The Mileses

Paul and Olena Miles with Grace Abroad Ministries

soteriology

The only test for salvation

​For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Eph 2:8-9 (ESV)

T​he Bible clearly teaches that we are saved by grace through faith alone… but many people have twisted up this simple truth. Often, if you ask someone how he knows that he’s a Christian, his response will start with faith, but then his focus drifts to his own works. Here is an example from John Piper as he responded to the question, “How can I know I’m saved?” 
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Appositive in John 1:12

Here is a cute grammar joke that has been circulating the internet:

​Personally, I prefer the Oxford Comma, but that’s a debate for another day.  For now, I would like to discuss a certain grammatical relationship that’s common in the Bible. It is called the appositive. Consider this sentence:

My wife, Lena, is an awesome person!

In the above sentence, the word, “Lena,” is a repetition and clarification of the phrase, “my wife.” Who is my wife? Lena. Who is Lena? My wife. The word, “Lena,” is an appositive. It is in apposition with the phrase, “my wife.” Pretty easy, right?
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Three reasons that James 5:19-20 does not teach that we can lose our salvation

A ​brother in Christ has recently heard a preacher on the radio say that the last two verses of James prove that a Christian can lose his salvation. Let’s take a look at this passage and see how they fit in with the rest of the Bible’s teaching on God, man, and eternal life:

​My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (Jas 5:19-20 ESV)

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Faith, Believe, Fides, Credo, and Gelēfan

The way we speak affects the way we think and the way we think affects the way we speak. And the way we speak is affected by centuries of geopolitical conflict and linguistic changes. Check out this map with translations of the word, “faith,” in various languages around Europe:

Picture

(From http://ukdataexplorer.com/european-translator/)

If you look at the map, you can see certain words that are similar and clumped together. The Slavic languages have something like “vera” (in the Cyrillic alphabet, “вера”). Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are all from the North Germanic branch, so they are all similar, whereas German and Dutch are from the West Germanic branch, so they look like each other.
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Nuances in English translations of John 3:16

One of my favorite authors calls John 3:16 the most beautiful 25 words of the English language and I agree. The book he wrote was translated into Russian, where John 3:16 only occupies 21 words (not to mention that the original Greek is actually 26 words). When the book was translated into Russian, it maintained the figure of 25 words. It was a good translation, but sometimes when we explain the Gospel, we need to use localization.
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Some thoughts on the word, “Justify”

There are some questions we can ask ourselves every time we see the word, “justify,” in the Bible.​ Let’s look at these questions and see how they affect our understanding of a famous passage that may seem to contradict the Gospel.
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