Biblical Figures

Peter’s mother-in-law—a woman who expressed her gratitude to God through  ministering (see Matthew 8:14–15; Mark 1:29–31; Luke 4:38–39). There are  interesting variations on how Jesus healed the woman: Matthew says that he touched  her hand; Mark says Jesus took her hand and Luke says that Jesus bent over her.   We don’t know the extent of her suffering, but Luke, a physician, seems to emphasize  the seriousness of her illness by describing it as a “great fever” (Luke 4:38).

God commanded the prophet Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and warn its people that He was going to destroy it for its wickedness. Jonah  disobediently ran from the Lord and headed for the city of Tarshish by boat.  The Lord then sent a severe storm that caused the crew of the ship to fear  for their lives. Jonah was soon thrown overboard and swallowed by a great  fish where he remained for “three days and three nights” (Jonah 1:15–17).  In the belly of the whale, Jonah rep

Eutychus, whose name means “fortunate,” had the misfortune of falling out of a window—and the fortune of experiencing a miracle directly afterwards. The account of Eutychus’s accident is found in Acts 20:7–12. The setting is the tail end of Paul’s third missionary journey. He has sailed from Philippi and is on his way back to Jerusalem with a gift for the church there. He spends a week in Troas, and “on the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to

In Luke 5:32, Jesus said, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” God chose to tell the shepherds about Christ's birth first because they were the least likely people to be inflated with their own importance and worthiness to hear such a message. The shepherds represent the sinners, the humble, the lost, the “least among us”—the prime candidates for the gospel! If we are honest, we should see ourselves in the shepherds. The shepherds “came with haste” t

Tertius is mentioned in the concluding chapter of the book of Romans: “I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord” (Romans 16:22). Little is known about Tertius besides this reference; it is the only mention of him in the Bible. What we do know about Tertius is his occupation; he served as the amanuensis, or scribe, for the letter. We often envision Paul sitting alone in a quiet, candlelit cell scribbling away as the Holy Spirit directed. In reality, Romans

Lot's wife is a biblical figure from Genesis 19, known for being turned into a pillar of salt after disobeying God's command not to look back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, serving as a cautionary tale against attachment to worldly life and disobedience, and notably remembered by Jesus in the New Testament as a warning. She remains unnamed in the Bible but symbolizes the danger of lingering on the past and rejecting divine guidance, with interpretations suggesting