Biblical Thoughts

  Adam was not born of a woman. He was born of God. God formed him out of dust and breathed his breath into him and there he received God’s Spirit because the Spirit in a man is the breath of the Almighty (Job 32:8). So, Adam began in Spirit. He communed with God daily, walked hand in hand with him. God and Adam had an unbroken companionship because Adam remained in Spirit while he was in his body. To be in communion with God, one must remain in Spirit because God himself is a Spirit (John 4:24). When he ate the luscious apple which was a delight to his eyes (Genesis 3:6) from the forbidden tree, by way of obeying satan, he fell from the spiritual realm and fell to his flesh. This was his spiritual death. When Adam and Eve heard the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they ran for cover and hid themselves among the trees in the garden (Gen 3:8). When God asked him, where are you (Gen 3:9), he was afraid to face him because those who are in the flesh cannot plea...

  Paul wrote to Corinthians famously; the letter kills but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:4). Paul, who was once a student of Gamaliel writes that the law of Moses kills but the Spirit of God gives life. What led him to make such a bold declaration? Why did he decide to deny his whole Jewish background once he met with Jesus? The answers to these questions could best be found by studying the life of Paul besides his epistles. Paul was born in the cultural, commercial, cosmopolitan capital of the Roman province of Cilicia, Tarsus. He was born to the dispersed Jews who settled outside the Holy land. Tarsus equaled Athens in Greece and Alexandria in Egypt as a dominant center of education. All of them stood out like bright jewels around the shores of the magnificent Mediterranean Sea. Being situated at a cross junction of civilizations, Tarsus had traders and learned people bustling the streets where a young and aspirant Saul (Paul’s Hebrew name) grew up. Though he grew up in a ...