How Not to Read the Parables
I want to share with you what the parables are, but first, it is helpful to establish what they are not.
The first error many readers make is to believe that the parables are simplistic religious illustrations, almost spiritual folktales. In this erroneous reading, the parables are read superficially like moral lessons. The parables are of course fairly simple up there at the surface—some of them simpler than others—and there are clear moral lessons in the... Continue Reading
Identifying Our Identity
Both the traditional and neo-traditional positions on homosexuality exclude from acceptable Christian behavior sexual acts that are outside of Scriptural marriage between one man and one woman.
This difference in identifying the desires, and not merely the acts, as sin is not mere semantics. It has profound consequences in how we address the person who desires to live the Christian life who has experienced same-sex attraction. When we are called to repentance, are we called to merely do different things or to... Continue Reading
Spiritual Gifts: What they Are and Why they Matter
Do the miraculous or revelatory gifts of the Holy Spirit continue to the present time or have they ceased?
At the beginning of 2018 I suggested this would be one of the themes of the year and I continue to believe this will prove to be the case. My cause is helped by Tom Schreiner’s new defense of cessationism, Spiritual Gifts: What they Are and Why they Matter. The movement called the New Calvinism has been... Continue Reading
Employees Quit American Bible Society over Sex and Marriage Rules
“This decision does not signal intent to advocate or champion any cause other than increased engagement with the Bible.”
The American Bible Society, founded 202 years ago to publish, distribute and translate the Bible, presented its “Affirmation of Biblical Community” to employees in December. It requires employees to “refrain from sexual contact outside the marriage covenant,” which it defined as man and wife. (RNS) — One of the oldest nonprofit organizations dedicated to distributing Bibles around the... Continue Reading
The Unforgetting God
However old (or young), however manifestly weak (or apparently strong), whatever our circumstances, there is our hope. Whatever we forget, He forgets us not.
She may yet forget more. But, no matter how much she forgets, the Lord who has loved her and saved her will never forget her: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of... Continue Reading
Envy: Tearing Down Those in Front of Us
One of the seven deadly sins and its antidote.
Ultimately, the solution to envy is found in humility, an attitude that is not focused on ourselves and what we think we deserve, and in charity, agape love that rejoices when good things happen to another person. We must learn to follow Paul’s instructions in Philippians 2 to do nothing from selfish ambition or vain conceit, but... Continue Reading
Homosexual Orientation, or Disorientation?
Embracing a gay identity prevents us from knowing ourselves as we are known by God.
Embracing a gay identity prevents us from knowing ourselves as we are known by God. Instead, we are kept captive by faulty categories of the human person, created in the mind of man. It is more than mere semantics. In departing from the clear teaching of the Church on our sexual identity, we do injury... Continue Reading
A Brief Introduction to the Life and Ministry of John Calvin
Calvin was a student at the University of Paris when he was twelve years old.
Calvin said there is no place on earth I’d rather not be than Geneva, but he sensed God’s call on his life, and so he went back to Geneva. He ended up staying there, Geneva becoming his adopted city. He not only led the church there, but as one biographer of Calvin said, while he lived... Continue Reading
Nigerian Bishop Says GAFCON Exists Because Some Anglican Leaders Have Rejected Authority of Bible
Divisions are deepening and will not be healed by the techniques of the corporate world, he says Where there is no repentance, there must be realignment
“When Anglicans come together as the global ‘household of God’ in a shared commitment to the unchanging gospel, which for us is set out in the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration, we can help and guide one another in the task of fashioning a faithful witness which is appropriate to our settings without being compromised.” ... Continue Reading
What Happens after Death (and before Resurrection)
For Calvin, the very idea that the soul “sleeps” until the resurrection made no sense, given the unique properties of the human soul.
Redemption from sin and the overturning of the consequences of the fall on human nature (death) are therefore necessarily eschatological in their orientation. The redeemed soul has been given eternal life through the work of Christ, by the Holy Spirit, who is the “earnest of our inheritance, that is, of eternal life, unto redemption, that... Continue Reading