Our pastor went on to say, “In the analogy, Jesus has a piece of paper too. He has his name at the top and underneath are all the sins that he committed. His paper, of course, would be blank because he lived a sinless life. At the cross, Jesus exchanged his paper with ours. He... Continue Reading

Atonement is not mere ritual, it is a reckoning with the world as it really is. Everyone offers a blood sacrifice for something: a creature’s blood for my food, a stranger’s blood for my survival, my own blood for the life of my child. Try to believe for one minute that this world is not... Continue Reading

The true theological grounds of the biblical gospel are narrow, but the God of the gospel is not politically confined, he is not wedded to our petty cultural norms – he is bigger than that, and our perspective on the latest hot button issue may not be as crucial as we have come to believe. Perhaps... Continue Reading

In our day, the false prophets are all around us. They may preach about “Jesus,” but they don’t preach Jesus, which is the whole Gospel of the Holiness of God and His Law and the truth of our utter lostness in light of that. Then the preacher of righteousness tells of the coming of Jesus... Continue Reading

Religious affairs officials will offer cash rewards for useful information starting from just 100 yuan (£11). But helping to identify and arrest preachers and members of religious groups will be rewarded as much as 10,000 yuan – about two months’ average salary.   One city is offering more than £1,000 to those who can identify ‘unofficial’... Continue Reading

Exodus 5 opens with Pharaoh’s insolent speech. The king of Egypt questions the supremacy of God: “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go?” (Ex 5:2). He also asserts himself in the place of God when he declares, “Thus says Pharaoh,” (Ex 5:10) an intentional mockery of “Thus says the... Continue Reading

The Reformers believed in genuine freedom of choice. Yet like their forebears, freedom for them meant that one can freely do according to nature and according to potency. A human cannot fly (nature). And sometimes one person coerces another person to act (since this person has no potency to resist).    Some criticize Reformed Theology... Continue Reading

Because of my ethnic heritage and my Reformed upbringing, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Canons of Dort, even when many Christians — if they’ve even heard of Dort — have considered it an embarrassment of overwrought sovereignty and doctrinal hairsplitting. And yet, the Canons of Dort are not just for Dutch people, and... Continue Reading

The Psalmist tells us that the “voice” of this “speech” goes out “through all the earth.” The new image of a black hole is yet another way in which God’s “eternal power and divine nature” have been “clearly perceived … in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20).   Astronomers made news by capturing... Continue Reading

Years ago, I commented elsewhere on how Christian liberalism, for all of its sophisticated philosophical underpinnings, typically manifested itself in the words of its adherents in the church as a bundle of vacuous pieties, a heap of verbal rubbish, full of sound and fury, signifiying nothing.  And it seems to be worse now than before.... Continue Reading