Where Will I Go When I Die?
Death doesn’t kill souls, but it does seal their destinies.
Jesus’s parable of the talents ends with this dreadful judgment against the one who failed to invest in eternity: “Cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 25:30). Our undying souls confirm our accountability to the One who has given them to us (Matt. 10:28). Scripture mentions... Continue Reading
The Father Himself Loves You
God’s love doesn’t wait on our love. God’s love is the first to move.
We doubt the love of God because we know who we really are. But the image we paint of ourselves is far better than the dim reality. God sees through it. We see the outward appearance even of our inward parts because we hold the brush, but God sees the heart. The simple yet disturbing truth... Continue Reading
4 Things Mental Illness Teaches Us
Commit your struggles to the Lord.
Only Jesus can satisfy that longing today and every day throughout eternity. My anxiety creates a fresh insight into faith and my walk with Christ. My anxiety causes me to long for another world. Like C.S. Lewis said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is... Continue Reading
7 Things the Lord’s Prayer Teaches Us
In a prayer that takes less than a minute to recite, the Lord’s Prayer teaches us the breadth, and height, and depth of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.
Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name (Matt. 6:9 NASB). We were once enemies of God, but now through the Lord Jesus Christ we have been reconciled to God and are made friends, even children of God. When we pray, we pray to him as beloved children. When we pray to him, we... Continue Reading
Canons of Dort (24): Synod’s Pastoral Concern For Assurance
Under the pretense of uncertainty, the Remonstrants sketch their doctrine of assurance (or rather the lack thereof) when they suggested that there are those who are actually, really “incorporated into Christ.”
As we have been noting through this series, in the hands of the Remonstrants, grace is not sovereign, saving, efficacious in the way that the Apostle Paul had spoken of it nor in the way that Augustine and his followers in the Reformation had spoken of it. In Arminius’ theology and in that of his... Continue Reading
Mastricht, Bavinck and the Efficacy of Scripture
The visible church is born of the word, now written in Scripture, not the other way around.
By insisting God’s word always operates to save, Lutherans appear to reduce the Spirit’s activity to something like an impersonal power. They must then explain the apparent failure of the word to save some people by arguing that “God, working through means, can be resisted” in a way that “God, working in uncovered majesty, cannot” (Pieper, CD,... Continue Reading
Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs: Assessing the Debate
The New Testament contains very little explicit information concerning singing in Christian churches, and yet debate about what kind of songs to sing in worship is controversial in churches today.
The purpose of this paper is to examine popular and scholarly discussions of the terms in these passages to determine, if possible, their exact meaning and what implications for contemporary practice may be drawn therefrom. The grammatical construction of the phrases in both Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 are nearly identical, and thus I will... Continue Reading
The Pollution of Man
The pollution of man shows itself in two ways: total depravity and total inability.
Knowing our complete inability to save ourselves highlights the grace and mercy of God. If I owe someone $5 and you pay it for me, I appreciate it, but I may not be overwhelmed with gratitude because I could have come up with the $5 myself. However, if I owed someone $5 billion dollars, then... Continue Reading
Nouveau Pelagianism
Concupiscence is the doctrine that declares all of humanity was really and tangibly present in Adam, our federal head, when he sinned, and therefore all of us are native born sinners.
The main theological opposition to the doctrine of concupiscence came from the British monk Pelagius (354–420). Although none of his writings have survived, the eight canons of the Council of Carthage in 418 provided an apologetic answer to his errors. Pelagianism insisted that mankind has the innate ability to choose good over evil, thus rejecting the idea... Continue Reading
The Apostle’s Creed: The Quick & the Dead
Though the contemporary church may know nothing of Marcion they actually embrace the theology he once taught.
We may be living many years removed from the days when Marcion walked the streets of Rome and threatened the well being of the church in that city. Nevertheless, Marcion’s teaching is alive and well and is still a threat to the Church. So, it’s no wonder the Apostle’s Creed has a freshness that seems... Continue Reading