Study
The featured studies
The studies in The Spirit & the Church, sorted by the kind of thing each one teaches.
Summary
The Spirit & the Church holds 51 of the site's 1112 featured studies, in 3 of the ten kinds.
- 2 studies ask what one passage says, line by line.
- 40 studies ask what Scripture teaches on a subject, from its first text to its fullest.
- 9 studies ask why Christians read the same texts differently.
The studies by kind
Passages and psalms
These studies take a chapter, a song or a single teaching and read it line by line. Each stays inside one passage and follows its own movement.
2 studies, 0 as cards, 2 in the register
The register: 2 studies of this kind
What Scripture teaches on a subject, from its first text to its fullest. The traditions that formed the teaching are named.
40 studies, 8 as cards, 32 in the register
The Gifts of the Spirit — 1 Corinthians 12–141 Corinthians 12–14 as the charter: four gift-lists under one Spirit, love as the governing chapter, and the gifts in operation today as Paul regulates them.
The Jerusalem Council — Acts 15One question walked into Jerusalem: must a Gentile become a Jew to be saved?, answered by four voices and a letter that set the church free.
Elders and DeaconsThree words, one office: presbyteros, episkopos, poimēn on the same men in Acts 20, the qualification lists side by side, and Phoebe's question held open.
The Fruit of the SpiritGalatians 5:22–23 names a singular fruit (karpos, not fruits) with nine visible facets. Gifts are distributed; fruit is unified. Every believer bears the whole fruit. The grammar is the theology.
Baptism in the Holy Spirit (the Acts Evidence)Five receptions of the Spirit in Acts laid out with the variety left in, and the Spirit's full operation today taught from each of them.
The Three Pentecosts — Acts 2, 10 & 19The same outpouring three times, at three walls, the Spirit crossing every boundary the gospel has to cross, first.
The Fivefold Ministry (Ephesians 4:11-13)Ephesians 4:11's five gifts, the one-office-or-two grammar question, and the contested center, continuing offices or foundation-era, presented at full strength both ways.
The Tests of Life — 1 John's Three Tests1 John's three interwoven tests: righteousness, love, belief, cycling and deepening across five chapters to a single assurance.
The register: 32 more studies of this kind
- Discerning of SpiritsThe page walks three concrete tests, confession, Scripture, and fruit, each with its own failure mode, then shows discernment at work in four scenes: the python-spirited girl at Philippi, Micaiah's throne room, and Simon's bondage in Samaria.
- Discipline and LawsuitsCorinth tolerated an incest case and was proud of itself while it did, and its members were suing one another before pagan courts.
- Gleaning and the corner of the field
- Grieving & Quenching the SpiritThis page separates Paul's two Spirit warnings, grieving in Ephesians 4 and quenching in 1 Thessalonians 5, and gives each its own setting, cause, and remedy.
- HealingThis page teaches healing from the texts, from the atonement question to James 5's standing instruction, and keeps two honest counterexamples in view the whole way.
- Hospitality in Israel and the Early Church
- How Scripture Shapes Christian Ethics
- Led by the SpiritThis page studies what Paul actually says about being led by the Spirit in Romans 8 and Galatians 5, then walks how the Spirit led concretely in the book of Acts.
- Order in WorshipIn 1 Corinthians 14 Paul orders the exercise of tongues and prophecy in the gathered church by one measure, edification, and closes by commanding both order and liberty: desire earnestly to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues.
- Prophecy as a Gift TodayThis page defines New Testament congregational prophecy by what it does (edification, exhortation, comfort), then covers how it is weighed by the assembly and why it is in full operation today.
- Speaking in TonguesThis page walks Pentecost's known languages, then Corinth's two different settings for the gift, the sign-and-order rules Paul wrote, and when he dated the ceasing of tongues.
- The AnointingThis page follows one word from the compounded oil of Exodus, through the anointed offices of prophet, priest and king, to the title Messiah and Christ itself, and out to the unction John says abides in every believer.
- The Body and Sexual Ethics in Scripture
- The Book of the Covenant
- The Christian Traditions
- The ChurchJesus said He would build something, and the word He used meant a gathering of people who had been called out: not a building.
- The False Teaching at Ephesus
- The Lord's SupperJesus took bread at a Passover meal and said “this is My body.” Christians have never agreed on what He meant by is.
- The Love Chapter — 1 Corinthians 131 Corinthians 13 is read in its own setting, Paul's answer to a church ranking itself by spiritual gifts, not a poem written for weddings.
- The Sabbath in Jewish Practice
- The Seder, the Meal Exodus 12 Is Kept By
- The seventy elders and the Spirit given to them
- The Spirit given for craft: Bezalel and Oholiab
- The Spirit in the Old Testament
- The Teaching Paul Answered at Colossae
- The Tithe
- Vows in Israel
- Water BaptismJesus commanded baptism, and Christians have read that command in more than one way.
- Who the Holy Spirit Is
- Words of Knowledge & WisdomThis page labels the word of wisdom and word of knowledge as readings, not definitions, then shows the biblical exhibits each reading appeals to and the one line Scripture draws with certainty.
Questions Christians answer differently. Each study sets out the texts both sides read, the positions with their holders, and where this site's tradition lands.
9 studies, 0 as cards, 9 in the register
The register: 9 studies of this kind
- An Eye for an Eye in the Law of Moses
- Head CoveringsIn 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 Paul regulates how men and women in Corinth were to appear while praying or prophesying in the assembly, arguing from headship, from creation, from the angels, and from nature.
- Infant Baptism and Believers' Baptism
- Sunday and the Sabbath
- The Kingdom and Culture: Dominion, Transformation and Separation
- The Prosperity Message
- Truth-Telling and the Hard Cases of Deception
- War and Peace: Just War and Christian Nonresistance
- Women in MinistryScripture names women as prophets, judges, deacons, teachers and the first witnesses of the resurrection, and Joel's promise of a Spirit poured out on sons and daughters alike is the one Peter preaches at Pentecost.
Keep studying
Every study cites the chapters it stands on and the words it turns on. A study is a way into the text and the lexicon.
On this page
People and groups1
The text itself3
The roster is the site’s own build manifest, so no study can be missing from it. A study leads its kind when it carries a line of its own and more of the other studies link to it; a register row with no line of its own borrows the first sentence of the study’s own summary. The pictures are public domain: engravings by Gustave Doré from Doré’s English Bible(1866), and paintings held at Wikimedia Commons. Each is named in full on the study’s own page.