God’s Book & God’s Voice
Among certain Christian circles, extraordinary claims of a trip to heaven are accepted as true.
Last week we looked at a glimpse of the kingdom, from the Transfiguration in Luke 9. Peter, James, and John experienced a moment of heavenly glory come to earth, and they heard the audible voice of God. This raises a question as to whether glimpses of glory and hearing God’s voice do still happen today. ... Continue Reading
God’s People in Exile
God promised to send a Redeemer to save us from exile and ultimately from death.
Humanity’s first exile cast us from God’s manifest presence and put us and the rest of creation under God’s curse. Work became hard, childbearing became painful, and everyone eventually died. We were spiritually stillborn, making it impossible to fulfill our covenant obligations or turn to God in faith. We lived in broken fellowship with God... Continue Reading
Educating Royalty
We must teach our children to be kingdom heirs—not just laborers in the marketplace.
I’ve realized that the biblical and covenantal answer to the question, “Who are you?” is a glorious one that stands in stark contrast to the secular myth that our employment or “career” defines us. Of course, our work and callings as Christians in the marketplace are important. Providing for our families is a great privilege... Continue Reading
Context Matters: Forgetting What Lies Behind
What Paul is after is to press on toward the goal, which is the prize of God’s upward call in Christ Jesus. Now what does that mean?
So that which lies behind Paul, which he is committed to “forget,” is all the great stuff on his spiritual CV that formerly shaped his identity. It was all his accomplishments, his law-keeping, his zeal for God, and his righteousness. He sets all these things aside so he might obtain new life, resurrection, through knowing... Continue Reading
Christians’ Sin Problem and Its Mortification Part 3
There is huge battle taking place between the Spirit and sin nature for dominance in the heart of the believer.
Believers are now in Christ spiritually and He is in them spiritually. They can pray, worship and read their bibles with understanding. However, it does not mean that their “old man” sin nature is dead and gone. He is still there. He now has an alive Spirit to deal with whereas before, the sin nature... Continue Reading
What Makes You to Differ? Some Thoughts on Divine Election
Our repentance from sin and his faith in Christ are portrayed as gifts because they flow from God’s sovereign grace.
In saying that faith and repentance are God’s gifts to Jerry but not to Ed, we are not to think of them as some sort of material, tangible stuff that comes gift-wrapped with a red ribbon! The Bible portrays faith and repentance as God’s gifts to his elect in order to emphasize that although Jerry... Continue Reading
A Theology of Art in 2 Minutes
Is there a way to envision “Christian art” as something more than misty fairytale cottages or contrived plotlines where typecast God-haters join in a tearful Jesus anthem before the credits roll?
The first time we meet God in the story of Scripture, we meet him as an Artist. “Created” is the first verb in the first sentence on the Bible’s first page. Out of the flurry of God’s imagination, the heavens and the earth burst into existence and teem with diversity and beauty. God could have... Continue Reading
Justification by Faith – the Source of Righteousness
Not one Christian can take credit for their own salvation.
After they have been baptized into Christ, they remain “sinners saved by grace.” They are not perfect or perfected. They have not somehow become “better than” anyone else. They have the mark of the Saviour upon them. They belong to Him. They are His bondservants or slaves and He is their Lord, but in the... Continue Reading
Seeing Ourselves in Revelation 14
The short description of Rev 14.1–5 gives us a wealth of insight into who we are as the people of God.
To understand who Revelation 14 says we are, we need to ‘do the math’. John does his theology through maths and numbers, which will make some hearts sink—but others rejoice! It is clear from chapter 7 that the 144,000 are neither a special group of martyrs, nor an elite group of end-times Jewish evangelists (as some... Continue Reading
Planning for the Future while Trusting God’s Provision
We live constantly in the experiential tension between God’s sovereignty and our responsibility, between the call to trust and the call to act.
I set my alarm to get out of bed this morning. You probably don’t judge that as an act of rank mistrust of God’s providence. I made plans. I didn’t assume that God would rouse me supernaturally at 5:30 a.m. That was not an act of unbelief but a wise embrace of secondary means. On... Continue Reading