God has gifted you with faith in the Captain of your salvation, Jesus Christ (Heb 2:10). His sinless life, His death on the cross, and His glorious resurrection are the only things that can uphold you on that day of dread and gladness. A faith in anything else has no backbone and is empty. Only... Continue Reading

The most important label—one that cries out for acknowledgment from the thousands of pages of his mighty corpus—is follower of Jesus. Bavinck loved the God who saved him by grace, and amid the complexity and brilliance of his thought, there is always a doxological current. As Bavinck put it: A theologian is a person who... Continue Reading

One of the finest expressions of Romanticism today is Donna Tartt’s prize-winning novel The Goldfinch. Published in 2013 to critical acclaim and commercial success, it is a classic Bildungsroman in which a teenage boy, grief-stricken by the death of his mother, follows his emotions into a series of increasingly unwise decisions, complex relationships, and the criminal underworld.... Continue Reading

Navigating the tension of vocation in exile involves a loving sensitivity and some amount of nuance but must always remain anchored in God’s vision for human flourishing, unswayed by cultural tides. Embodying and expressing this vision requires courageous, loving resistance. And part of resisting is remaining rather than retreating. This has been God’s plan for... Continue Reading

[Christ] suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell. Because we believe that Jesus was a personal actor in space-time history, we deny that his death was merely symbolic. He suffered an unjust conviction and was crucified by the Roman authorities, who knew how to execute people effectively. We... Continue Reading

When abortion advocates dehumanize the baby in the womb, they dehumanize themselves too. Ours is an age when so much of our culture encourages us to treat others made in God’s image as less than human. This is true, from the comparatively trivial trashing of others that is the favored idiom of those who seem... Continue Reading

A Christian repents murdering others with their attitude and sass and picks up the cleaver to begin murdering the sin that caused it. A Christian is the one who picks up the bayonet and goes to war, as Romans 8:13 says, not one who continually succumbs to their hostilities and rage. Here is what I... Continue Reading

We must take Christlikeness seriously right now because we do not know when the Lord will return (2 Pet. 3:10). We pursue holiness because all our works will be exposed on the last day (2 Pet. 3:10). We pursue holiness because whatever we live for in this life will be burned up and dissolved (2... Continue Reading

We remain firmly Presbyterian in polity, with the highest court being the General Synod. What seems to be at the center of this confusion is a short phrase in the new FOG “in order to:” That phrase indicates that the synod has the authority to do those things (organize, receive, divide, dissolve, etc.). And that... Continue Reading

For in the world, strength is measured by our ability to do things on our own. By ourselves. By our own intelligence or ingenuity or physical presence. Those are the truly strong people in the world. But here again we find another irony, because even those considered, in the eyes of the world, to be... Continue Reading