How Should We Understand “Shall Rule Over You” in Genesis 3:16b? (Part 2)
Coming from man, the woman will desire to return to him to seek oneness just as man desires to return to God in oneness because he came from God.
This desire and longing is the natural longing instilled at Creation by virtue of God having created woman from man (Genesis 2:21-22). This means that woman will naturally long to return to man, just as man longs to be one with his Creator. This Creation Longing is now to become the source of her frustration,... Continue Reading
Five Truths About the Holy Spirit
Jesus also spoke of the Spirit as the Helper in John 14 and introduced Him as “the Spirit of truth.”
We need to notice that the Holy Spirit is a unique person and not simply a power or an influence. He is spoken of as “He,” not as “it.” This is a matter of import because if you listen carefully to people speaking, even within your own congregations you may hear the Holy Spirit referenced in... Continue Reading
The Gospel Of The Synagogue Vs. The Gospel Of The Son Of God
Mark is explaining the gospel as the person and work of Christ in fulfillment on behalf of his people.
The presentation of the gospel of the “Son of God” is pressed with urgency upon people to repent and believe the Gospel of Mark. Mark uses the word “immediately” an astonishingly forty-two times throughout the book. This is not intended to impress upon us the need merely for ethical change, but to receive by faith, all... Continue Reading
Why Christians Must Be Readers
But in his prison cell he longs for something which Timothy can bring — books and parchments.
We cannot know for sure what these books and parchments were. They might, of course, have been the Scriptures of the Old Testament. We bear in mind that the New Testament Scriptures were only beginning to exist at this time as a collection of books. They certainly were not yet put together in the form of a completed... Continue Reading
Quiet and Deep Christianity
How should the church address the issue of our overladen minds and emotions – via accommodation or revolution?
The twenty-first century has largely abandoned being informed in favour of staying notified, we have rejected leafing through the pages of great minds in favour of scrolling through the curated scenes of one another’s lives, we have repudiated analysis in favour of rolling coverage, and we have become addicted to allowing the facts to play... Continue Reading
What Job Teaches Us About Endurance
Job cannot give up on the God he has known even though he no longer understands him, nor can he give in and believe that he himself is a hypocrite in order restore an idyllic past.
It seems God has turned against Job without just reason, refusing to explain his action, indeed refusing to speak to him at all, and instead keeps on hounding him to death. This is the antithesis of Eden; it is a kind of hell. This being so (or seeming to be so, for in the dark... Continue Reading
3 Things that Keep Christians from Living with a Sense of Urgency
Not one of us knows when Jesus will return. It could be… now. Or now. Or now.
Before we come to understand the good news of Jesus Christ, we must come to understand the grave news of sin. Whether we know it or not, all of us are in the most real and the most grave of danger apart from the gospel. Not one of us knows which breath will be our... Continue Reading
Union with Christ is Everything
The New Testament uses a wide variety of Greek constructions to describe Christians' connection with their Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.
Believers are “crucified with Christ,” “raised with Christ,” “in Christ Jesus,” “baptized into Christ Jesus,” “sanctified in Christ Jesus,” “circumcised by Christ,” and reconciled to God “through Christ.” Christ’s disciples are related to Him as branches to the life-giving vine. In Christ, believers receive “every spiritual blessing,” including election (v.4), predestination (v.5), adoption (v.5), grace... Continue Reading
When Humpty Met Alice: Some Thoughts on Systematic Theology as Poor Relation, Part Four
When it comes to the meaning of the classic vocabulary of Reformed theology, the question is: Which is to be master, that’s all -- in this case, the Confession or the reader?
I want to highlight the fact that the issue of the ST-BT relationship is not just theological and pedagogical. For confessional Protestants, it is also ecclesiastical because ministers take vows to uphold the faith as summarized in the great confessions of the Reformation. Since those confessions were forged through the kind of dialectical doctrinal process which I noted in Part Two, it is highly questionable whether... Continue Reading
Incomprehensible but Knowable: Human Knowing
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Not only are we never going to be able to truly know all that God knows, we are never going to be able to know in the way that God knows things. In other words, when God knows something He understands all of it. For Himself, He knows Himself completely and in absolute perfection. When He knows... Continue Reading