Luther’s Life: Lessons From a Controversial Colloquy
In the middle of the 1520s, key Protestants desired a political alliance between the Lutheran and Reformed (the non-Lutheran reformers in Switzerland and Strasbourg) bodies.
When it came to agreeing on the sixth sub-point, whether Christ is bodily present in the elements, the most distinguished minds of Protestantism slammed into an insurmountable obstacle. While Zwingli and the Reformed representatives viewed the issue of Christ’s presence as a non-essential doctrine, Luther’s intransigence and his insistence that it is an essential guaranteed... Continue Reading
The Glorious Things That Happen While Waiting On God
God works uniquely through waiting, giving me blessings that I couldn’t get any other way.
God allows me to wait because he wants to demonstrate his wisdom. He wants to teach me that his way is always the best. That I should trust in the Lord with all my heart and stop relying on my faulty, fickle, usually deluded understanding. God wants me to trust him, and he’ll often make... Continue Reading
The Semi-Arianism of ESS Arguments
Grudem, Ware, and any who make these quoted arguments, are indeed arguing for an ontological subordination, whether they would like to acknowledge it or not.
That, my friends, is an ontological statement—an ontological subordination—and it absolutely contradicts the Nicene formula. If (a) God is ontologically triune, (b) the triunity of God is defined by the relational distinctions of Father, Son, and Spirit, and (c) father-ness and son-ness necessarily implies authority and submission, then we must conclude that the supposed relation... Continue Reading
Praying for the Heart’s of Our Children
Above all, the prayer I keep coming back to time and time again is a prayer for their heart.
The truth is, the heart of the matter is the heart. What our children need most is a new heart. They need the Spirit to bring them from death to life. They need the Spirit to work in them, sanctifying and transforming them into the likeness of Christ. So even as I pray about other things for... Continue Reading
Did Christ Really Have to Die?
Only by recovering its core message—God must punish sin, but God’s anger can be satisfied and averted by sacrifice—will the indispensable necessity of Christ sin-atoning death be recovered.
Have you ever applied the same question to Christ’s death? Why did he do this? Was it really necessary? Why did Christ have to die, and to die such a death? Though it’s rarely asked today, it was asked by many in the 19th century and many wrong answers were proposed. In Christ’s Doctrine of the Atonement, Scottish... Continue Reading
Is It “Lutheran” To Say That We Are Mystically United To Christ Through Faith?
The suggestion assumes that there is a great gulf between the Lutherans and the Reformed on this issue
There are certainly important and marked differences between Lutherans and the Reformed traditions, e.g., the rule of worship, Christology, the Supper, Baptism, church government, perseverance of the saints, covenant theology, and reprobation to name a few but it seems to be more an a priori assumption rather than a matter of fact that the confessional Lutheran and Reformed traditions are... Continue Reading
Fearing Christianity?
It seems that in the western world there is one category of people not particularly allowed to voice an opinion; one category of people that should be denied office at all costs.
But why all this hostility? There is an intolerance, a subconscious fear, of biblical Christianity. Why is that? It’s because it confronts people with what they know to be true and try to suppress: that there is a God. Christians who live like there is a real God to whom they will one day give... Continue Reading
What Does It Mean to Call God “Father?”
The first Jewish rabbi to call God “Father” directly was Jesus of Nazareth.
A few years ago, a German scholar was doing research in New Testament literature and discovered that in the entire history of Judaism—in all existing books of the Old Testament and all existing books of extrabiblical Jewish writings dating from the beginning of Judaism until the tenth century A.D. in Italy—there is not a single... Continue Reading
The Reform of Private Life, Part 2
Protestants saw marriage as a creation ordinance, something God mandated to all humanity at the creation, and thus primarily a civil rather than ecclesiastical institution.
Luther argued that the Catholic Church was wrong in defining marriage as a sacrament. Protestants believed that only things that Jesus Himself had specifically commanded us to do qualified as sacraments, and though Jesus attended a wedding, He never commanded us to marry. Further, if Jews, Muslims, pagans, and even atheists marry, how can it... Continue Reading
I Don’t Want a Celebration of Life, I Want a Burial Service
When I die, please don’t call my burial service a Celebration of Life.
If my life is eulogized, let it be in the context of God’s marvelous grace and the love that he puts in our hearts. Let it be the story of how God wove our stories together. Let it be a story of forgiveness, and let it leave room for even more forgiveness. When I... Continue Reading