Obviously, the world at the time of the biblical writers was extraordinarily different from our world today. Life for them was profoundly different from us in terms of culture, lifestyle, language, science, and philosophy, which frequently makes it difficult for us to grasp the truths they were trying to convey to their original audiences and thus have created many unfortunate contemporary beliefs. We’ve previously looked at several instances of specific misunderstood biblical passages and the significant affect those misunderstandings have had on the Christian church and the larger society. This series, on the first three Sundays in Lent (March 9, 16, 23), will take the same approach to clarify the biblical teaching contextually but will deal with the larger issues of “salvation,” “women in leadership,” and “abortion.”

March 9 – Many Christians have a sense that the principal biblical concept of the term “salvation” is that, because of the cross, being a “Christian” means that we’ve said the magic words of “believing in Jesus” during some moment in life which has become our ticket to heaven when we die. True?