Peace That Passes All Understanding
Scripture is all about knowing and trusting a person, and our formulas can actually turn us away from that person and cause us to rely on a series of steps.
Commands such as “do not be anxious” typically come after the reason why we don’t have to be anxious. In this case, the reason was slipped into the preceding verse: “The Lord is at hand” (Phil. 4:5). That changes everything. The emphasis is not on how we pray. It is on the God who has come... Continue Reading
Wisdom Versus Law—What’s the Difference?
Besides the fact that wisdom and law are closely related to each other because God is their source, there are differences between them.
Wisdom sayings and admonitions are not law commands per se, although keeping God’s law is surely wise. Mostly, we prefer laws since they tell us what to do. Wisdom, on the other hand, takes more effort, so we tend to shy away from learning how the world works and the reasons, benefits, and purposes of... Continue Reading
Planned. Purchased. Preserved.
How God Saves and Keeps a Sinner
To be faithful to the whole story of salvation, Christians are eager to say, as well, that apart from the work of the Father and the Holy Spirit, we have no good news. If we separate what Christ accomplishes in salvation from what the Father and the Holy Spirit have done (and are doing), then... Continue Reading
Still Protesting: The Protests of the Spirit
The truly Spiritual church was one which was submitted to and regulated by the word of God, properly preaching the word of God.
Five hundred years have now passed since the Protestant Reformation first took root, and so it’s fair to say we’ve had ample time to assess and judge the tree by its fruit. And certainly the small seed of Luther’s protest has become like “a large tree, so that the birds of the air come and... Continue Reading
The Canons Of Dort (1): Introduction And Background
The Canons were never intended to be anything like a complete statement of the Reformed faith.
The Cannons of Dort were the product of ecclesiastical deliberation on the attempt by some within the Reformed church in the Netherlands fundamentally to revise our doctrine of salvation. The Canons do not speak to many other topics in Reformed theology, piety, and practice. Further, what the churches were defending was the Word of God... Continue Reading
Jesus Is Better
For the current occupant of your heart’s throne to be unseated, a new thing of more significant value must unseat it.
Chalmers suggests that we have only to look at Christian conversion as God’s revealing to us the immeasurable value and beauty of Jesus Christ. Jesus unseats any would-be pretenders to the throne of our hearts. And because Jesus is the most valuable possession a person can possess, He cannot be unseated. But that doesn’t mean... Continue Reading
Noticing Literary Cues in Jonah
What is at stake should the reader focus first on matters of provenance, is that he would likely miss, or not fully apprehend, the embedded literary cues resident in the narrative.
I do not intend to propose a strict bifurcation between the literary nature of Jonah and the provenance of Jonah. I only wish to encourage the reader to see Jonah first as literature, and only then, after a strong understanding of its literary cues, should the reader turn to matters of provenance. Furthermore, I contend... Continue Reading
The Joys (and the Limitations) of Male-Female Friendships
Does the brother-sister relationship provide a valid model of what I should expect to experience with sisters in Christ?
Brothers and sisters in Christ are meant to model their love, commitment, and purity on the familial relationship. Besides the hundreds of verses that exhort us to live as brothers and sisters, we have some very specific teaching on relationships: Treat “older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity,” says Paul to... Continue Reading
Should Christians Fast or Feast?
The verses about fasting are not so much about pride or hypocrisy or Christian liberty but about the movement from the old to the new—from the old covenant to the new covenant.
Jesus indicated that fasting was very appropriate under the old covenant, given the nature of the experience of the people of God under the law of Moses. But now that Christ has come, the reasons for fasting have largely faded away. Christians are people characterized by joy. People fast for a variety of reasons.... Continue Reading
Prayer That Matters
Of course we should pray—and yet in difficult situations we often still find ourselves asking ourselves the same question again: “What should I do?”
Peter and John faced such a situation in Acts 4. They were arrested, threatened, and charged “not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” (v. 18). There were many ways for these two Apostles to respond: they could flee, hide, speak, or remain silent. What should they have done? Their response as... Continue Reading