Many bloggers take advantage of this time of the year to reflect on their most popular posts. Now we know there is a time to follow the crowd (Zech 8:23), and a time not to follow the crowd (Ex 23:2). And I believe the present time to be akin to the former and not the latter. So here we go.
This post lists the top 10 viewed posts this year, from among the posts we wrote this year. Next week, we’ll list the top 10 viewed posts from the full KW archive. May these lists enable you to be warm and well fed while you celebrate the season with joy and delight.
10. The Complexity of Applying the Speeches of Job’s Friends
It is somewhat common to consider the three friends of Job to be categorically wrong, and their speeches to be discarded. But the Apostle Paul never got that memo. The truth is far more complex and nuanced.
9. The Reckoning of the Minas
Because context matters, we must be careful not to hastily harmonize parallel passages. One key example of this is the parable of the ten minas in Luke 10. It sounds very similar to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, but it is not the same, nor was it spoken in the same circumstances. This post, that had the eighth highest number of views this year, was simply a set up for the following post where I dove further into the details.
8. The Dangerous Consequences of Ignoring Context
Just as the title says, ignoring context has dangerous consequences. We miss the truth. We disrespect God. We mislead our neighbors. It’s just not worth it.
7. Quoting Scripture Contrary to Its Purpose is Devilish
This companion piece to the previous one reveals the staggering truth that those who ignore context are reading the Bible more like Satan than like Jesus. Let’s not do that.
6. Context Matters: Leave the Dead to Bury Their Own Dead
The first of many “context matters” posts to show up on both this week’s list and next week’s, this post examines Jesus’ cryptic statement in Luke 9:60. With help from the context, the instruction doesn’t need to be as cryptic as many typically presume.
5. Context Matters: Always Prepared to Make a Defense
1 Peter 3:15 this time. Though it can apply to apologetics (reasoned defenses for Christianity), that is not the only, nor even the main, thing Peter had in mind. Not all Christians can succeed at philosophical argumentation. But all must succeed at living righteous and respectful lives, thereby generating opportunities to bear witness to the suffering and kingship of the Lord Jesus.
4. Context Matters: The Weaker Vessel
Just a few verses before the previous one, 1 Peter provides one of the most uncomfortable, politically incorrect statements in the Bible. But it ought to be proclaimed in skywriting over every wedding and every marriage. You, husband, can win your wife to the glory of God by understanding her. By showing her the same honor you would show an empress. By praying together with her.
3. Why We Should be More Familiar with OT Sacrifices
We move on (momentarily) from an example of why context matters to an example of how drastically the early parts of the Bible inform the later parts of the Bible. The sacrificial system, and especially the burnt offering, is everywhere. Whenever you lay hands on someone, wash with water, speak of atonement, or offer acceptable worship, you call upon these ancient rituals. Are you aware of how they were done or what they meant at the time?
2. Why You Can Trust the Bible
The most important reason is simply that Jesus trusted it. This post shows him in action.
1. Context Matters: Apart From Me You Can Do Nothing
In our most-read post, from those written this year, Ryan dives into John 15-4-5 to show that the popular understanding of this phrase is not necessarily incorrect, but is much enriched by a grasp of Jesus’ argument in the context.
Previous years’ top tens: 2019, 2018, 2017
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