10 Things You Should Know About Union With Christ
Our union with Christ is profoundly real and intensely intimate
Union with Christ is not a sentiment, metaphor or illustration, or even primarily a “doctrine”. Nor is it a way of speaking about something else—whether justification, sanctification, or any other benefit of Christ (even if it includes all of these and more!). Our union with the living Christ is the essential truth of our new... Continue Reading
The Covenant With Abraham: Blessing The Nations
God’s promises to Abraham are inseparable from the biblical understanding of God’s mission for the church.
Jesus is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant. The Seed of Abraham delivers God’s grace and mercy to Israel and to the Gentiles, that is, the nations of the world. Jesus brings the blessings of the covenant to the family of nations through the global mandate given through the gospel to the Church. Following... Continue Reading
Jesus Loves Me, This I Know…
In recent years, myriads of books have been written to seek to convince men --and particularly women-- of the love of Christ. Jesus Calling is one such example.
The quest for a subjective experience of the love of Christ apart from Scripture also often comes in the form of superstitious readings of nature or providence. One sees a rainbow or a beautiful sunset and thinks, “This is a sign of God’s love for me.” Someone narrowly escapes a near-death incident and thinks, “Now... Continue Reading
Therapeutic Praise
The ancient Psalms are experiencing somewhat of a revival in various places. Why?
Some Christian songs are emotionally stirring, but have little theological content; the heart is engaged, but not the mind. Over-reacting to this, some have composed songs that are full of theological facts, but don’t engage the worshipper’s feelings. They are more like sung sermons. The Psalms strike an inspired balance of doxological theology and theological... Continue Reading
The Necessity of a Divine Mediator
Why is it important for Jesus to be God? Without this being his identity, you would have no Savior.
Finally, our mediator needs to be divine so “that he might…bring [us] to everlasting salvation” (Q&A 38). His divinity has sustained the wrath of God against him because of our sins. His divinity gave infinite value to his work on our behalf. His divinity has satisfied God’s eternal justice against our sins. His divinity has... Continue Reading
Prey to Being Positive?
At risk of being ‘jaundiced against joy’, I’ve often remarked how the ‘positivity police’ who cry ‘stop being negative’, are often among the most negative people I know.
If I’m now in danger of being too negative, never preach heaven if you do not warn of hell. Never preach blessing unless you threaten curse. Don’t omit wrath when you assure ‘no condemnation’. I hope I’m not guilty of overstating the case. If anything, I think, the opposite is true. The sparkling Gospel diamond... Continue Reading
Regret Will Kill You Unless You Kill It With Promises
The life-giving promises of Scripture are the God-appointed means of renewing our mind when we feel regret
The human mind struggles to grasp these truths. We have no mental framework for this type of response. When someone sins against us, we don’t respond this way. Perhaps, if God is gracious, we are able to forgive the person for the wrong they’ve done. Our offer of forgiveness means that we will not seek... Continue Reading
It Is Time For Cultural Apologetics – Pt. 1
Our rising generation desperately needs to be trained in cultural apologetics, the theological analysis of contemporary culture using terminology that speaks to this new, de-christianized situation.
How interesting that via these different terms of “holy” and “holism” we come back to our starting point, the fact of only two religions, Oneism or Twoism. Oneism is a form of spiritual holism where everything is included—including God. Twoism is the very essence of holiness, where things are not confused but have their special,... Continue Reading
Distinguishing Among the Three Persons of the Trinity within Reformed Tradition
I do not think the talk of “roles” is the best way to speak of the eternal distinctions between the Persons of the Trinity
Traditionally, the way in which the Persons of the Godhead have been distinguished—and they are distinct (which suggests three hypostases) not different (which would suggest another ousia)—is not by roles or by eternal relations of authority and submission, but by paternity, filiation, and spiration. To put it another way, the Father is the Father (and... Continue Reading
Toward a Better Reading: Reflections on the Permanent Changes to the Text of Genesis 3:16 in the ESV
We’re concerned that this new rendering repeats the very mistakes that led to the formation of the ESV in the first place
As users of the ESV, we have always known that the translation of the ESV occurred in context of concerns about gendered language. We understood the concern as such: Because Bible translators can read meaning into gendered words based on current sociological agendas, we want to be constrained by the actual words of the text... Continue Reading