aBeLOG
Welcome to the aBeLOG, a series of (hopefully!) fortnightly posts on all matters homiletical. I intend to touch on whatever grabs my attention regarding preaching—issues contemporary and ancient, ideas hermeneutical and rhetorical, personalities conservative and liberal, publications antiquarian and avant-garde. Essentially, I’m going to follow my own homiletical olfactory instincts up rabbit trails and after red herrings. Comments are always invited and appreciated.
“Applicable,” not “Obeyable”!
For those interested in following my writing endeavors, there is a new article I’ve written for the Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society available here.
It is actually an essay-length book review of John H. Walton and J. Harvey Walton, The Lost World of the Torah: Law as Covenant and Wisdom in Ancient Context (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2019). This volume is part of InterVarsity’s Lost World series and the second tome co-authored
Moving!
Folks, a big announcement:
As of July 1, 2021, I will be on the faculty at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, teaching preaching. After almost a decade-and-a-half teaching at Dallas Theological Seminary, I’m uprooting and moving, lock, stock, and barrel, to ye olde town of Louisville, Kentucky.”
See Southern Seminary’s press release here.
I am grateful for your prayers for the transition and beyond!
New Commentary!
This is a rehash of an old post, redone to announce my new commentary that’s just come out: 1–2 Timothy, Titus: A Theological Commentary for Preachers.
I’m frequently asked by my students about commentaries I employ in my preaching prep.
My son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless,
and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.
Ecclesiastes 12:12
Qohelet notwithstanding, I do have a variety of commentaries collected over the years—no
Ephesians 3:14–21
Believers, increasingly conformed to Christ in faith by the Spirit, and comprehending, in community, the immensity of Christ’s love, glorify God who dwells in them.
This pericope is the continuation of Ephesians 2:11–22 (after which came the “digression” of 3:1–13). There, Paul had concluded by saying that believers have been recreated as a holy temple, the dwelling of God (2:20–22). Here we find out how they should function as this “temple,” and “holy
Ephesians 3:1–11
Paul’s divinely empowered role in the administration of God’s plan forms a paradigm for the ministry of all believers, as God is made known to the cosmos through the church.
Paul begins in Ephesians 3:1 intending to utter an intercessory prayer but breaks off immediately, to resume in 3:14, where he repeats his opening phrase, “For this reason ….” The seeming digression of 3:2–13 describes the stewardship entrusted to Paul by God’s grace—the apostle’s
Authorial Doings and Application
I was recently interviewed on the Bible Study Methods podcast (under the aegis of Faithlife, the parent of the Logos Bible software) by its editor, Dr. Mark Ward. We talked of a number of things, but focused on authorial doings and the derivation of application in sermons.
Here’s our conversation …
Ephesians 2:11–22
All (believing) humanity has been united in one body, the work of Christ removing the condemnation of the law for sin, winning access to God, and building believers together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
Believers are “co-citizens” with the saints (Eph 2:19), an edifice “co-fitted” (2:21), and being “co-built” into a divine dwelling (2:22). This incorporation of all humans into one new body reconciled to God, i.e., the church, continues the grand design
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.