How Death can Make us Wiser
Even in the matter of death, which all of us need to consider, God offers wisdom, comfort, and hope.
By numbering our days, recognizing how short our time really is, we can increasingly cherish the good gifts that God gives to us today, such as life, family, daily bread, and our local church. The godly contemplation of our earthly exit also helps us to re-evaluate our ultimate loves and hopes, whether they are turned... Continue Reading
“Forgive Us Our Debts”: Getting Specific When Confessing Our Sins to God
I think one of the more difficult parts of prayer is making a serious effort at confessing our sins.
I suspect that most Christians recognize they are sinners—recognition of this fact, after all, is one of the fundamental elements of making a valid profession of faith and joining a church. We have to acknowledge our need of a savior, Christ, which means we are in need of salvation. In simple terms, we are sinners.... Continue Reading
The Great Exchanges of Romans
The gospel of Romans can be summarized in one word: exchange.
In response to the great exchange that has been accomplished for us in Christ, there is an exchange accomplished in us by the Spirit: unbelief gives way to faith, rebellion is exchanged for trust. Justification—our being declared righteous and constituted in a righteous relationship with God—is not made ours by works, ceremonial or otherwise, but... Continue Reading
What God Chooses to Forget: The Greatest Sermon Nature Ever Gave
In the very place God dwells and rules, he has surrounded himself with the rainbow as a reminder of the commitment he made to the people that he loves.
The Bible describes this mighty Christ representative as having “a rainbow over his head” (Revelation 10:1). This should encourage God’s people. Like the story of the exodus, the angel of death has come to judge the world. But because of the blood of the Lamb, because of the rainbow reminder of God’s promise over his... Continue Reading
God Teaches Us The Right Perspective By Teaching Us The Right Questions
God doesn’t just leave us to speculate the proper perspective to have of the Bible; he teaches us what the point is by giving us the questions to ask.
So there is a reason that we don’t move on to new perspectives on the Bible, because God gives us the perspective by giving us not only the right answers, but the right questions to ask. So we don’t need to change the emphasis to a new perspective, or seek to get our joy by... Continue Reading
The Gelding of God
On the authority of the Archbishop, many Christians will today be wondering whether they have been wrong to call God ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ and Jesus their ‘Lord’ and ‘King’.
God is not a Father in exactly the same way a human being is a father. Of course not, for we are the image of God; just as my image as I looked in a mirror this morning was not human, or aged 44, or male, in exactly the same way as I am all those things. But to... Continue Reading
Canons Of Dort (6): God Is The Cause Of Salvation But Not Of Reprobation
Arminius argued that the relations between God and creation are not what the Augustine and the Protestant Reformers had said.
Ultimately, Arminius’ solution to the problem of evil was to make God contingent upon human choices. Another way to put this is to say that, in his own way, Arminius was a rationalist. He put human reason above holy Scripture. His revision of Reformed theology was not fundamentally driven by Scripture nor by the historic... Continue Reading
Christ, Our Righteousness
The gospel ministry with its proper emphasis on justification and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the repenting and believing sinner does not need a new perspective but a renewal of spirit-filled preaching.
The subject of our essay is to consider how the perfect obedience of Christ to the Mosaic law does apply to those who believe in Him. The answer to this question, according to the Reformed understanding of Scripture, is “the active obedience of Christ is imputed to the justified believers as their positive cover in... Continue Reading
Penal Substitution and Gospel Proclamation
Those of us who affirm that it is a truly biblical doctrine need to grapple carefully with how it should shape and inform our ministry.
The purpose of this brief article is to argue that PSA should be at the heart of our proclamation of the gospel—at the heart of our regular preaching of the word of God. There are important reasons for this both at the level of theological integrity and at the level of pastoral practicality. It... Continue Reading
The Missing Strings of Sanctification
Leave off one or two elements of the biblical teaching about sanctification and it won't function properly.
There is never a time when we do not need to be reminded of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. We will never reach a point in our Christian life when we do not need to return to the truth that we have been united to Christ, in whom God has... Continue Reading