Faith and the Power of God
God will not be hostage to our lack of faith.
That God is not dependent on human faith for accomplishing His work is clear from the accounts of other miracles recorded by Matthew. The transfiguration of Jesus immediately prior to the healing of the boy is a prime example. It was a spectacular miracle; yet no human faith was involved. This is also true in... Continue Reading
Loving Other Saints Who Are Sinners
We as God’s people are called to love each other with a fervent and forgiving love.
A saint is like a fair face with a scar; we love the beautiful face of holiness, though there be a scar in it. The best emerald has its blemishes, the brightest stars have their twinklings, and the best of the saints have their failings. You that cannot love one another because of his infirmities,... Continue Reading
What Gender is God?
Male and female are terms that are used for human beings – not for God.
Despite all the caricatures God is not some kind of superhuman or old man up in the sky. This is of course hard for us to understand and so our temptation is always to try and create a God in our own image. But the Bible gives us a different picture. I have just... Continue Reading
Oh the Deep, Deep Joy of Jesus
What Sustained the Man of Sorrows?
We know from the New Testament, and the realizing of Isaiah’s words 700 years later, that this suffering servant would be not only the promised Messiah, but God himself — God’s own Son, come to rescue his people, by receiving in himself the justice they deserved. How can God himself, the happiest being in the... Continue Reading
Praying for Eyes That See
I've asked him to show me more of his glory, his amazing grace toward me, and the way he works in all the details of my life.
It’s what the Psalmist prayed, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things” (Psalm 119:18). It’s also what Paul prayed for the Ephesians, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of... Continue Reading
How Not To Pray: Two Correctives from Christ
It is incredibly interesting that when Jesus honored the disciples’ request, he first taught them how not to pray.
Matthew 6:8 is one of the most important verses in order to understand the Lord’s Prayer: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” If we come to understand that our Father knows our needs before we ask him, then far from leading us away from prayer, our prayer lives will be utterly... Continue Reading
Should I ‘Let Go and Let God’?
Debunking the idea that Christians are sanctified by ‘letting go and letting God.’
So that, on the one hand, we’re to be actively engaged, not quietly waiting for God to do it for us, but at the same time not depending on our own powers and our own resources but realizing that this is a synergistic operation—a cooperative enterprise. I’m working. God is working. And He works through... Continue Reading
Hell is Not Separation from God
The problem here is that hell, rather than God, becomes the object of fear.
Think of Jesus’ sober warning: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). Hell is not horrible because of alleged implements of torture or its temperature. (After all, it is described variously in... Continue Reading
God Doesn’t Waste Words
God doesn’t waste words, but sometimes it seems like he does. The Bible contains plenty of information that seems superfluous to us, information we tend to breeze over too quickly.
Pay attention to the oddities in the Bible — and there are a lot of them. Seemingly extraneous things are not extraneous at all. What they have to say is important because God chose to include them. The odd details in John 21:1-14 are not the main points of the chapter. Nor are my observations... Continue Reading
Biblical Doctrine and Extrabiblical Terminology
That we have to borrow metaphysical language to explain the scriptural realities makes those realities no less scriptural.
And so, the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity — which is summarized by the confession that God is one, and that this one God eternally subsists in three co-equal and consubstantial persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which persons, though distinct from one another, each fully possess the undivided divine essence — is not... Continue Reading