Union with Christ in Hebrews
Christ is our anchor and we are tethered to Christ because of great union with Him.
Hebrews does have a conception of the people of God sharing in a union that links their destinies with the head of the people, the Son Jesus Christ. The believer can have every confidence in Christ and Christ’s ability precisely because he acts as the representative of the eschatological people of God. Because Christ entered... Continue Reading
3 Reasons to Be Aware of Your Own Sin
We remember our sin not so we can wallow in it; we remember our sin to bring great value in our hearts to the gospel.
If the gospel is no longer the best news to us; if we feel our affection for Jesus growing stale; if what was once bubbling out deep from our souls never now escapes our lips; then perhaps we have lost sight of just how desperate our situation is apart from Jesus. The good news of... Continue Reading
Tripping on Scripture
Whoever takes another meaning out of Scripture than the writer intended, goes astray.
Though we can never eliminate our subjectivity in the act of reading–ought not even to try to do so if we would read the Bible as God intends–we can certainly do better than reduce Scripture to a Rorschach ink blot or muse for pious psychedelics to trip on. But this is not just a postmodern problem;... Continue Reading
Christ-Centered Courage Trumps Charisma and Gifts in Evangelism
Love and mercy will reign forever when hate is cast away into outer darkness.
You get the story wrong if you don’t see Jesus as the center and the goal. But when you get it right, you understand, as Stephen did, that suffering makes sense. For even our Lord and Master was crucified. Why would we expect comfort and ease? Stephen understood that his proclamation was not likely to... Continue Reading
How Jesus Brings You to the Father
We now have the confidence to approach our heavenly Father through the curtain of Christ’s flesh.
There was a curtain that separated the Most Holy Place from the Holy Place. Only the High Priest could enter through the curtain. Only the High Priest could approach the ark, which symbolized the presence of the Holy God. To everyone else, access was denied. And then Christ came. If we have grown up hearing about... Continue Reading
Why We Must Know God
Theology proper is not merely for the academics and seminary-trained among us.
The consideration of God’s character and attributes is not merely an interesting topic of study for the Christian. It is an absolutely essential one! God has revealed himself to us, and this revelation leads us into salvation and makes possible our perseverance in the Christian life. We will never know it all, but we must... Continue Reading
5 Things Every Christian Should be Doing with God’s Word
In Psalm 119, we find David interacting with the Word of God in five ways that should be paradigmatic for all believers.
David uses a variety of terminology to describe God’s Word: commandments, law, statutes, precepts, ordinances, rules, words, testimonies, etc. These all refer to the Scriptures as they existed in David’s day (essentially the Pentateuch). Thus, Psalm 119 is one of the best examples of Scripture speaking about Scripture. It is the Word about the Word. ... Continue Reading
Why Bereans Would Have Notepads In Their Pews Instead Of Bibles
The Spirit causes the renewed heart to leap for joy at even bread crumbs left by Jesus.
A Berean is one akin to those described in Acts 17:10-15. There we read that these noble Jews “received the word with all eagerness” as they were “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so”. In other words they didn’t simply receive the missionaries words just because they said them, they dug into... Continue Reading
Canons of Dort (23): God Not Only Sovereignly Gives New Life But He Uses Means To Do It
"Regeneration is that active God by which the principle of new life is implanted in man , And the governing disposition of the soul is made holy."
The first is great error in the doctrines of regeneration is to downplay or even deny the need for regeneration. This is the Pelagianism. One of the reasons that the Synod of Dort regularly characterized the Remonstrant position as “Pelagian” was because the Remonstrants did downplay the need for regeneration in this sense. Pelagius and... Continue Reading
God’s Masterpiece is Less Like a Painting and More Like a Mosaic
God is in the habit of putting broken pieces back together.
A mosaic is the process of taking shards of material – glass, stone, or most anything else – and assembling them in a recognizable pattern. It takes seemingly unrelated and in many cases useless things and puts them together to reveal something only in the mind and the heart of the artist. That’s starting to... Continue Reading