I’ve realized that the biblical and covenantal answer to the question, “Who are you?” is a glorious one that stands in stark contrast to the secular myth that our employment or “career” defines us. Of course, our work and callings as Christians in the marketplace are important. Providing for our families is a great privilege... Continue Reading

So that which lies behind Paul, which he is committed to “forget,” is all the great stuff on his spiritual CV that formerly shaped his identity. It was all his accomplishments, his law-keeping, his zeal for God, and his righteousness. He sets all these things aside so he might obtain new life, resurrection, through knowing... Continue Reading

Believers are now in Christ spiritually and He is in them spiritually. They can pray, worship and read their bibles with understanding. However, it does not mean that their “old man” sin nature is dead and gone. He is still there. He now has an alive Spirit to deal with whereas before, the sin nature... Continue Reading

In saying that faith and repentance are God’s gifts to Jerry but not to Ed, we are not to think of them as some sort of material, tangible stuff that comes gift-wrapped with a red ribbon! The Bible portrays faith and repentance as God’s gifts to his elect in order to emphasize that although Jerry... Continue Reading

The “alien righteousness” we have in Christ is a real righteousness, delivering us from the “alien” sinfulness that we have in Adam.  When we are united to Christ by faith–as a result of His grace and the Holy Spirit’s work through Word and Sacrament–we are saved by His good works, which become ours, since we are... Continue Reading

There’s a relentless push for progress that we are being swept up in, and in an era of what I call “Big Eva” – the large evangelical ministry juggernaut replete with conferences after conference, ministry tool after ministry tool, leadership summit after leadership summit, technique after technique, there seems very little commitment to true rest. Apex... Continue Reading

The infectious pathos, rising from the pit of hell and blackening the darkest periods in human history, is an idea, an idea that a hierarchy of human and subhuman exists. Men who kill men in cold blood lose sleep; men who kill beasts don’t.   How does one group of people murder another and sleep at night? Answer: they don’t.... Continue Reading

Why is there a decline in religion? For one thing, young Americans have different habits. Rather than join institutions, millennials, argued Wade Clark Roof, author of the book Spiritual Marketplace, are indulging in a kind of “grazing,” finding their spiritual fixes in various different places rather than any one organized church. As sociologists Robert Putnam and David... Continue Reading

The first time we meet God in the story of Scripture, we meet him as an Artist. “Created” is the first verb in the first sentence on the Bible’s first page. Out of the flurry of God’s imagination, the heavens and the earth burst into existence and teem with diversity and beauty. God could have... Continue Reading

After they have been baptized into Christ, they remain “sinners saved by grace.” They are not perfect or perfected. They have not somehow become “better than” anyone else. They have the mark of the Saviour upon them. They belong to Him. They are His bondservants or slaves and He is their Lord, but in the... Continue Reading