Luther’s 95 Theses decried the sale of indulgences by developing a number of themes: First, the Christian life is to be one of repentance and daily turning from sin rather than doing things (penance) to obtain pardon and removal of penalty. Here he was critiquing the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance. Second, the Church, and... Continue Reading

Christian people should be careful not to be too influenced by the celebrity culture of our age when being guided in some way by spiritual leaders who are not their local pastors or elders. Podcast preachers and YouTube teachers are not your pastors. Christians should commit to membership in a local congregation and eagerly sit... Continue Reading

During the meeting and in a follow-up email to WORLD, Johnson referred to the Compassionate and Faithful materials as a “learning experience,” not a curriculum. Since most staff had completed the training, Johnson told me it made sense to incorporate future training on sexuality and gender issues into Cru’s Institute of Biblical Studies for incoming... Continue Reading

One of the greatest gifts by McCormick was endowing four chairs in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Northwest in Chicago. The seminary had struggled to exist for several years in different locations but finally found a permanent site in Chicago in 1859 thanks to a gift of land from some city philanthropists and a... Continue Reading

The problem isn’t that there is too much individualism.  Pure individualism can still result in people seeking God because God is the source of their highest good.  Nor is the problem merely that people want to be happy because a consequence of knowing God is happiness and joy. The gender cult is simply an expression... Continue Reading

Mere intellectual knowledge that Jesus is the only Mediator and the One who fulfills the covenant promises is insufficient for us to receive the promised blessings—we need to exercise personal faith in Christ as the object of the blessings. God has chosen to make faith the instrument of union with Christ. This affects our invocation... Continue Reading

What we have seen is that the “day of judgment,” or “day of wrath,” will be the day of Jesus’s judgment and Jesus’s wrath, acting by the appointment of God the Father. Therefore, when Paul says that Jesus “delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10), we are not to think of the... Continue Reading

Church historians tells us that John was “nearly kidnapped” or “almost abducted” or “forcibly taken”–which essentially means he was kidnapped, abducted, or taken, despite the adverbs. For 700 miles the case was made for why John ought to be the next pastor of the city church in Constantinople and when they arrived back in the city–the... Continue Reading

Left and right decisions are different. These are the kinds of decisions in which there is no decision that is inherently more moral than the other. These are times when you just have to choose – to choose this home or that one. This town or that one. This job or that one. Neither choice... Continue Reading

We need thicker communities, but saying that and doing it are very different things. Rebuilding life after it’s been stripped apart by the many arms of cultural change will take a long time, maybe even generations, but the church has all that’s required to do so. If we want to get practical, one of the ways... Continue Reading