10 Beautiful Things You Will Be After Reading Church History
Reading church history can add great beauty and joy to your life by helping you to better love and trust God and understand the world around you.
Reading church history will reveal that, in attempting to avoid various grave errors, many well-intending people have often countered one error by embracing an extreme error in the opposite direction, like a swinging pendulum. Some theologians who are deeply concerned with legalism (earning favor with God through erroneous law-keeping) may fall into promoting the radical extreme of antinomianism (lawlessness).... Continue Reading
The God-Centered Gospel
To be God-centered is to know and experience the God of the Bible in the daily practice of our lives
“Whether it’s from the angle of the gospel, prayer, Bible-reading, community, or any other perspective that we might consider—our God is good, just, loving, merciful, kind, and holy. God is the Gospel.” The Bible from beginning to end is the story of God. There is but one living and true God (Deuteronomy 6:4; Is.... Continue Reading
Preachers, Prayer and Gospel Progress
Prophets were not only to be men of the pulpit, but men of prayer
“If the gospel is to make its God-ordained inexorable progress throughout the world as it is proclaimed publicly through preaching and privately through the witness of the saints, then it must go hand in hand with the ‘give-yourselves-and-God-no-rest’ kind of praying of which Christ speaks in these verses.” It should go without saying that... Continue Reading
Why Good Theology is Necessary For Good Parenting
Good theology does one other thing — it encourages us to take heart, because God is in the business of rescuing fools and restoring hearts
“As Christ-followers, our parenting goal is not to raise well-behaved children, but to raise Christ-following adults. To disciple a Christ-follower, we must feed them a steady diet of good theology that is fortified with the Word of God, which tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and that... Continue Reading
Divine Presence and Human Response
Saving faith is the result of the Holy Spirit’s giving life more than it is the result of collecting evidence
“Conversion is the work of the Spirit in attendance with gospel proclamation. Reason, experience, and imagination all play a role in salvation, but if the Spirit does not give life, saving faith will not result.” Over at the newly renovated Tabletalk site, I have a post on John 6:60-69 and the ways in which... Continue Reading
No More Boredom
Our belief that Heaven will be boring betrays a heresy — that God is boring
“Won’t it be boring to be good all the time?” Note the underlying assumption: Sin is exciting, righteousness is boring. We’ve fallen for the devil’s lie. His most basic strategy, the same one he employed with Adam and Eve, is to make us believe that sin brings fulfillment. Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov said,... Continue Reading
What Is Biblical Meditation?
In the minds of many Christians, meditation is associated with eastern religions
“Since the concept of meditation has been appropriated by other religions, we’ve lost an important and meaningful way of interacting with Scripture. The Bible mentions 23 occurrences of some translation of meditate: 19 of them appear in the Psalms, and of the 23, 20 refer specifically to meditating on the Lord in some way.” ... Continue Reading
The Judgment of the Canaanites
It is a fairly common objection to the Bible and to all forms of biblical faith that a God who would order the extermination of all the Canaanites by the Israelites cannot be a loving God
“This brings us to the question: what did the Canaanites deserve? Did they deserve life? Did they deserve heaven? No one deserves life, and no one deserves heaven. The evidence suggests that they were a very sinful people on whom God’s judgment is therefore entirely just.” It is a fairly common objection to the... Continue Reading
The Quest for Biblical Worship (Part 2)
No one, from Bucer to Calvin to the Westminster Assembly to the late 20th century considered liturgical uniformity unusual, indeed the opposite
How much “sameness” is enough and how much is too much? The devil, quite literally, is in the details. The Apostles expect a high degree of uniformity between the churches and demand a high degree of conformity. Reformed churches not only have the regulative principle worship (RPW) to guide them regarding elements and forms,... Continue Reading
We are what our Creator says we are
If our identity is based on our job, education, intelligence, sexuality, or anything else you can think of, we’re thinking too small.
What does it mean to be made in God’s image, according to His likeness (Gen. 1:26)? The short version is that as God’s image bearers, we are mirrors, reflecting God’s attributes to the rest of creation in three distinct but complementary ways. How do you understand what it means to be human? Most of... Continue Reading