What’s the difference between our two websites –  TacticalChristianity.org and LivingWithfaith.org ? It’s a question we are sometimes asked, so we thought we would explain!

Tactical Christianity.org was our first website, launched in October, 2013. Then, a few months later –  in January 2014 –  we launched LivingWithFaith.org. Both websites are non-denominational, non-profit, and dedicated to making the Bible clear and meaningful in everyday life.  Both sites have hundreds of articles and blog posts on a great many subjects that are easily accessible through the site indexes and blog archives. Both sites receive hundreds of thousands of visitors from almost two hundred countries around the world. 

So why two websites, and what’s the difference between them?   The main difference is one of approach and type of material covered.   TacticalChristianity (as its name might suggest) concentrates more on topics having to do with Christian living, while LivingWithFaith (as its name might also suggest) tends a little more to matters of faith and belief.   That doesn’t mean that we never talk about faith on Tactical Christianity, or Christian living on Living With faith, but that’s where the stress is respectively.

That same difference is reflected in the free e-books we publish under the imprints of the two websites. Our “Tactical” books are frequently about practical subjects such as prayer, study, and everyday living, while our “Faith” site books tend to include more on subjects like Christian beliefs and biblical understanding.  Once again, however, there is overlap and many of the e-books we publish could be on either site. As it is, we list all our free books on the e-books download page of each site so you don’t have to site-hop in order to see what is available.

On the other hand, a little site-hopping is sometimes a good idea. We publish new blog posts or articles on each site every week so checking out our two sites gives you twice the material there would otherwise have been.  And here’s an insider tip.  If you haven’t noticed, our new material is auto published every Sunday on TacticalChristianity.org and every Wednesday on LivingWithFaith.org – so many of our followers routinely check the blog on each site on these two days.  

So there you have it. Both our sites are committed to providing quality Christian information based on sound biblical scholarship, and –  as always –  without charge. We have nothing to sell, but lots to give, and if you have only visited one of our sites we hope you will try the other!

At a time when Jerusalem lay under the shadow of the brutal Assyrian Empire – which had already conquered the northern tribes of Israel – the prophet Isaiah was given the difficult task of taking bad news as well as good news to the people of Judah.  The Book of Isaiah not only records those messages, but also shows us an important aspect of how they were delivered.

You may not have noticed it, but Isaiah delivered the news he was given to relay in a way that we can learn from. You can see the lessons that apply to us today by taking a look at our latest article: "How Isaiah Delivered the News." Read it here.​

Is God’s love for us conditional or unconditional?  If that seems like a somewhat abstruse philosophical or theological question, realize that it does have important practical applications, and, as a result, it is a subject of ongoing debate for many. 
 
Those who think that God’s love for humanity is unconditional often feel that the alternative would be an invitation to legalism, to trying to save ourselves by meeting God’s requirements that were fulfilled in our place by the life and death of Jesus Christ.  On the other hand, those who see God’s love as conditional often feel that anything else is “cheap grace” that amounts to an invitation to sin because we feel we are unconditionally loved despite our behavior.

If we look closely at what the Bible teaches, however, we find that the answer to this question does not lie on either side of this debate, but on both!  Many verses show that God’s love for us is indeed unconditional and not based on our meeting some standard.  The apostle Paul summarized this when he wrote: “… Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8, emphasis added here and below).  

Yet other scriptures show just as clearly that God has a conditional love for us. Notice the words of Jesus himself: “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them” (John 14:21) and “The Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God” (John 16:27).

So what are we to do with this apparent contradiction? The Bible clearly teaches that God loves us both conditionally and unconditionally!  The answer can be seen in our own human experience that there are different kinds of love.  For example, as parents we still love our children even when they misbehave and we have to correct them.  Normal parental love is unconditional in the same way that God loves us unconditionally.

On the other hand, if a mate is unfaithful or unkind to us, we may well lose our feelings of love toward them. That is no different from the conditional love that God expresses to us based on our faithfulness and love of him. 

This comparison is more than just a simple analogy because the Bible specifically compares God’s love for his people to both that of a parent (1 John 3:1, etc.), and that of a spouse (Hosea 2:19, etc.).  To say that God expresses both kinds of love – what we might typify as parental and marital love –  is no different than saying God expresses both unconditional and conditional love toward us.

When we understand this, we see that in one way –  as our heavenly parent –  God will always love us no matter what mistakes we might make.  Even if, in his love, he has to punish us (Hebrews 12:6), his actions will still be based on the kind of unconditional love a parent has for a child.  But the fullest and richest human love that we can know, that of individuals bound in total love of each other, is the kind of conditional love that God gives us according to our relationship with him. 
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In a way, this description of God’s love for us is a summary of the gospel itself. The first half of the gospel is that God, through his unconditional love, determined to save us (as we saw in Romans 5:6-8). The second half of the gospel might just as well be said to be that through his conditional love God is pleased to reward us (John 14:21).   God loves us both unconditionally and conditionally.  We cannot change the first kind of love, but the second kind of love that God feels for us is determined by the love we show for him (John 16:27).

​The New Testament contains a profound and beautiful story that illustrates exactly the three aspects of care, acceptance and respect that underlie godly love. The Book of Luke records that Jesus was invited to the home of a Pharisee named Simon. While he was there, a woman who was a prostitute slipped into the house and, weeping at his feet, wiped her tears from him with her hair before kissing his feet and pouring expensive perfume onto them. When Simon began to think that Jesus surely could not be a prophet of God or he would have known the sinfulness of the woman, Jesus rebuked him by comparing her behavior with that of the Pharisee:
 
“Look at this woman,” he said. “When I entered your home, you didn’t bother to offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You refused me the customary kiss of greeting, but she has kissed my feet again and again from the time I first came in. You neglected the usual courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has covered my feet with rare perfume. Therefore her sins – and they are many – are forgiven, for she loved me much; but one who is forgiven little, shows little love” (Luke 7:44–47 as paraphrased by The Living Bible).
 
It is a story of heartfelt agape love and its results.  Agape means to love actively and deeply, sometimes even sacrificially (John 3:16) – as this woman clearly did, considering her actions and the economic sacrifice she must have made in her gift of expensive perfume. But if we look closely at the story, we find that it highlights three of the key aspects of agape love and how it is expressed to others.  Notice the three specific things that the repentant woman did:
 
Care – She washed Jesus’ feet:  This was a physical need in the hot dusty climate of Jesus’ world, though it was something that the Pharisee did not even provide for – although this was a common courtesy at that time.  But the woman’s actions signified, in Christ’s words, the fact that with her tears she expressed love by caring for another.  We care for others when we are concerned for them and when we “take care of them” by helping them.
 
Acceptance – She kissed him:  In doing this the woman expressed total acceptance of the one whose feet she kissed. It was also customary in that culture for a host to greet guests with a kiss to the cheek to express acceptance and welcome.  In her actions the woman expressed the aspect of love which addresses acceptance – one of our deepest emotional needs.
 
Respect – She anointed him:  By pouring extremely costly perfume on him the woman showed great respect – an area in which the Pharisee also failed by not even providing the customary (and relatively  inexpensive) anointing of olive oil to honor his guest.  Giving respect to another person addresses the underlying mental need for personal significance that all humans have.  This is not the same as pride, but it is part of what it means to be human and part of God’s love (Psalm 138:6).
 
Significantly, then, the woman’s expression of love addressed the  physical, emotional and mental needs of the human condition – all things the woman herself doubtless rarely received; but these were the qualities of care, acceptance and respect she had probably seen Jesus give, unreservedly, to many like herself who were rejected and despised by many religious people of the day.
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The story not only paints a clear picture of these three qualities, it also reminds us that all of these qualities are necessary.   We can interact with others without caring for them. We can provide care to others without really accepting them. We can accept people without truly respecting them.  But the repentant woman’s actions showed all three things:  the care, acceptance and respect that constitute the most fundamental aspects of the expression of love to others – as Jesus affirmed in his acknowledgment of the woman’s deep and godly love.

​Scriptures in question: Matthew 4:1–11 and Luke 4:1–13
 
A number of books claiming to show discrepancies and contradictions in the New Testament mention that the accounts of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness found in Matthew 4 and Luke 4 give the temptations in a different order. This is said to show disagreement among the New Testament writers as to what happened and that they were not sure themselves. 

The temptations of Christ are identical in the two accounts, but Matthew records them as:

1.  Turn stones into bread to satisfy his physical hunger.
2. Leap from the temple pinnacle to show his divine nature.
3. Worship Satan to receive great power. 
 
Luke changes the order of the temptations slightly to:

1. Turn stones into bread.
2. Worship Satan.
3. Leap from the temple pinnacle.
 
However, there is a very likely reason for the different order in Matthew’s Gospel and that of Luke. Matthew’s Gospel was written to a Jewish audience.  Luke’s Gospel, on the other hand, seems to have been written to a primarily Greek-speaking audience.   Many of the differences between the two Gospels – for example, the genealogies of Jesus – are clearly as a result of the audiences addressed. The stories of the temptation of Jesus are no exception.

In Matthew, from a Jewish perspective, the temptations are arranged in an increasing order from appropriating God’s power for personal needs, to taking an easier path to fulfilling God’s will, to finally placing another god before God himself.  For a Jewish audience, all these temptations would seem serious, but there is no question that they would be seen as being in an increasing order.  

In Luke, the order of the temptations is subtly but importantly changed. For a gentile Greek audience, the temptation to perform the miracle of changing stones to bread would not be as great as a temptation to great power and rulership in the world, but that would itself not seem as great a temptation as to become like a god oneself.  Luke’s order of the temptations perfectly fits this gentile Greek perspective, as do so many of the details in his Gospel.

There is another detail we should consider in looking at these accounts.  Matthew’s order of the temptations not only fits the Jewish perspective best, it also seems to be an actual chronological order. We see this in the fact that Matthew uses chronological markers in his account – he writes “then…” or some similar term before each of the temptations to show that one followed the other (Matthew 4:1, 5, 8, 11).

Luke, however, uses no chronological markers and simply tells us what the temptations were – in an order that would make the most sense to his own primarily non-Jewish audience. 

Ultimately, the fact that the temptations are listed in a different order in Matthew and Luke shows that the order itself does not matter.  But the cultural perspectives of the audiences addressed by the two Gospels may show why the order changes in each of the accounts.