Couples who keep those vows, even when those vows feel like a trap, often find that something beautiful happens as they endure the hardship. Things get better. They learn to love each other. God grows beautiful things in what looks like a garden of clay if we stick with it long enough and keep our... Continue Reading

The United States in the 50s and 60s might have seemed to be more or less Christian, but it was anything but. And one radical Christian who knew all about this much earlier on than most other Christians was Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). He knew everything was not right in America and the West, and he sought to give a... Continue Reading

In light of that picture of humanity, Christian ethics cannot merely concern itself with knowing the right or good thing to do, it must first attend to being or—more starkly—becoming the right or good sort of being, the kind of being who might then do good things. Grace, redemption, and salvation are elemental to Christian... Continue Reading

If Satan wrote a book on parenting, he would want you to raise them in strict accordance with law rather than gospel, with strict rules rather than free grace. He would want parents to physically discipline them, then abandon them in their pain and misery, wondering how they can once again earn their parents’ favor.... Continue Reading

In the end, the PCA did something that no other denomination had ever done before. “Committees of commissioners” were created to oversee the work of the permanent committees. In this manner, the presbyteries as courts of the church oversee the work of the committees through the ruling and teaching elders working as committees of commissioners. The... Continue Reading

The recent expunging of the name “Buswell Memorial Library” came as the main concrete outcome of a lengthy committee study of the history of race relations at Wheaton College, commissioned and then approved by President Philip Ryken and the board of trustees. The study itself was a worthy enterprise, revealing many dark spots as well... Continue Reading

In the case of Jehoshaphat, his reforms produce something far more interesting and engaging and serious than what had previously captured Judah’s attention. In what we might consider rather mundane detail, in commissioning teachers to go to the towns and people with an open Bible, this King was shepherding the people wisely and lovingly. Going... Continue Reading

Baltzell would see the end of the establishment and the collapse of the upper class into an irrelevant rump as a significant underlying cause of many of today’s social maladies, such as the progressive collapse of norms in our political life. This is frequently bemoaned, often with a heavy dollop of blame heaped on one’s... Continue Reading

Scripture is clear that faith unites us to Christ, and through faith in him we receive all that he has to give us–namely the forgiveness of sin accomplished by his death, and the gift of righteousness based upon his life of faultless obedience. Through faith in Jesus, our sin is imputed to him so that... Continue Reading

In Genesis 3, Eve’s sin occurs when she takes the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree God had forbidden his image-bearers to eat from. Note the language in 3:6: the woman “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes,... Continue Reading