While few of us today seek to follow the Pharisaical model, this level of misery is alive and well among those who misunderstand the complementarity of law and gospel and seek to earn favor with God through both keeping the law and misappropriating it to extrapolate a set of personal convictions—often related to modes of... Continue Reading

Surely no one who had actually been in heaven would neglect to mention what Scripture shows is its main focus. If you had spent an evening dining with a king, you wouldn’t just talk about the place settings. When John was shown heaven and wrote about it, he recorded the details — but first and... Continue Reading

It’s painful when a pastor leaves a pulpit in question or disgrace. There is no side, despite what the news reports. There is a circular pain without an exit ramp. No Jesus follower wants the kingdom of God to be tarnished, and maybe that’s the only thing any of us can agree on, but at... Continue Reading

Entertainment is about impressing people and keeping them at arm’s length. Hospitality is about opening up your heart and your home, just as you are, and being willing to invite Jesus into the conversation, not to stop the conversation but to deepen it. Hospitality is fundamentally an act of missional evangelism. And I wouldn’t know... Continue Reading

Dale W. Brown, who writes from a perspective sympathetic to pietism, identifies five central motifs: 1) a turn to the practical; 2) a primitivist reading of Scripture, which is described as Biblicism; 3) an emphasis on sanctification and ethics; 4) an emphasis on religious experience; 5) acts of mercy (Dale W. Brown, Understanding Pietism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,... Continue Reading

To be sure, Trump’s rhetoric and personal behavior — his denunciations of Hispanics, tasteless remarks about women and sex, and marital infidelities — were negatives for many of us who voted for him. But, though sometimes excessive or offensive, his brash style was effective because it showed that he understood the feelings of those alienated... Continue Reading

What Lewis found was something the Great War nearly destroyed for him: an explanation for his deepest longing, the desire for joy. What he discovered, from his own careful study of the gospels, helped him cast off his doubts: a vision of God’s grace as well as his holiness. Here, in the life and teachings... Continue Reading

When the internet first came along, we all dutifully signed up for accounts and began to explore this new medium. We surfed and chatted and downloaded and shopped. It was only a few years later that we realized that along the way an entire generation had gotten hooked on porn. It’s obvious now—what else was... Continue Reading

The story of science and faith is much more complicated than we have been told. Some of the most outspoken atheists or skeptics have painted a simplistic picture, one that is not scientific. The truth is much more interesting. Stephen Hawking, who is often seen as supporting the atheist cause, doesn’t end up where we... Continue Reading

In this brief article, I want to provide three ways that you might be unwittingly denying the resurrection by how you live. I’ll get at them by way of question. The goal is not to make you feel bad, but rather to provide a diagnostic to help you evaluate your life and make proper adjustments.... Continue Reading