As part of the work of the Committee on Christian Education, on motion, the body approved this: “That the Eighty-fifth (2018) General Assembly notify the member churches of NAPARC and other appropriate church bodies with which we have fellowship that it has erected a special committee to propose linguistic updating of the doctrinal standards of... Continue Reading

It feels awful to fail to advance in our vocations, to miss our goals, to be surpassed by our friends, to miss out on making our mark. It feels soul-crushing to fail to receive the plaudits of the people we admire. And while this failure can be a tremendous sorrow to ourselves and others, it... Continue Reading

I suspect Jordan Peterson finds himself in a bit of a quandary today in matters of faith, religion and particularly Christianity. By his own admission, he feels boxed in when asked what he believes about God. It sounds like he is still up in the air and not yet ready to come down on one... Continue Reading

That God is not dependent on human faith for accomplishing His work is clear from the accounts of other miracles recorded by Matthew. The transfiguration of Jesus immediately prior to the healing of the boy is a prime example. It was a spectacular miracle; yet no human faith was involved. This is also true in... Continue Reading

Despite all the caricatures God is not some kind of superhuman or old man up in the sky. This is of course hard for us to understand and so our temptation is always to try and create a God in our own image. But the Bible gives us a different picture.   I have just... Continue Reading

We know from the New Testament, and the realizing of Isaiah’s words 700 years later, that this suffering servant would be not only the promised Messiah, but God himself — God’s own Son, come to rescue his people, by receiving in himself the justice they deserved. How can God himself, the happiest being in the... Continue Reading

It’s common for people to attend a church regularly without officially belonging to that particular church. What this sort of church attendance fails to understand is that all sheep need a shepherd. Jesus is, of course, our ultimate Shepherd, but he leads his sheep through under-shepherds who are specially called to care for his people.  ... Continue Reading

It’s what the Psalmist prayed, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things” (Psalm 119:18). It’s also what Paul prayed for the Ephesians, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of... Continue Reading

Matthew 6:8 is one of the most important verses in order to understand the Lord’s Prayer: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” If we come to understand that our Father knows our needs before we ask him, then far from leading us away from prayer, our prayer lives will be utterly... Continue Reading

Think of Jesus’ sober warning: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). Hell is not horrible because of alleged implements of torture or its temperature. (After all, it is described variously in... Continue Reading