In this episode of TGC Q&A, H. B. Charles and Ligon Duncan discuss what the Bible teaches about the moment believers die. They emphasize the hope Christians have in being immediately found in the presence of Christ following death. The comfort of Christ points not only to an eternity in which all suffering ends after his return, but also to the joy of being with Christ the instant we sleep in death. Such joy caused Paul to vacillate between a desire to serve Christ in the world and leave by death to experience the presence of Christ.   You can find more information about our guests here:H. B. CharlesH. B. Charles TwitterLigon DuncanLigon Duncan TwitterYou can also read more from TGC about this topic here:Away from the Body and at Home with the Lord

Nancy Guthrie and Joni Eareckson Tada begin their conversation by reflecting on the first time they met, more than 20 years ago. At the time, Guthrie was reading Tada’s book, Heaven: Your Real Home, as Guthrie’s daughter had recently gone home to heaven.This memory prompts Guthrie to ask Tada what it means to set the heart on heaven. Tada says that she does her best to take God’s advice to lay up treasures in heaven, where she will be with Jesus, who makes it a heavenly place. Tada also references Jonathan Edwards’ remark on heaven where he said, in Tada’s paraphrase, that everything we do down here on earth has a direct bearing on our capacity for worship and joy and service in heaven. For Tada, this means that every day she can invest in heaven, obey God, trust him more, believe his Word more, and follow him more closely.Guthrie adds that the joy of heaven is going to be many things, but the Bible says that this ultimate joy we're going to have is being in God’s presence and seeing him face to face.This resonates with Tada as someone who has been paralyzed for 52 years. Though she looks forward to having a new heavenly body one day, she says she is most looking forward to the new heart—a heart free from all sin.Guthrie then asks Tada if she thinks it’s true that suffering allows the Christian to relate more to the sufferings and things of Christ. Tada says that suffering can be a platform that gives someone authority to model and speak about joy in suffering. When Tada looks at her quadriplegic friends and their trust in the Lord through their heartache and hardships, she listens to and believes what they say about their faith.Guthrie adds that it is an incredible privilege, at the lowest places of our lives, to sense that God is at work and present in these low places of life—the work of God on the interior of our lives is being put on display for the world.Guthrie goes on to ask Tada how she makes sense of various theological beliefs about praying for healing and believing that Jesus will heal us. In response, Tada says we must go to Scripture to make sense of it all because yes, on one hand, God wants us to pray for healing. Jesus wants us to be healed in the sense that he despises suffering. He doesn't take any delight in it. He spent most of his time on earth trying to remove it. Yet, we must look at Jesus’ priorities—he is much more concerned about the healing of our inward soul, about getting rid of sin. God's core plan in rescuing us is to get us free of sin, not only when we first believed and when we prayed to receive Jesus, because we are even now being saved.Guthrie and Tada sing multiple hymns together as their hearts are stirred during this conversation about suffering, healing, and heaven.

Karen Swallow Prior begins the conversation by reminding us that there really is no thing as autonomy. We are born into communities, times, and places, and everything that makes up who we are comes from others. In other words, our particularities come from somewhere outside of ourselves. As Christian we understand that it is indeed God who determines the things that make up the individual self.Jen Pollock Michel points that it can be burdensome to believe in yourself. Humans tend to be unreliable and fail everyday. But Christianity helps us face the truth about ourselves: there’s good that I don’t do and evil that I do, to paraphrase the Apostle Paul, and if our only ethic is to believe in ourselves, we’re left in a truly hopeless position. We need other people!Karen agrees adding that we not only need other people, but that meaning and purpose come from beyond the human realm.Jen mentions the book Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, which chronicles the stories of people who at the end of their lives discover that finding meaning outside of themselves leads to a more joyful and full life. This is true, Karen adds, not only at the end but in every stage of life. All throughout life we are changing and growing, but to believe in ourselves means to believe in something different in every stage of life.It’s ironic, Jen notes, that we think believing in yourself is the way to freedom when it reality it only leads to slavery. Freedom always tends towards flourishing when we have our boundaries, because those boundaries are established for our good. We often think of obedience as negative boundaries, but they are actually meant to free us.Finally, Karen concludes that our development never happens in a vacuum. We always cultivate our desires based on who or what we set our eyes on.CreditsThanks to WinShape Teams for sponsoring this episode. To learn more, visit winshapeteams.orgTo submit a question for TGC Q&A podcast, direct message us on Facebook or Instagram or write us at ask@tgc.orgThis episode was produced by Heather Calvillo.

Glen Scrivener begins the conversation by saying the problem with prosperity theology is treating Jesus as though he is the delivery system for a bunch of blessings that are apart from him. Scrivener then references Sinclair Ferguson's book, The Whole Christ, which says that the problem with our gospel presentations is that we talk about every blessing through Jesus when we should preach every blessing in Jesus—offering Christ himself to people. Therefore, Scrivener suggests, you're not promised health and wealth and prosperity.Scrivener says Christians really need to have a good doctrine of union with Christ and be far more Christ-centered in what we preach. We're not just offering health and wealth, and we're not just offering fire insurance. We're offering Jesus himself, Scrivener says.Sam Chan agrees and says that union with Jesus is what we as Christians should be focused on when sharing the gospel. He says if we can preach it that way, there's this incredible prosperity in knowing Jesus. The climactic blessing is shalom—peace.Chan references John R.W. Stott’s book, Cross of Christ. In the book, Stock says, "Union with Christ is the foundational blessing. Justification and forgiveness of sins, that's the center blessing. But the cream on top of the pudding is adoption, it's relationship, it's shalom."CreditsThanks to Cedarville University for sponsoring this episode. To learn more, visit cedarville.edu/TGC.To submit a question for TGC Q&A podcast, direct message us on Facebook or Instagram or write us at ask@tgc.orgThis episode was produced by Heather Calvillo and Steven Morales.

Russell Moore begins the conversation by pointing to Scripture when Jesus washes Simon Peter’s feet. Moore asks Mika Edmondson what he thinks we can learn from Jesus about power and authority as it relates to serving one another inside and outside the church.Edmondson answers by saying that authority in the church is not exercised in the same way as authority outside of the church. He says that one of the conspicuous ways in which we are to function is not lording it over one another like the Gentiles do, but looking to Jesus’s example. Jesus shows us this by actually taking the place, not just of a servant, but the lowest servant in that social setting.Edmondson says that leadership must be a kind of servant leadership, a leadership that puts others' interests before our own, a leadership that's willing to associate with the lowly and the downtrodden, and a leadership that's willing to sacrifice for the good of others.Moore points out that Jesus leads, but not toward his own interests. Instead, he leads toward Peter's in this moment of washing his feet. Moore says that this act shows how we are to lead—by serving.

Ligon Duncan begins the conversation by sharing his and David Platt’s shared belief in the primacy of the Word just as God speaks and brings his people into being. Duncan says that as we image God as witnesses, we should speak his word of grace, and the Holy Spirit will use that to bring people to newness of life.Duncan goes on to say that we want to see the Word come to fruition in the lives of the people that we are speaking to, and that if we desire those people to come to faith in Christ, we should then want the Word coming to fruition in our own lives and through our testimonies. Duncan thinks one reason that Christians are motivated to do deeds is not just for evangelistic reasons, but also because we are called to be a blessing to other people and to love our neighbor, at all times. Duncan says we as Christians don't need an evangelistic motivation to love our neighbor. In the context of evangelism, Duncan says that when people see us living out the life that we are proclaiming with our lips, it makes the words that we are saying especially compelling and oftentimes, opens a door of someone’s heart to hear the Word of God.Duncan thinks it's helpful for us to see ourselves as followers of Jesus—called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind. Second, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are intended to look to others' interests and ask, “How can I serve, how can I care?” Duncan says this is the character of Christ in us, and the greatest love we can show to someone else is to share the good news of how they can be reconciled with God.Platt agrees and says the greatest way we can show love to another human being is to care about their eternal wellbeing, not just their temporal wellbeing. Platt says that caring about the eternal wellbeing does not mean that we don't care about the temporal wellbeing, because we care about people who are embodied, they are enfleshed, they are in a context, and because we love them, we should care about all those things.Platt shares a story about a time he attended a conference with a missionary that was working in a closed Muslim country, and when the missionary told Platt what country he was in, knowing that many of the men who flew planes into buildings on 9/11 had actually come from that country, Platt wondered how he was ministering there. Platt asked him what ministering in word looked like and realized it was mostly displayed through deed.Duncan says his hope for the listener of this conversation is to have zealous commitment to love neighbors as ourselves. To see physical needs and to ask, “What can we do to show the love of Christ?” Duncan says that question must be then coupled with and driven by a desire to proclaim the gospel.CreditsThanks to Cedarville University for sponsoring this episode. To learn more, visit cedarville.edu/TGCTo submit a question for TGC Q&A podcast, direct message us on Facebook or Instagram or write us at ask@tgc.org This episode was produced by Heather Calvillo and Steven Morales.

Taylor Turkington begins the conversation by highlighting that both men and women in the church can have the gift of teaching the Bible, and because of this, it is important to equip them—just like all the saints should be equipped for the work of the ministry as described in Ephesians 4:12-14.Jen Wilkin says that she notices churches have a lot of pathways for men to teach but not as many of those for women, often leading to an imbalance due to access to tools and resources. Wilkin wants to see churches develop a category of training specifically to equip women to teach the Bible with excellence and precision, understanding the weight of what they are teaching.Wilkin and Turkington both agree that teaching the Bible comes with a certain weightiness and, as Wilkin argues, the cost for teaching the Bible incorrectly is high. Because of this, Turkington says the church should help both men and women excel at both their interpretation and communication of God’s Word.Wilkin says she believes women in the church want to get trained on teaching the Bible, they just don’t always know where to go. Wilkin suggests women need to see an example in the church of other women who are properly teaching the Scriptures. Ultimately, they need permission and tools to do so. Turkington agrees and adds that it is essential for women to see a model of what it looks like for a woman to teach the Bible.For women who are wanting to grow in teaching the Bible, Wilkin recommends reading books that explore the metanarrative of the Bible, explaining what the bigger story of the Scriptures is. Wilkin also suggests delving into a systematic theology text and trusted commentary texts. Lastly, Wilkin recommends the yearly conference in Dallas, Texas, called Proclaim Truth that gives women leaders at all levels an opportunity to learn the mechanics of Bible teaching and studying the Scriptures in the local church.Turkington ends by pointing women to The Gospel Coalition’s Women’s Training Network that seeks to train women to use the Scriptures for their own growth and for service in God’s kingdom. Turkington also recommends the Charles Simeon Trust organization that trains the next generation of Bible expositors. CreditsThanks to Cedarville University for sponsoring this episode. To learn more, visit cedarville.edu/TGCTo submit a question for TGC Q&A podcast, direct message us on Facebook or Instagram or write us at ask@tgc.orgThis episode was produced by Heather Calvillo and Steven Morales.

Ray Ortlund begins the discussion by saying that it is harmful for anyone to make aspects of their fallen nature their primary identity. He goes on to say that we all have tendencies toward this, as we often take aspects of our earthly life and make that the ultimate lens through which we see ourselves. This false grid, Ortlund states, can be made up of sexual identity, corporate identity, relationship status, or any number of things. When we come to Christ, Ortlund reminds, we all have to offer up our identities to him and allow him to define who we are. He references the New Testament ethic and defines it as being who we are, and who we are has now changed—the new self in Christ Jesus.Sam Allberry asks Ortlund why it is so hard for us to believe we have been made new and Ortlund responds with a confession of how the old self is still very close at hand. He points to Romans where we are commanded to consider ourselves dead to sin and how important it is for us to have a mind shift of who we are in Christ, as we start walking in our new selves. Ortlund argues that one of the things that makes this shift complicated for us is the fact that we live in a culture that tells us that the highest priority is to “be who you are.” The problem with this mindset, he suggests, is that the gospel critiques the very thing our culture most prizes by calling us to let God define identity rather than ourselves. Allberry adds that Romans also warns us against idolatry of even good gifts—God-created things. He says the idolatry enters in when we don’t look higher and try to find finality within ourselves rather than in Christ who is above all. He adds that we were never designed to generate our own finality and if we try, we end up disappointed and angry, often taking that out on others. Idolatry doesn't work because of the internal energy of impossibility we are attempting. In this episode, Ray Ortlund references Kevin DeYoung’s book, The Hole in our Holiness.CreditsThanks to Cedarville University for sponsoring this episode. To learn more, visit cedarville.edu/TGCTo submit a question for TGC Q&A podcast, direct message us on Facebook or Instagram or write us at ask@tgc.org This episode was produced by Heather Calvillo and Steven Morales.

Leeman begins the discussion by outlining four biblical observations about tithing and says that tithing was required of Old Testament Israel in a certain way. Tithing means “tenth.” Leeman says we are now not required to give a tenth of our income in the same way since we are no longer under the mosaic covenant law. So, tithing doesn’t necessarily refer to a particular percentage, but rather, an attitude of generosity. Second, Leeman says when giving, the Christian should do so not reluctantly or under compulsion, but cheerfully, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:7. Third, Leeman says Christians are called to give cheerfully, generously, and according to their means (1 Corinthians 6:2). The fourth Biblical observation Leeman makes is that Christians should prioritize one’s church when giving (1 Timothy 5, Galatians 6:6). Onwuchekwa talks about how the Scriptures implicity outline how tithing and giving to one’s church is for the support of the pastor, the relief of the poor, for the advancement of gospel works. He says as we give, the church is the primary place that we give to. Onwuchekwa also highlights how Jesus, when it came to tithing, celebrated a widow who gave it all and then told a rich man to give it all. So, Christ is talking about the attitudes of our hearts when giving, that we know all of our means belong to him and when we have a vision of what he did for us, then we become a generous group of people. CreditsThanks to the The Gospel Project who sponsored this episode. To learn more about The Gospel Project, visit gospelproject.comTo submit a question for TGC Q&A podcast, direct message us on Facebook or Instagram or write us at ask@tgc.org This episode was produced by Heather Calvillo and Steven Morales.

Nancy Guthrie and Courtney Doctor share their thoughts on why it is important for women to care about Biblical theology as it relates to their reading and understanding of God’s Word as a whole.Guthrie defines Biblical theology as a way of approaching and understanding the Bible as one cohesive story about what God is doing in the world through Christ. Guthrie suggests that Biblical theology differs from its companion, systematic theology, which gathers what the entire Bible says about a certain topic like sin or humanity. Guthrie says that as we look at the Bible’s themes, the themes we encounter actually develop throughout the Scriptures.Doctor agrees and highlights that Biblical theology is a progressive revelation in narrative form—we know more about God at the end of the story than we did in the beginning.Guthrie says her love of Biblical theology began when she started to hear preachers and teachers teach the grander narrative of the Bible, centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ. For Doctor, her love for Biblical theology started in her class called “Covenant Theology” at Covenant Seminary—a class that dedicated five professors to teach the Bible as one story. Doctor says that parts of the Bible started to make sense to her that were harder for her to understand before. She says it helped her love God more and love his Word more, too.Guthrie is passionate about helping other women pull together what they know about the Bible through an understanding of Biblical theology.In this episode, Doctor mentions Nancy Guthrie’s book called, Even Better Than Eden.To hear more from Guthrie, you can listen to her podcast, “Help Me Teach the Bible.” Giveaway!In the beginning of this episode, our team announced a special giveaway. Here are the details:We're giving away two tickets for you and a friend to attend this year's women's TGCW20 conference, Steadfast, a conference on the book of James. The women’s conference will be held in Indianapolis, June 11 to 13. Along with your conference tickets, you'll also win a free three-night hotel stay in downtown Indy. Here's how you enter in four easy steps:1. Check us out on Instagram and follow our account. Our handle is simply: "thegospelcoalition" 2. Like our giveaway post3. Tag three friends in a comment on the post4. Share our post in your Instagram story and make sure to tag us in your story and leave your profile public so we can see it.If you want an extra entry into the giveaway, you're already completing the first step by listening to this episode. Next, make sure to rate this podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Last, send us a screenshot of your review through a direct message on Instagram!The winner will be announced next Wednesday, February 5. CreditsThanks to the The Gospel Project who sponsored this episode. To learn more about The Gospel Project, visit gospelproject.comTo submit a question for TGC's Q&A podcast, direct message us on Facebook or Instagram or write us at ask@tgc.orgToday's episode was produced by Heather Calvillo and Steven Morales.