Can God Love Me If I Hate Myself?
When you can’t love yourself and wonder where God’s love is, remember the God by Whom you are loved
You are not worthy of the gospel. You never have been. That’s the point. God’s love is not due to your loveableness. Because of this, He will not leave you, even when you’re unlovable. You are reckoning with a God who came down to take on flesh so that he could replace your unworthiness with His worthiness—a... Continue Reading
Even If He Doesn’t
I know that God could fix these things in a heartbeat. The test comes when he tarries.
Some translations render “but if not” as “but even if he doesn’t.” I seem to be in a season of “even if he doesn’t.” I am not peering into the mouth of the fiery furnace, but I am begging God to do a bunch of things only he can do. These relationships might never be... Continue Reading
Here’s Why Jesus Never Said “I am God” in the Bible
Jesus isn’t answering our question, though; he was answering theirs.
When Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I AM,” he was claiming to be God. His language echoes that time when God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” The Greek Bible, called the Septuagint, translates this as “I Am the Being,” and Jesus’s... Continue Reading
Living in Mystery
Living in mystery means yielding and submitting to the One who does know the answers to all the unknowns.
The things we don’t know are God’s hidden will. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16.9. While we know Jesus will return one day to make all things new, we don’t know when that will be. “But concerning that day and... Continue Reading
Classic Theism: Worshiping the Immutable God
All of life and even all of worship is “from him and through him and to him.”
Today’s obsession with being relevant and being all things to all people isn’t so much the fruit of pragmatism (though it is that too) but more so the outcome of forgetting God. We’ve forgotten the Immutable, Impassable, God only wise and so we’ve become convinced that God is OK with our neat tricks and new... Continue Reading
Pictures of Jesus
When God supplies so many rich and varied pictures of believing in Christ, I dare you to still believe that he doesn’t want you to believe!
Why does God give us so many pictures of believing in Jesus? Why not just some philosophical treatise on faith, or some systematic theology of faith? Why illustrations? And why so many? First, because faith is so hard. Unbelief comes naturally to us; faith is unnatural. Faith is so hard it has to be given us... Continue Reading
Classic Theism: Trinitarian Errors
Any conception of the Trinity that purports to uphold one portion of Scripture while ignoring others is in fact a violation of Scripture and a failure to trust in its sufficiency.
Most errors fall into one of three categories. First, they deny that God exists in Trinity or diminish the Persons to such an extent that it becomes a practical Unitarianism. Second, they either explicitly state that there are three separate Gods or stress the differences so much that they essentially demote one or more of... Continue Reading
Actually They Don’t Just Hate the Church, They Hate Jesus
At least we’re cutting through all the cant about how the problem we have is that people hate the church but deep down really love Jesus.
Sure we can be stupid. Sure we can be selfish. Sure we can do lots of dumb things as the church. And no excuses for them. But deep down the world seethes with hatred for Jesus. It burns with an unquenchable loathing (and it will be unquenchable) for the fact that Jesus is king of... Continue Reading
If You Want To Know What P&R Christians Believe, Read The Confessions
In these documents, the churches (as corporate bodies) and her members confess before God, the church, and the watching world what we believe.
The confessions and catechisms of the P&R churches emerged from the sixteenth-century Reformation, when pastors and churches returned to God’s Word (sola Scriptura!) as the ruling authority for the Christian faith and the Christian life and Reformed the church from its various doctrinal and practical corruptions. From earliest decades of the Reformation the P&R churches... Continue Reading
N.T. Wright’s Long Farewell
An assessment of N. T. Wright’s teaching and influence in the evangelical church.
And thus, for Wright, Christ Himself takes no punishment as our substitute, because even though He was hanging, suffering on the cross, it was not Him who is being punished, but sin—and yet, somehow, He was still our substitute. And so—Voilà!—Wright has convinced himself (and all his acolytes, I might add) that he still believes... Continue Reading