Undying Love
The doctrine of divine impassibility is the belief that God has no “passions”—that is, no disordered affections that could make his love ebb and flow.
God’s affections are always in accord with his holy and gracious character. They are perfect, self-derived expressions of his faithful covenant love. While our emotional responses are often manipulated by others, or caused by circumstances that make us act “not like ourselves,” God is never less than true to himself. Thus, the fundamental difference between... Continue Reading
Union with Christ is Everything
The wonderful truth about Christians' union with Christ, and all that it means, is at the heart of Christianity spirituality.
What “spiritual value” comes from union with Christ? It is our position in Him that makes His death count for us and His resurrection mean our life (Rom. 6). Inclusion in Christ is the logic of salvation; when you exclude it from your picture of redemption (even with the intent of being more inclusive), you sever salvation from its... Continue Reading
The Irony of Holding a Grudge
When we think we are executing some kind of justice by holding a grudge, we actually harm ourselves more than we harm the object of our disdain.
Sure, obtaining “justice” might not always look the same, depending on your personality, but typically it looks like lashing out, ignoring the other person, avoiding eye-contact, walking the other way when you see them, and having imagery debates in your head. We’ve tricked ourselves into thinking there is freedom in that. They have to pay,... Continue Reading
About Those Angels of the Churches
Angels are heavenly beings who are representatives of the seven churches.
Angels are often seen in the Scriptures as those who transmit the word of God to His people. For instance, we are told that the written law was given to Moses by an angel (Acts 7:53; Galatians 3:19; Hebrews 2:2). Surely what is being communicated to these churches is that Jesus knows each congregation of... Continue Reading
John Calvin’s Tips for Right and Worshipful Prayer
The tips are more scattered than systematic, and present a sample of the richness of his writing.
“We see that nothing is set before us as an object of expectation from the Lord which we are not enjoined to ask of Him in prayer, so true it is that prayer digs up those treasures which the Gospel of our Lord discovers to the eye of faith. The necessity and utility of this... Continue Reading
What Is Brotherly Love?
The bond that exists between earthly siblings gives shape and form to the language of Scripture, where God commands believers to “love one another with brotherly affection” (Rom. 12:10).
The New Testament is full of references to “brotherly love.” In many places in which the Apostles expound on Christian living in the church, this paradigmatic phrase surfaces. The Apostle Paul explained the instinctive nature of brotherly love when he wrote to the members of the church in Thessalonica: “Concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone... Continue Reading
What Is Baptism?
The practice of “baptism,” whatever it is, must have been something that was familiar to Matthew’s Jewish audience in the first century.
When Jesus commands His followers to go and make disciples in Matthew 28:18–20, He instructs them to baptize those disciples in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But He nowhere explains what He means by baptism, and we nowhere read that the disciples were confused by what He was saying. If we... Continue Reading
Christ Puts a Comma Where the World Puts a Period
We all slip up in our speech at times, but the Bible often uses pointed oxymorons to drive home a point.
The Bible often takes words that don’t go together, and puts them together to grab our attention and help us see the point more clearly. For example, Paul writes “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live” in Galatians 2:20. The Gospels tell of the “Virgin birth” and Jesus says that “the first shall be last.” All... Continue Reading
Filled With All the Fullness of God
The profundity of the statement is clearly of such a character that it would be presumptuous to imagine that we can fathom its depths.
Characteristically the Apostle has expressed his prayer in Ephesians 3 with an extreme economy of language and for this reason it is more than ordinarily necessary to consider the words in the fuller context of the whole Scriptures and especially of Paul’s other epistles. When we do this it becomes clear that there are at... Continue Reading
What Will They Do When I’m Gone?
What will happen to my children if something happens to me?
We can plan, and we should plan, for such eventualities, both spiritually and materially. I have life insurance for myself and my wife; we are working on finding guardians for our children should both of us die. Our financial plans are in place, more or less. Material planning is so very important. It is not,... Continue Reading