Love or Hype?
A church is supposed to be a living body.
I was stunned. It was the first time that I saw death without it first having been made up by the undertaker. Yes, I had been to a number of funerals. And I have heard people say things like, “He looks so good, so natural.” Once someone whispered to me, “She looks so beautiful. She... Continue Reading
Where Is Jesus in the Old Testament?
How to Find Him on Every Last Page
We feel we ought to view the Old Testament as Christian Scripture, but we’re not quite sure why or how. It seems like such a crunch of gears. But is it? Perhaps we’d be helped by a simple framework for how Christ is at the heart of the Scriptures: he is patterned, promised, and present from Genesis onward.... Continue Reading
He Cannot Deny Himself
Immutability and Simplicity
In this short article, I would like to consider how a more traditional understanding of God’s immutability might be illumined and reinforced by the doctrine of divine simplicity. While setting forth the relationship between immutability and simplicity will not allay the concerns of all critics, it can shed light on why a stronger doctrine of God’s... Continue Reading
Is The Doctrine Of Penal Substitutionary Atonement A Late, Western Doctrine?
It is unfortunate that so many have chosen to use the noun religion as a foil.
According to James, there is nothing wrong with being religious. The noun translated “religion” also means “worship.” There is a “pure and undefined” religion. There is a God ordained worship (Col 2:23) and there is “will-worship.” What is wrong with a religion of salvation by works is not that it is a religion but that... Continue Reading
Paying Attention in Worship
If we can carve out undistracted time and space for a fine meal, why not also for public worship?
The Westminster divines wanted us to understand that it is largely through public worship that God meets with His people. These standards serve to deliver God’s promise that the Word and the sacraments are effectual to the elect for salvation. Reformed worship is about guarding the pulpit and fencing the table. The Westminster Assembly goes... Continue Reading
Why Modern Christians Should Obey the 10 Commandments
We certainly don’t want to set aside the Ten Commandments. Jesus didn’t set them aside; he fulfilled them.
I like the analogy many people have used of a piece of music that you transpose to a different key. It’s the same melody you’re playing—the same piece of music—but now on the other side of the incarnation, it’s transposed and there’s a different key to it. And so each of the Ten Commandments now... Continue Reading
God, Creation Ex Nihilo, and Immutability: Does God Change By Virtue of Creation?
Creation is “that act of God through which, by his sovereign will, he brought the entire world out of nonbeing into being that is distinct from his own being.”
The difference between creator and creature is infinite, not just ‘very great’; ‘creator’ does not merely refer to the supreme causal power by which the world is explained, for God would then be simply a ‘principle superior to the world,’ or ‘the biggest thing around.’ Such conceptions falter by making God one term in a... Continue Reading
Canons Of Dort (12): We Judge God’s Will From Scripture
The Lord directs us away from ourselves and our experience to his Word, which is not dependent upon our feelings and ever-changing experiences.
One of the caricatures of the Augustinian-Reformed position is that the elect are given a special revelation—indeed, some Reformed folk have held this but none of our churches confesses such a thing—whereby they knew with infallible certainty that they are elect. This is not what we confess. We do believe that assurance is of the... Continue Reading
For Instruction, Doctrine, and Morals: Interpretation, Truth and Holiness
With the passage of time we encounter new experiences, new realities: events, people, places, and objects. We must and will interpret them. How?
When we identify the meaning or significance of something we are making claims to knowledge. In both interpretation and knowledge claims we are unavoidably relating one reality to another reality. In this we are saying something about what characterizes the relationship of one reality to another. In such affirmations we are claiming that we know... Continue Reading
What Does the Bible Say about Angels?
Reformed theologians and students might be surprised that our forefathers in the faith mused and wrote copiously on these heavenly beings and saw them playing a vital role in the history of redemption.
Scripture is replete with references to angels. From the cherubim who guarded the garden of Eden in Genesis 3:24 to the angel whom Christ sent to reveal so much to the Apostle John in Revelation, the angelic host of heaven is a dominant theme in the Bible. The Hebrew word for angel, malakh, occurs 213 times in the... Continue Reading