C. S. Lewis’s line is appropriate here: “I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun, not just because I see it, but by it I can see everything else.” Immersion into God’s world, through Scripture, changes the way we think, feel, and live—even when it doesn’t give us detailed prescriptions on every aspect... Continue Reading

In short, the Two Kingdoms approach gives too little weight to the fact that every culture is filled with idols, that sin distorts everything, that there can be no final neutrality, and that we need Scripture and the gospel, not just natural revelation, to guide us in our work in the world. I don’t think... Continue Reading

What will a fresh Christianity look like in America?…Sunday worship will have less denominational flavor and more interaction among local constituents. Traditional resources like prayer books and hymnals will give way to local idioms and creative resources. Leaders will be locals, not hires from afar. First, it will have multiple faces, not just a few... Continue Reading

Can the commission be saved? Yes, but it will take grassroots contact with your two senators, Senator Durbin, and the White House. Tell them religious freedom is too precious and too endangered to be a political bargaining chip. Tell them to reauthorize the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Last week, the Obama administration issued... Continue Reading

This is an excerpt from Horatius Bonar’s God’s Way of Holiness. Much here that is helpful to men and women of God. Read carefully, to the very end. It’s packed with meat. Paragraphing is mine. (TB, w/thanks to Tim C. by way of Matt B.) “The man who knows that he is risen with Christ,... Continue Reading

One incident is indicative of the tensions developing at Northampton. This is sometimes called the “bad book” incident. Some young men (in their twenties) in the congregation got a hold of a midwifery book that described intimate details of the female anatomy and these young men used this information to taunt young women in the... Continue Reading

I wonder if the Tebow critics would be as mouthy about his faith if Tim’s name was Achmed and the god he praised after a TD was Allah. I doubt it. Why do I hesitate? Well, it’s principally because Christophobic toads are afraid to turn the verbal guns they use to berate Christians on Muslims,... Continue Reading

Why would it be positively beneficial to engage the complex questions raised by the non-literal approaches to Genesis 1 and 2 in relation to the historicity of Adam and Eve? Why would it be positively beneficial for denominations to engage, creating positive statements and formulating clear boundaries? Certainly in part because a failure to work... Continue Reading

The minute we think that anybody owes us grace, a bell should go off in our heads to alert us that we are no longer thinking about grace, because grace, by definition, is something we don’t deserve. It is something we cannot possibly deserve. We have no merit before God, only demerit. If God should... Continue Reading

I’ve seen baptism administered at different points in the service, but it makes sense to me that the seal be preceded by what is being sealed (the promises of the Word of God). Yesterday, I read Rowland Ward’s section in the book Scripture and Worship: Biblical Interpretation and the Directory for Worship (P&R Publishing, 2007)... Continue Reading