Your God Is Too Small
There is no one like our God.
Isaiah’s prescription for this withering sickness of unbelief is a dose of God’s magnificent majesty, power, and glory. The promises of God are guaranteed by who and what He is. He is the Creator and Sustainer of the world and His people. Your God Is Too Small is the title of the book written by J.B. Phillips, and... Continue Reading
Racism And The Second Use Of The Law (Updated)
Racism is the antithesis of loving one’s neighbor. It does not seek his good. It hates.
To add “social justice advocacy” to the mandate of the visible church is to go beyond Scripture and imperil her true vocation. Individual Christians, however, have every freedom to band together to advocate for social policies and our brothers and sisters have a right to disagree with us about those social polices. One hopes that... Continue Reading
Surveying Sanctification: Union with Christ
Holiness of life is drawn from Christ, who alone is “life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45).
Union with Christ reminds us we cannot lay hold of one benefit of Christ without receiving the others. We cannot come to Christ for justification and somehow sneak away without sanctification. To have one benefit is to have Christ. To have Christ is to have all benefits. The benefits of justification and sanctification are, of... Continue Reading
How do we Seek the Things that are Above?
Is it a child’s game to you, or a desperate search for that without which you cannot live?
This Greek word for seek, zeteo, can refer to simply looking for something, but when talking about seeking God, Christ, and His kingdom, it tends to mean something quite a bit stronger. In fact, you could use words like “require,” “crave,” and “demand.” You NEED it, so you seek it. A few years ago, our family was... Continue Reading
Rediscovering the Lost Art of Lament
Does God want us to ignore the great difficulties of life, to get over them, to power through them, or to be crushed by them?
This place where Jesus experienced forsakenness—this place of ultimate lament—is where we need to come when we are lamenting. When we cry out to God for his help, we can look to the cross and know that God will not turn his back on us. God’s rejection is what Jesus has already experienced, in our... Continue Reading
10 Commandments of Progressive Christianity #1: Is Jesus Our Lord or Our Example?
When given the choice between worshiping Jesus (which requires that he is divine) and merely looking at Jesus as a good moral guide, liberals have always favored the latter.
While liberal Christians make much of Jesus’ moral example, what is missing in their system is why anyone should care. After all, if Jesus is just an ordinary man, then why would we think his particular moral code is any better than any other person’s? Why should we think his moral code matters at all?... Continue Reading
The Amazing Riches of Psalm 23
Jesus’ unceasing love for us never ceases. Every sunrise brings new mercies. His faithfulness is infinite.
Because Jesus has redeemed us, called us by name, and made us his own, he will always be with us, no matter what we go through. And because he is the Lord our God and our Savior, he will allow nothing to overwhelm us in an ultimate sense. He will give us peace. Psalm... Continue Reading
Unorthodox Christology
Recently, it has come to light that William Lane Craig, professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, propagates an unorthodox view of Christology.
Rather than avoiding the Appolinarian heresy, Craig embraces a form of it which he personally calls, “Neo-Appolinarianism.” How very sad that we are re-living the early church heresies in our own day. Instead of staying with the orthodox notion that Christ is fully God and fully man–two natures in one person, “without confusion, without change,... Continue Reading
Three Things to Remember When You Fear the Future
It's hard not to worry and fret about the unknown. It's hard not to fear. And it can be hard to trust God with the future.
Because the future is in God’s hands and no one else’s and because he is good and only does what is good, we can trust our future to him. We can rest in his sovereign care for us. The trials and circumstances we fear, while not good in and of themselves, are always used by... Continue Reading
Are There Degrees of Sin?
Calvin and every one of the Reformers strenuously maintained that there is a difference between lesser sins and what they called gross and heinous sins.
It’s clear that we have different degrees of sin when we consider the warnings of Scripture. There are at least twenty-two references in the New Testament to degrees of rewards that are given to the saints in heaven. There are different levels, different rewards, and different roles in heaven. The Bible warns us against adding... Continue Reading