Christ Church Studies

Jesus is the Wisdom of God made flesh: not only the wisest man who ever lived, but also the very source of all wisdom! In our final session, we compare the wisdom of Solomon to the wisdom of Jesus and ask how we ought to relate to Jesus as the Wisdom of God.

Decisions are an essential part of everyday life. Some decisions can have significant and long-term impacts on us and others. But what ought to guide our decision making? In this session, we look at what Proverbs says about wisdom and decisions.

“He who commits adultery lacks sense.” Proverbs thus summarizes sexual intimacy outside of marriage. Forbidden pleasure may seem enjoyable for a moment, but it inevitably results in hurt, regret, and heartache. At the same time, Proverbs celebrates the blessings of marriage and the intimacy of a husband and wife.

The Bible talks about money more than almost anything else in human life. Though we often look for advice to obtain money or advice to keep it, Proverbs asks about the proper use of the money we have. In this session we explore the wise use of money and how to avoid spiritual mistakes.

Work is a good part of creation, and good work is neither drudgery nor degrading. Proverbs, therefore, encourages us to work diligently. In this session, we examine the wisdom of work, answering not only the question of how we should work but also why.

Americans have fewer and fewer friends. We’re busy and distracted, yes, but perhaps the decline in friendship has more to do with how little we understand its value and purpose. In this session we explore why friendship matters, how can we protect it, and what it means to be a good friend.

Words have power. They can wound and they can heal. They can strengthen and they can weaken. They can inspire a person to action and they can destroy a person’s spirit. Words have power. So how and when and in what ways should we use them? How should we speak and how should we listen? What does it mean to do this with wisdom? Those are the questions that we’ll discussion in this session.

Frequently, Scripture commands us to listen. Moses does so to the people of Israel before they go into the Promised Land. Likewise Jesus instructs his followers as he proclaims the kingdom of God. But why is listening so important, and how do we listen well?

How do we acquire wisdom? In this first session of our study in Proverbs, we examine what the Bible means when it talks about wisdom and how God’s people are to become wise.

What do we really know? Does certainty change the way that we ought to live? Again and again throughout John’s letter, we assess what we know with certainty, especially in the final chapter when John reminds us that we know that we have eternal life, we know that God hears us, and we know the true God.

“Little children, love one another.” It is thought that the elderly apostle John repeated this message to early Christians every time he joined in their gatherings. This simple and profound message gets right to the heart of this letter. In this session, we reflect on why John places such a heavy emphasis on love and what effect love has on the world around us.

Are you a child of God or a child of the devil? To ask such a question may seem shocking, even offensive, but these are the categories John appeals to in his epistle. If you are a child of God, then that should be evident in the way you live and in the way you love.

1 John 2 tells us truths about what Jesus has done for us, the love which now defines our lives, and who we are as children of God. These truths do more than satisfy our curiosity, but show us how to live in the greater reality of God’s love.

We all want to truly know and to be truly known, but where can such community be found? In his first epistle, the apostle John offers us some initial answers to that question. True community means living in the light, and he both points us to the Light-giver and denounces the lies that keep us in the dark.

Thomas, though often remembered as a skeptic, is also the disciple who first referred to Jesus as God, undoubtedly the most profound of Jesus’s titles. It is also the claim that draws the most criticism from modern skeptics. In this session, we address the arguments of those who deny the truth of Thomas’s words and explore the remarkable implications of Jesus as our Lord and God.

John the Baptist gives the first answer to the question of who Jesus is: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” These words are a vital clue to understanding Jesus and why he matters for us, and so in this session, we examine what John meant.

Christ is so commonly applied to Jesus and used so repeatedly in the New Testament that many today assume it is part of his name. But it is a title: Jesus is “the Christ.” In this session, we explore what that means and why it matters to us today.

Jesus is certainly more than a great teacher, though we ought not skip over what it means for Jesus to be just that. In this session, we consider what people thought of Jesus’s teaching, what kind of a teacher he is, and what it means to be his student.

Who is Jesus, really? People debated it in Jesus’s day and continue to debate it today. Is Jesus a gentle savior, a fierce revolutionary, a kind friend, an uncompromising prophet, or a warrior king? In this session, we examine the implications of these answers, for how we answer this question often says more about us than it does about Jesus himself.

“Praise the Lord!” This three-word exhortation begins and ends the last five psalms in the Psalter. Why is praise important, and how can we join the psalmist in praise, seeing the world as he also sees it? This sixth and concluding session of our study of the Psalms addresses these questions.

What should you do when you are anxious or afraid? The answer Psalm 121 offers is very similar to what we experience in our Anglican liturgy. When we feel afraid, we look away from what troubles us, we lift up our eyes and hearts to God, and we take refuge in the One who promises to keep us.

Jesus said the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers will experience true happiness, yet those who seem to be having the best life often care little about what Jesus has to say. Why are we tempted to lose faith in the promise of Jesus? If you have ever found yourself wondering, then Psalm 73 is here to anchor you.

In a time of deep disagreements, conflicting facts, and moral confusion, where can we turn for guidance? In this session, we turn to Psalm 19. Through this psalm we discover what it means to attend to God, hear his voice, and have our troubled souls healed by his wise and comforting words.

Why does God remain silent as we suffer? Why does he forsake us? Many believers throughout the centuries, including Jesus himself, have asked this and turned to Psalm 22. It is through this psalm that we discover therapy for the soul who feels abandoned and alone.

Philosophers say that we live in a therapeutic culture that invests its time and money into therapy, but neglects the therapy that God himself has provided for us in Holy Scripture. In this session, we discuss how psalms offer therapy to our souls, both by diagnosing what ails our hearts and minds and also by offering a cure.

God is love. Those three little words contain the most profound meaning. Of all the divine attributes, Scripture places the greatest emphasis on love. But what does it mean to say that God is love? How does God’s love compare to our own, and where do we see God’s love revealed? These questions we consider in this final session.

The attribute of holiness sets apart the God of Scripture from all the false gods of other religions. Holiness is everywhere in the Bible. “Holy, holy, holy,” cry the angels. Where God meets his people is holy ground. In this session, we explore what divine holiness is, how we experience it, and why it is good news.

According to John Wooden, faithfulness is one of the most important character traits: to be a person that others “can bet the farm on and still be able to sleep at night.” God exemplifies faithfulness more than any other, and in this lesson, we discuss how we experience God’s faithfulness and how we can become ourselves a faithful people.

When we witness wrongdoing, our hearts cry out for justice. Something must be done! Yet when it comes to ourselves, we desperately hope for mercy. How can both of these longings be fulfilled? We find both justice and mercy in the justice of God.

Does God really know what he’s doing? We believe that God is good and God is powerful, but can we really trust his purposes and his plans? In other words, is God wise? That is the question that we address in this session as we reflect on the wisdom of God. We’ll discuss what it means to call God wise and why this matters so much to our everyday lives.

We sing the almighty power of God. Among God’s attributes is his overwhelming power and might, for God’s voice can bring worlds into existence, make mountains tremble, and raise the dead. The power of God is a consuming fire, never safe but always good.

“You are good and do good.” This verse from Psalm 119 identifies one of God’s central attributes: goodness. God is supremely good. He is the most desirable good, and the generous Giver who shares his goodness with others, even before creation itself.

God doesn’t change. His character doesn’t change. His purposes do not change. His will does not change. And in a world of constant change, when so much that once seemed solid and dependable is no longer so, this is enormously good news. For, to quote an Anglican prayer, “we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life” can find rest in the “eternal changelessness” of God.

While it may sound off-putting, the truth that God doesn’t need us is actually wonderfully heartening. God’s self-sufficiency means He depends on nothing for His existence or happiness, enabling Him to love us in perfect freedom rather than from necessity.

To see and to know God—that, according to Jesus, is the goal of human life. That is what will make us happy. That is how our hearts will find rest. But how can we see a God who is invisible? And how can we know a God whose being is beyond our comprehension? In this session, we begin our study of God’s attributes with a discussion of our complete inability to comprehend him and why this matters. 

This final lesson frames parenting as divine vocation within God’s broader calling on Christian life. When parenting feels overwhelming or passes quickly, remembering it as God’s calling can transform how we practice parenting for our families’ good and God’s glory.

This lesson addresses parenting’s significant modern challenge: relating wisely to technology. Digital technology has dramatically changed parenting and childhood in recent decades. Parents must initially shepherd children’s technology relationship, then gradually help them learn to make wise digital decisions independently.

This third lesson reframes discipline beyond simple behavior modification as apprenticing children to gather their energies together toward love’s purposes. Dr. Coolman invites parents to view discipline as apprenticeship into essential skills needed for virtuous living rather than behavioral control.

Dr. Coolman introduces apprenticeship as a transformative framework for reimagining Christian parenting, moving beyond management-style approaches that emerged from recent technological and economic changes in domestic life. This apprenticeship model reframes the parent-child relationship as disciple-making disciples of Jesus Christ.

In this first session, Dr. Holly Taylor Coolman provides an overview of the Christian vocation of parenting. Throughout church history, the family has been viewed as a miniature church, a worshipping community whose shared life is fundamentally guided by love.

We often speak of hope as a kind of wishful thinking or general optimism, such as hope that a relationship will work out or that an interview will go well. But this is not what the Bible speaks of as the virtue of hope. Christian hope is confidence in God and God’s promises. In this session, we discuss how Christian hope gives us strength to live in the present.

Love is central and necessary to a life well lived. Act justly, prudently, temperately, and courageously, but without love, you can never be the person God made you to be. In this lesson, we discuss why love is so essential, why we need the grace of God to become loving, and how we can open ourselves up to God’s transforming work.

Prudence, justice, temperance, and courage are recognized as central virtues by many religious and philosophical traditions. But faith, hope, and love–these three are uniquely Christian. In this session we begin with faith: what is it, and how is it a virtue?

Fear is among the most common obstacles that prevent us from doing what we should. And its remedy is often courage, the fourth and final of the cardinal virtues. In this session, we discuss why courage is so important and how we grow in it.

In the book of Philippians, the apostle Paul serves us a warning about lacking temperance: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame.” In this session, we discuss the peril Paul is referencing and how the virtue of temperance helps us to avoid it.

What do we owe to God and what do we owe to one another? That is the basic question of justice, a question the God of the Bible takes very seriously. In this session, we consider what it means to be just and how to respond when we fail to do what is right.

How do we make wise decisions and carry them through? How do we judge rightly what is right and what is wrong? How do we set goals worthy of our lives and then achieve them? Questions like these reveal our need for the virtue of prudence, the first virtue in our exploration of Christian character.

“All things come to us, not by chance, but by God’s fatherly hand.” This doctrine, described as such in the Heidelberg Catechism, is a truth wonderfully reflected in the book of Ruth. As we conclude this study, we discover that behind the twists and turns of Ruth’s story lie the invisible hand of God.

On the threshing floor that night, Boaz asks Ruth, “Who are you?” Is she a woman who should be ashamed or a woman of honor? It is a weighty question with much at stake, and it is asked not only of Ruth, but of ourselves. Who is Ruth, and who are we?

The romance of Ruth and Boaz is among the most famous in the Bible. Yet when they first met, they were not romantic interests but two people from entirely different worlds: a wealthy, respected landowner meets a poor, immigrant widow. Through their unlikely relationship, we glimpse our own relationship with God.