Spirituality is an area of ongoing interest to those outside the Christian faith, and so our neglect of these themes—motivation, repentance, and holiness—does more damage to our witness than we realize. If someone can look at your life and not see differences in your motive, a daily practice of repentance when that motive is off,... Continue Reading

To read Scripture apostolically, then, is not merely to extract moral principles, distill doctrine in abstraction, or isolate proof-texts. It is to perceive the coherence of God’s saving work in his ordained story from creation to new creation, centred upon the person of Jesus Christ. This may be one of the most important lessons the... Continue Reading

We might be tempted to think that living “worthy” means garnering enough merit to deserve respect. And we know there are at least two problems with that. First of all, we know that we will never be worthy of the Lord, no matter how hard we try. But secondly, we know that as Christians, we... Continue Reading

Perhaps you have a good reason for being unchurched. Maybe pain or disappointment from the family of God has left you with a bad taste in your mouth. If that’s your story, that pain matters, and it shouldn’t be minimized. Just “going back to church” may not be reasonable. I instead challenge you to take... Continue Reading

At a congressional hearing on the Department of Homeland Security’s Minnesota deportation efforts, the Rev. Mariah Tollgaard, a United Methodist minister in St. Paul, read a statement criticizing the president’s immigration policies and mentioned Matthew 25. In response, GOP Rep. Michael Cloud, a former communications director at an evangelical megachurch, brandished a Bible and argued... Continue Reading

Suffering can reveal impatience, anger, self-pity, pride, envy and unbelief. It can show us how much we crave ease, recognition, productivity and control. But this exposure is not God’s cruelty. It is part of his fatherly care.   There are lessons God teaches us in the valley that we rarely learn on the mountain top.... Continue Reading

Baptism is the sacrament of birth into the visible church; it can be passively received. The Lord’s Supper is the sacrament of growth and nourishment; it must be actively received by faith. You can bathe an infant who does nothing but cry, but you cannot feed a steak to a newborn.   Because the Reformed... Continue Reading

The consecrated life and the discerning life turn out to be one and the same, and this is where every Christian should rest. God pours out His pleasure on the child who is given over to His will and able to discern it.   The renewed mind is given for a purpose, and the close... Continue Reading

Public Christianity in England has long since been evacuated of any doctrinal content or counter-cultural pungency. The fact that the Church of England remains established and yet only a fraction of the country bothers to attend even once a year means that it is in a permanent state of having to justify its own existence... Continue Reading

The biblical worldview recognizes no such category. Scripture does not divide humanity into religious and non-religious people. Rather, it divides humanity into those who worship the Creator and those who worship the creature (Rom. 1:25). The fundamental distinction is not between worship and non-worship but between true worship and false worship. The Bible assumes that... Continue Reading