How Christianity Flourishes
Christian mission has always thrived by surging in the margins and under the radar
“Christianity grows best under hardship. There are more Christians in China today, for instance, where free expression of faith is illegal, than the total population of the United States. Christianity is in decline in America, and Christendom is already in ruins in Europe, but in the East and in Africa, where it is new, a... Continue Reading
What Is Biblical Stewardship?
Fundamentally, stewardship is about exercising our God-given dominion over His creation
“A steward in the ancient world was a person who was given the responsibility and authority to rule over the affairs of the household. For example, the patriarch Joseph became a steward over Potiphar’s household: he managed everything in the household and was given the authority to rule over the house (Gen. 39:1–6a).” The... Continue Reading
When Healing Hurts
Being refined is painful but it's a good pain. It is a necessary pain. It's a pain that heals.
What that means is, when I ask God to transform me, to make me more like Christ, he doesn’t instantly change me. He strips away my sin through a multitude of circumstances and situations. For example, when I pray and ask God to make me patient, I don’t wake up the next morning a patient... Continue Reading
No Bucket List Required
Bucket-lists make sense—if you believe this world is all there is.
The reality of Jesus’ resurrection guarantees the resurrection of his people. And his miracles were little tasters of his ability to produce a world without sickness, death, disease, storms, cancer and every other flaw. Only he can make it right, and only he can take you there. Infinite beauty, infinite splendour, and infinite time to... Continue Reading
The Gospel Promise of God’s Performance
God presented a bilateral contract of law to us, and we have done nothing but transgressed the terms. However, God has made a unilateral covenant of grace for us.
All our spiritual blessings are the result of God’s unilateral, undeserved, unbreakable, one-way, covenant. The Law tells us how to perform to earn his favor. The Gospel tells us how he performs to favor us. In the Gospel, God is the Promise-Maker and Promise-Keeper; we are merely the unworthy and passive recipients. God is the one who makes and keeps covenant;... Continue Reading
Why Does the Universe Look So Old?
God did not create a universe that began in an infant or primordial state before maturing over billions of years, but one that began in a state of maturity.
When it was still young it already looked mature because this was God’s design. Indeed, this was the case with the first human being. “When he made Adam, Adam was not a fetus; Adam was a man; he had the appearance of a man. By our understanding that would’ve required time for Adam to get... Continue Reading
Remembering the Reformation but Celebrating What?
The problem is that the Reformation is only really congenial to modern American evangelicalism if it is reduced to little more than the doctrine of justification by grace through faith
“The truth is: The priorities and concerns of American evangelicalism have a highly tenuous and ambiguous relationship to those we find embodied in the confessions and catechisms of the Reformation and exemplified in the attitudes and actions of the Reformers.” October is the month of the year in which, as a Reformation specialist, I... Continue Reading
You Are What You Think
Scripture does not make brute statements that circumvent our interpretive lenses
“Epistemological modesty sounds so compelling, so humble, so godly. After all, which of us wants to claim we have the corner on truth? How can we really know we are right and someone else is wrong? Though such “humility” seems so right on the surface, a quicksand foundation lies beneath it.” Every society has... Continue Reading
You Can’t Trust Yourself
Why peace is a terrible basis for decision making
Our internal sense of peace serves as the ultimate rationale for decision-making and, the great thing is, no one can question us. It’s the ultimate mic-drop—akin to saying that God told you to do something. Who’s gonna say that God didn’t tell you this or that your sense of peace is wrong? This might not... Continue Reading
Toward a Better Reading: Reflections on the Permanent Changes to the Text of Genesis 3:16 in the ESV Part 2
How did desire “for” the man become desire “contrary to” the man?
The only way translators can justify rendering ‘el as “contrary” is to assume something negative about the woman’s desire based on the use of desire in Genesis 4:7-8. But such a novel change relies solely on commentary, not on accepted definitions to the Hebrew ‘el. In fact, Denny Burk, current president of The Council of... Continue Reading