Why You Should Stop Pretending You’ll Live Forever
Accepting death is the first step in learning to live.
The reality is, we spend our lives trying to escape the constraints of our created condition. Opening our eyes to this is a significant breakthrough. To be human is to be a creature, and to be a creature is to be finite. We are not God. We are not in control, and we will not... Continue Reading
A High View of Marriage Includes Divorce
Sacrificing a person to save a relationship is not the gospel.
The following article is a guest post by Rebecca VanDoodewaard, author of Uprooted: A Guide for Homesick Christians and Your Future ‘Other Half’: It Matters Whom You Marry. She is married to William VanDoodewaard, Professor of Church History at Puritan Theological Seminary. They have four children. During a recent visit, my wife and I discussed these types of issues with... Continue Reading
Don’t Be a Do-Gooder: Pastoral Reflections on Goodness
To say God is good is to assert he is without fault, without an ounce of error, without a speck of deceit.
None of your actions bridge the gap between you and God. As “good” as they may be, they are not good the way God is good. You are not good the way God is good. The moment you weigh your merit by your productivity, the instant you compute your value by the number of good deeds done, you miss... Continue Reading
Luther’s Trinitarian Defense of the Gospel
The Trinity doesn’t simply support our theology; it is our theology.
According to Luther, “the Spirit, who was promised to extol Christ, certainly cannot preach ‘free will’” as the Arminians understand it. The reason for the Spirit’s liberating power isn’t simply that it may give freedom for freedom’s sake, but that it may give freedom to flee to the second Person of the Trinity: Christ. Salvation is... Continue Reading
Strive Until Strivings Cease
Grace doesn’t free us from striving towards holiness, but rather it changes our motivation for doing so.
Grace doesn’t free us from striving towards holiness, but rather it changes our motivation for doing so. We do not strive in an attempt to ascend to God. We do not do it to earn His love—or our salvation. No. No amount of striving will ever accomplish these ends. Rather, we strive because he loves... Continue Reading
Calvin: Ministers Ought Not to Steal
Calvin points out that the eighth commandment means that Christians are bound to fulfill whatever duties they have been given, “to pay their debts faithfully.”
In other words, pastors obey the Eighth Commandment when they fully discharge their calling. Particularly, we’re to proclaim the gospel with fidelity. Anything less is to be considered as theft. We are robbing God of what he is owed and we are robbing the people of God what they are owed from us. I’m... Continue Reading
What Does It Mean to Succeed?
The measure of our success cannot be defined by what we accomplish here on earth; it has already been defined by the fact that we are in Christ.
Whether I “succeed” or “fail”—by whatever standard—ultimately counts for nothing. What counts is the fact that Christ has succeeded for me, in my place. My only hope and boast rest not in my faithfulness but in the fact that whether I am rich or poor, prominent or obscure, weak or strong, my faithful Savior has... Continue Reading
Did You Know that the Bible Commands Us to Eat, Drink, and Be Merry?
God takes pleasure in your pleasure. He’s given it to you.
It’s vital to see that eating, drinking, dressing, and loving in these verses do not form an exhaustive list of God’s gifts. Rather, it’s a representative list of what it looks like to love life and to live it to the full. These things are a way of saying: when God made the world, he... Continue Reading
The Holy Spirit is Not an “It”
God is not an it, he is a person. And, the Holy Spirit is God.
For the sake of illustration, how do you think my wife would respond if I casually referred to her as an it? I’ll give you a hint, not very well. She is a person. In fact, she is a very special person to me. Listen, our speech reflects what we think and know. It is an... Continue Reading
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