Alex Singleton

  • Why weekly Holy Communion matters

    Last year, I attended a Quaker church service – well, meeting, as they call it. Quakers are famous for rejecting all sacraments, so there was no communion. Now I’ve always had a soft spot for Quakers. We know them in part for their principled approach to business – creating firms like Cadbury’s, Clarks and Family…

  • Valentine’s Day and marriage as a metaphor

    Valentine’s Day seems like a secular invention belonging to a world of easy swiping on Tinder. Or perhaps a way of businesses wanting to upsell you. I did notice a lovely looking deal at one supermarket for three special courses. Chocolates and flower sales spike on around February 14, and that’s all good. But what’s…

  • 1 John 1: walk in light, not darkness

    Jesus’s close friend and disciple, John, writes the first Johannine epistle to Christians in (probably) Ephesus, where he is understood to have eventually lived. In 1 John 1, the disciple describes God as light, with no darkness in him at all. But, he warns (CSB): If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” and yet…

  • Titus 3: churches should avoid foolish debates

    As a child in the 1980s, I went to very good Sunday school each week. But suddenly the other kids in my Sunday school class started disappearing from church. And over a period of a couple of years, the group went from sizeable and thriving to just two of us. Over the same period, the…

  • Titus 2: God’s grace is offered to all

    In Titus 2, Paul talks about how God showed his grace though Jesus by cleansing us of our sins and now wants us to be “eager to do good works”. He writes (CSB): For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to…

  • Obadiah and the perils of schadenfreude

    Taking a break from New Testament letters, today I’m looking at the minor prophet in the Old Testament called Obadiah. A big theme of the Obadiah’s written down prophesy, which forms the smallest book in the Old Testament, is that of schadenfreude. This is “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune” according to the…

  • Titus 1 and the sanctification of the Spirit

    Paul writes to his missionary friend Titus in Crete to address a problem that has arisen in the local church. Some people on the Greek island are probably running small house churches with the wrong motivations. The letter suggests that they are only interested in money, have lots of weird theological ideas, and behave badly.…

  • The theology of sola fide in ‘The Cross’

    The Bethel Music song The Blood highlights the idea of “sola fide” – the Reformation concept, in Latin, of salvation by faith alone. The lyrics read: It’s never been about performancePerfection striving for acceptanceLet me tell youIt’s only by the bloodIt’s never been about deserving or earningIt’s a gift that’s freely givenLet me tell youIt’s…

  • Jude versus fake teachers in the early church

    In the 1992 Genesis single Jesus He Knows Me, Phil Collins portrays a US television evangelist who’s motivated by money and not by God. The lyrics include: Won’t find me practisin’ what I’m preachin’Won’t find me makin’ no sacrificeBut I can get you a pocketful of miraclesIf you promise to be good, try to be…

  • Colossians 4: full-on prayer lives

    The Bible continually flags prayer as important and powerful and central to our relationship with God, yet it’s something that’s easy to overlook. We can be great organisers of activities, distributing leaflets, sharing messages on social media, making sure there are custard creams and tea bags at the ready, and ensuring the sound system is…

  • Colossians 3: how to live as a Christian

    In yesterday’s instalment, I looked at the so-called Colossian heresy. Paul urged the Colossians to avoid weird ideas and stick the what we might call orthodox Christianity. Now, in Colossians 3, he moves on to some encouragement on the sort of lives the Colossians should live. In short, he urges them to “set your hearts…

  • Colossians 2 and the Colossian heresy

    In Colossians 2, Paul urges the young church in Colossae to stick firmly to what we might now call orthodox Christian views. In the background, this church faces a danger now know as the Colossian heresy. This is not a church that has gone completely off the rails and reinvented itself into a cult: Paul…

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Abraham Bartimaeus Ben Witherington III Charles Wesley Handel Isaac Isaiah 6 James 1 James 2 James 3 James 4 James 5 John Wesley Justification King David King Solomon Magi Mark 8 Mark 10 Matthew 5 Moses N.T. Wright Nathan the Prophet Penal substitutional atonement Pharaoh Richard Dawkins Romans 8 Scot McKnight Sovereignty The Children's Society Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion Zacchaeus Zadok the Priest