My discovery of the spiritual riches in Galatians came at the end of a long road. For more than a decade, I tried to follow Jesus by “rededicating” my life to him over and over and over again, maybe two hundred times. I was converted at age 10 and was fortunate to grow up in... Continue Reading

“Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways. When it... Continue Reading

The Jews were very familiar with the sacrificial system in which a lamb was offered as a blood sacrifice. His reference of the Lord Jesus as God’s Lamb was speaking of His being sacrificed on the Cross to atone for the sins of the world.   29 The next day he *saw Jesus coming to... Continue Reading

In the premodern Christian tradition, love as an affection could therefore be appropriate or inappropriate, since love could be rightly or wrongly directed. The object of desire determined if it was right to desire such a thing, and necessarily dictated the moral quality of the affection. This changed in the 1700s. In eighteenth-century Germany, a third... Continue Reading

I’m writing this because that season feels like it’s over.  There was a sense of overlapping, simultaneous tragedies, where wherever we turned, all we could see was someone crying.  This morning, it feels that life has moved back into a more normal season, where pastoral issues come singly. They will come again, but probably not... Continue Reading

It is a wonderful thing to delight in the glory of Natural Revelation, and to linger on the sweetness of Special Revelation – however, to know we have gained the intended spiritual benefit from a sermon, reading or mediation on truth, it is vital that we ask ‘Has there been something of this inward, transforming,... Continue Reading

In the church, Christians have a community to support them as they mourn and grieve. The Bible calls Christians to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).  When the body of Christ weeps for one another, the stage is set for genuine Christian encouragement. True Christian encouragement is not an energetic pep talk or a... Continue Reading

To teach that repentance follows justification and pardon is to teach contrary to the language and meaning of Scripture.  It is to teach that we can and should expect pardon without repentance because we are pardoned before (logically or temporally) repentance.  It is to teach a form of carnal Christianity because impenitent sinners are justified... Continue Reading

What is happening in our waiting? Is it just an empty space between our prayers and their fulfillment? No, in our waiting, God does his deepest work. God is sanctifying us and teaching us to trust him. Sometimes we get what we are waiting for, and we rejoice and are grateful. Other times, we never see... Continue Reading

They say that “God created a new human nature for His Son” that “merely passed…through Mary.” Instead, MLJ states that is a true human, the seed of Abraham and the seed of David: “Now if a special human nature had been created for Him, He would not have been the son of David nor the... Continue Reading