Faith Unchained
Gordan Runyan
Copyright © 2026 Gordan Runyan
All rights reserved.
First edition
Contents
- Part I: Reading Scripture
- Bible reading good, but dangerous
- Christians need the whole Bible
- Both testaments gifts from God
- Bible relations defined in covenants
- Bible not corrupted by translations
- You can trust modern translations
- Faith: We need to do better interpretations
- It's not always wrong to judge
- God's law is still the moral standard
- Local pastor answers objections to God's law
- Submit first and foremost to the Lord
- Love of neighbor has biblical context
- God's law provides for poor
- Psalm 2 calls us to be on right side
- Say same things that Jesus says
- In trying times, major on the majors
- Part II: Christ and the Gospel
- God is made flesh at Christmas
- Faith: Reason for season rediscovered
- Christmas hymns a great blessing
- He has many rivals, but no equals
- Old objections to Christianity answered
- Popular objection: Jesus never said 'I am God'
- Faith: Faith challenge: What kind of man is this?
- Faith: No contradiction, long-awaited king cleanses temple twice
- Jesus has eyes like flame of fire
- Jesus Christ the faithful witness
- Mount Hermon repossessed by Christ
- King pays enormous price for bride
- Free gift of salvation illustrated
- Faith: Biblical salvation a gift: Two examples
- Tight-rope act illustrates saving faith
- Sins blotted out through faith
- Forgiveness not an easy topic
- Opinion: Resurrection for the real world
- Easter morning brings world terms of peace
- Answering the internet: What about cremation?
- Christians seated with Christ
- Bible: Earth is still the Lord's
- Grace should be seen in us
- Our self-identification not enough
- Faith: Salvation in Christ isn't a quick fix
- Take up your cross this new year
- Part III: The Life of Faith
- Start Bible reading with quick tips
- Faith: Consistent Bible reading encouraged
- Use your quiet time wisely
- Your time important to the Lord
- New year goal: Live consistently
- Advance in this critical season
- See the signs, change your mind
- Faith: God's silence may be posing questions
- Christians losing sight of biblical doctrine
- Faith: Covetousness can lead to violence
- Lord's mercy still abundant
- Stain deeper than we will admit
- An accounting of sin is on its way
- Redemption demands brutal honesty
- Bible: You can have joy again
- You have a right to a clean conscience
- Conscience should not be coerced
- Respond to God's love with indelible hearts
- Forgiveness about choices, not feelings
- Biblical requirement to forgive examined
- Faith: God deals gently with failure
- Believers should fear God alone
- Fear a deadly challenge to faith
- Faith is not the absence of fear
- Trust puts skin in the game
- Faith: Trust God enough to make the jump
- Have courage for coming victory
- Our Captain cannot be stopped
- Runyan: Fearful days bring opportunities
- Big storms reveal our foundations
- God really does care about the game
- Faith: God always on time, so hang in there
- Take this promise into 2022
- Sink into the riches of the Lord
- Time to think rightly about disaster
- Faith: Fairness not an easy concept
- Faith: Amalekite story troubling Bible saga
- Suffering is not meaningless
- Real faith made clear in tragedy
- Bible: Are you too hurt to believe?
- Faith: All things work together for good
- Faith: Face your trials with joyful faith
- Real hope needed in a hurting world
- The Lord is my dinner host
- Change thinking to be more thankful
- Celebration is good for the soul
- Joyful singing a weapon in evil days
- Give thanks to the God of festivals
- Giving thanks act of Biblical faith
- Past is for visiting, not for living
- Part IV: The Church and Its Witness
- Faith: We should live in community with other believers
- Faith: Could be time to leave that church
- Objection: Church is full of hypocrites
- Church services not matching Biblical picture
- Leaders called to service, not power
- Faith: God gives authority to good servants
- Pastors afraid to teach whole Bible
- Faith: Preaching should be the centerpiece
- Bible teaches how to preach
- Preaching should move us to maturity
- Preaching must confront our idols
- Faith: We need Jeremiah 3 types of pastors
- Faith: Experience vital part of Bible teaching
- Church discipline is up to you
- Faith: There is price to pay for bad conduct
- Turn small talk into God talk
- Faithful servant sets fine example
- Faith: Mission unchanged: Be a witness
- This is how our side gets the win
- Part V: Family, Work, and Neighbor
- Humanity: God's image over all things
- Love for God more than a feeling
- Love defined by the law of God
- Love does no harm to anyone
- Faith: You need confidence about God's love
- Definition of self is important
- Jesus Christ our model for marriage
- Truth about Abraham, Sarah surprising
- Individual callings should be valued
- Young man, it's time to move
- Bible's Ecclesiastes a needed corrective
- We should serve God in the marketplace
- In God's world, cheaters are losers
- Faith: Bible gives guidelines for helping poor
- Part VI: Law, Liberty, and Government
- Morality, law can't be separated
- God's word the standard of justice
- Authority and law: Religious concepts
- Look to scripture for government purpose, your rights
- Render to God what belongs to him
- Civil government isn't our highest authority
- The king must stay in his lane
- Same law governs king and people
- Faith: 'Legality' and 'morality' are not the same
- Self-government is the Biblical model
- Self government is biblical government
- There is no king in United States
- Faith: God's government gives liberty
- Freedom can be irritating
- We should study principles of liberty
- Libertarianism taught in the Scriptures
- Bible outlaws all 'soft socialism'
- Jesus did not teach socialism
- Socialism absent from book of Acts
- Faith: Christ's kingdom not one of socialism
- Faith: Current empathy controversy considered
- Bible shows how to handle theft
- Bible instructive on dealing with crime
- Bible speaks to issue of gambling, gaming
- Self defense a biblical right
- Armed citizens a biblical virtue
- Brittney Griner case basically unjust
- Arguments on Griner case examined
- Loki has easy solution for us
- Don't be such a Boromir
- OK to stand against government injustice
- Righteous lesser magistrates still needed
- Geneva Bible: Obey God, resist tyrants
- Pastor: Evil must be resisted
- Jesus opposed the wicked rulers
- Acts 5: Tactics of tyranny defeated
- Cameroon a call to faithfulness
- Secession: Biblical wisdom of moving on
- Christians should defend freedom
- It is past time to get involved
- Election season is a spiritual challenge
- We must stop downward slide
- Bible teaches peace is better
- Part VII: Culture and Human Dignity
- Human rights endowed by the Creator
- Identity politics breeds racism
- Generational guilt: Real, but treatable
- Faith: Challenge: Does Bible condone slavery?
- Love the foreigner as yourself
- Ancient Israel was open to migrants
- Objections to biblical immigration answered
- Equality Act a teaching opportunity
- Old idea dominates gender discussion
- Pastor: Gender theory illogical
- 'Shiny Happy People' a sobering watch
- Purity culture opposes the Gospel
- Wrestle with hard questions
- Real life never free of risk
- Major vaccine objection explained
- Part VIII: Belief, Doubt, and Discernment
- Ideas have consequences for life
- Objective reality confirmed as God's creation
- Truth of God is certain, trustworthy
- Morality flows from religious faith
- Faith: Religious neutrality is a cherished myth
- 'Deadly Class' a lesson in nihilism
- Time, history are going somewhere
- Two moves can deal with skeptics
- God doesn't believe in atheists
- Faith: The Bible doesn't believe in atheists
- Challenge: Why doesn't God show himself?
- Government can be false god
- Faith: Bill Burr never understood Christian faith
- Suffering no argument against God
- Faith: Objection: Would a good God allow suffering?
- Runyan: Question remains for who you believe and why
- Scientism: Another false religious belief
- 'Experts,' too, will be standing in line on final day
- Discernment vital to Christian maturity
- QAnon exposed as a false religion
- No conspiracy threat to God's plan
- There is nothing new under the sun
- Part IX: The Kingdom and the Last Things
- 'King of Kings' applies here and now
- Bible's Gospel: The kingdom is here
- Kingdom includes more than our hearts
- The kingdom is in the world
- Exodus conflict continues to rage
- Christ offers rest through service
- End-times ideas have consequences
- His kingdom and peace will increase
- Victory of Jesus explains everything
- The world promised to Jesus Christ
- Gospel leaves nothing untouched
- Restoration is focus of Advent
- Christ is at war with mega men
- Kingdom a place for 'Nones' and 'Dones'
- Kingdom greatness is not at the top
- Service comes before authority in the Kingdom
- No shortcuts to kingdom greatness
- Christ's basin overturns all the kings
- You must become small to be great
- Faith: Reflecting on waiting for the rapture
- Faith: Let's look at the rapture doctrine
- Faith: Missing word no proof of rapture
- Faith: Deliverance doesn't have to mean escape
- Faith: Pessimism not a Christian virtue
- Faith: Rapture may not be in your future
- Faith: No rapture in parable of wheat and tares
- Do right while you're waiting
- Part X: Angels and the Unseen World
- Angels worth considering this Christmas
- Faith: Think biblically about paranormal
- Faith: More careful study on angels, demons needed
- Faith: Paranormal forces complex, not clear
- Faith: Learn to focus on the real enemy
- Scripture index
- Back cover
Part I
Reading Scripture
It’s easy to deal with a Bible that never disagrees with you. Leave it on the shelf. Let somebody else tell you what it says. Pretty soon, Jesus sounds a lot like you. At least He’s safe that way. If you start reading, just know at the outset: that will all change.
We need the whole thing, including the parts written before Matthew. God did not become a different God between the testaments, and His commandments did not become embarrassing family secrets. We’ll look at covenants, translations, and the work of understanding a passage before recruiting it to support our favorite opinion. We’ll also consider judgment, submission, care for the poor, and what loving a neighbor might really require.
God’s law tells us what love looks like, and Christ has the first claim on our obedience. Open the Book. We may discover that some of the things we’ve been defending are things He never said.
Bible reading good, but dangerous
A man came to me after church and said wistfully, “Imagine how much better off we’d be if everyone kept asking, ‘What would Jesus do?’ Wouldn’t that be a great thing?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that nothing would change at all. But maybe he’ll read this and hear me out.
First, I need to tell a little story. I met a man when I was in the Navy, who had recently become a Christian. I asked him how that happened. He told me he picked up a Bible (as an unbeliever) and began to read the New Testament. He started at the beginning, Matthew’s Gospel. When he got to the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 5, and the famous passage we call “The Beatitudes,” (nine statements of blessing — blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit, the peacemakers, and so on) a sudden, weighty thought entered his brain that he could not escape.
That thought was: No mere man said these things. The Beatitudes fly in the face of everything the world thinks. This Jesus opposed “common sense!”
A little more reading and the truth became inescapable. Jesus was indeed no mere man. Rather, He was the God-man, appearing in human flesh to reveal the invisible Creator to us, that we all might be saved.
This, in short, is why the world would not change at all if people started asking what Jesus would do. They have no idea, and would be offended by it if they did.
It has been my experience that most professing Christians really do not know what the Bible teaches. They don’t read it for themselves. They trust the paid man in front to tell them the important stuff. But the Bible is a big book, and even a faithful preacher can’t teach all of it.
Christians who are not studying on their own can begin to assume that the Bible agrees with them on every issue. After all, they basically agree with the pastor, and they’re pretty sure he agrees with the Bible. So, by the associative property of theology, the Bible must agree with them.
Reading it can be traumatic. It will challenge what you thought you knew. It can be shocking and infuriating.
That was the experience of the Pharisees and Sadducees. These “church men” built their lives on the confidence that God agreed with them. Then, in walks Jesus of Nazareth, who had the temerity to point out what the Scripture says. He turned their world upside down, and they killed him for it.
If only they had stopped to ask themselves, “Wait. What would the Messiah do?”
The answer was obvious. Surely, he would do what they already thought.
A pastor once confessed, “If Jesus showed up at my church and had to sit through a Sunday service, he would vomit.”
This man was not far from the kingdom of God. People who don’t study Jesus will invent and believe in a Jesus who is just like them.
What would Jesus do? Probably something that upsets your whole, comfortable existence.
Welcome to discipleship, Christian. It means learning, over time, how to be more and more OK with that.
CHALLENGING ROADS AHEAD
Reading Gordan Runyan can be like driving behind a guy with no turn signals or brake lights. About the time you think you know where he's going, suddenly he's taking a turn that could flip the car, or he's screeching to a halt in the middle of the freeway. You may feel the urge toward "road rage" at times, but take a breath and look around. Chances are you've arrived at the destination you needed to find. (His preaching is different, though, as he aims the vehicle at your chest.)
In these clear, challenging essays, Gordan Runyan brings the claims of Christ to bear on ordinary life and public affairs. He explores what follows when the Bible is allowed to correct our assumptions about faith, the church, human dignity, and political power.
Moving from Scripture and the gospel to family, work, liberty, suffering, and the kingdom of God, Faith Unchained joins practical counsel with questions that refuse easy answers. Prayer and repentance stand beside debates over authority, justice, and Christian hope.
For readers willing to test familiar convictions against the whole counsel of Scripture.
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