit gospels which were evidently already common (2Co 11:4), implies it is extremely important that we each strive to fully understand what Christ taught Paul; we can easily be misled if we’re careless. (2Pe 3:16-17) Getting the Gospel wrong, either in our understanding or personal ministry, may be eternally and incomprehensively devastating.

Paul’s determination to openly challenge those who had been deceived by a false gospel, even those who had been taught by Paul himself, tells us Satan is actively at work to deceive and corrupt the Gospel and that he is often very successful. Paul was on the lookout for gospel deceptions and anticipated them because he understood our enemy. (2Co 2:11) We should soberly consider Paul’s admonitions and carefully verify that our personal understanding and application of the Gospel aligns with everything in the Word of God.

By including angels from Heaven in his list of potential deceivers, and even including himself, Paul is warning us to anticipate corruption from the very highest levels of spiritual authority. We should expect any religious organization or individual claiming authority to interpret scripture for others to be a magnet for satanic infiltration and deception. Paul is effectively saying we should ultimately trust no other Gospel claims than what we can verify for ourselves in the source material, the Word of God, which He has already given us.

Paul rejected the right of any being in Heaven or on Earth to alter or adjust the Gospel itself in any way. This implies there never has been and never will be any revelation from God that modifies or amends the original Gospel message in any manner whatsoever. The everlasting Gospel has never changed since the beginning of time; it will remain constant forever, just like Jesus Christ. (He 13:8)

Finally, Paul’s lack of reference to any external authority as a final arbiter in any dispute over gospel claims, such as the other apostles, a counsel of bishops, an angel from Heaven, or even Paul himself, implies his audience already had a reliable, faithful, unchanging standard by which to evaluate any subsequent preaching of the Gospel and that they were each individually and personally responsible for doing so. Paul, in writing to the local assemblies of Galatia (Ga 1:2), comprising all the saints and not merely bishops, could easily have set himself up as such an arbiter, or pointed believers to church leaders for approval, but he did not. Rather, he admonished them all for having allowed themselves to be deceived by a false gospel and removed from God as a result. (Ga 1:6)

Claiming otherwise, that someone else could be the final, authoritative arbiter in interpreting Paul’s Gospel for anyone but themselves, is effectively indistinguishable from giving a sinner authority to misinterpret it and preach a different gospel. This would remove the responsibility and accountability from the individual believer for believing the true Gospel, which neither Paul nor God ever does. Thus, Paul’s claim implies each believer is individually responsible to evaluate any presentation of the Gospel for themselves, based on their personal understanding of that eternal standard which they already have, interpreting it for themselves, and rejecting any gospel presentation which they find to be inconsistent with it. (This is the essence of Sola Scriptura.)

God’s prescription for addressing Satan’s gospel counterfeits is therefore not self-appointed spiritual authority telling others what to believe, but the humble, earnest searching of scripture by each individual believer (Ac 17:11), seeking a common, mutual, personal understanding of the Gospel (Php 2:2), based on an unchanging, written, supernaturally preserved standard (Ro 16:26): holy scripture. (2Ti 3:15)

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Not With Meats

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God’s dietary law seems to draw inordinate resistance from the carnal mind. (Ro 8:7) “Why does God care what we eat? Why’s He meddling with our food?” As I heard one casually say, “He can have everything else; just don’t mess with my stomach.”

Yet wasn’t Jehovah God’s very first command, not eating of the forbidden Tree, dietary law? Maybe this resistance isn’t just post-apostolic error: it’s as old as humanity itself.

What if God’s interested in our appetite because in some ways we are what we eat. Perhaps then it isn’t good to ignore any of God’s laws, especially kashrut, the dietary ones. (Mt 5:19)

Then again, some of us thrive on such external restrictions and leverage them for self-exaltation, imposing artificial barriers in addition to God’s dietary law (1Ti 4:1-3) to differentiate and commend ourselves for our self-restraint. (Co 2:20-23) But basing our identity on our own self-will seems a bit circular, pointless really.

And let’s be real, some of us just get bored with Torah so we start looking for something fresh, something different, something new, heaping to ourselves teachers, having itching ears. (2Ti 4:3) Yet we end up being carried off by divers and strange teachings (He 13:9a), tossed to and fro like little boats in the storms of life (Ep 4:14), deceiving and being deceived (2Ti 3:13), “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (2Ti 3:7)

So how do we ground ourselves in such complex spiritual realities? Where should our hearts and minds be resting, finding strength and stability? (Is 26:3) Different is not necessarily better, and focusing on anything such as diet, as an end in itself, certainly isn’t the answer: it’s grace. (He 13:9b)

Yet, being precise in our definition here (which is simply game-changing, paradigm-shifting), we find that grace is not mercy or lenience; God’s unconditional forgiveness isn’t the rock on which our soul should rest. Being forgiven of the eternal consequences of our sin is essential, certainly, but it won’t get us very far all by itself: we need to be delivered from sin’s power as well, set free from the stranglehold it has in our minds and hearts. (2Ti 2:25-26) That’s where grace comes in.

Grace is divine enablement (2Co 12:9), it’s the power to obey Torah, to overcome sin and stop sinning. So, God’s grace is indeed the answer: what should ground our hearts in spiritual reality is God’s ability and willingness to transform us into the image of His Son. (Ju 24) We should not glory in anyone or anything else. (2Co 10:17)

Earthly food won’t make us spiritual; spiritual food is what we need: the Bread of God, the Bread of Life. (Jn 6:33)

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