I’ve had Christians with me while I was explaining the gospel to someone, and the Christians seemed more uncomfortable with the situation than the person being evangelized. So, while their apprehension may or may not lead them to physically climb onto your shoulders, the prospect of potential conflict makes many believers nervous.   Growing up, I had... Continue Reading

For me personally, engaging a significant pre-modern theologian like Augustine has been an enormously helpful way to engage the doctrine of creation, both with a view to shoring up the neglected areas as well as with a view to calming and directing the contested areas.   Several people have asked about my book on Augustine’s doctrine... Continue Reading

This definition is helpful. It provides a framework to help you evaluate whether the teaching you don’t like is from a sheep that you disagree with or a wolf who needs to be ignored or rebuked or both. Let’s break down the definition a little more.   Occasionally, I’ll see a social media post about... Continue Reading

The words “ultra crepidam” have been combined and anglicized, then passed to us in the term “ultracrepidarian.” An ultracrepidarian is someone who goes “beyond the shoe.” He is “one who is presumptuous and offers advice or opinions beyond his sphere of knowledge.” Or “someone who has no special knowledge of a subject but who expresses... Continue Reading

Converted from a life of cosmopolitan self-pursuit, Augustine was marked by a deep awareness of God’s sovereign grace to him in Christ. His unexpected calling in the community of Hippo bore tremendous fruit, multiplied through his writing. Among these, his Confessions and The City of God provide enduring lessons for pastoral care and Christian discipleship.   The fires of... Continue Reading

As I grappled with the nature of Scripture, its authority, power, and sufficiency, and the implications for my life and ministry, my world was rocked. I had been raised by a godly mother who taught her children to believe the Bible but I had never thought deeply about the nature and implications of divine revelation.... Continue Reading

Outside the Bible and the writings of early Christians, there are very few other references to Christ from the late first and early second centuries.  Should that bother us?  No, not at all!  For two reasons: first, the total extant literature from this period would fill a very small section of one ordinary bookshelf, so... Continue Reading

Living in this age, prior to the age to come, is the proving ground for the believer. God uses this life to mature His children, growing them in Christlikeness. We err when we become so temporally focused that we view what is going around us now as if the eternal is not awaiting us. How... Continue Reading

Scripture makes clear that God wants us to understand what it means for us to commit evil. The whole Bible, from the fall in Eden onward, is one long account of the catastrophic fallout of evil’s infection of the human race and God’s unfolding plan to ultimately overcome that unfathomable evil with an even more... Continue Reading

Especially as a young minister, Timothy, you need to be persuaded that the Spirit’s regenerating action is, as John Owen wrote, “infallible, victorious, irresistible, and always efficacious”; it “removeth all obstacles, overcomes all oppositions, and infallibly produces the effect intended.”[6] All modes of action which imply another doctrine are unbiblical. J.I. Packer writes: “All devices for... Continue Reading