Warfield on “Christianity and Our Times”
Christianity is for sinners who know they need a Savior. People who sees themselves as capable of loving God and neighbor on their own will remain indifferent to Christ and his gospel.
“Christianity is summed up in the phrase: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world with himself.” Where this great confession is contradicted or neglected, there is no Christianity.” The crisis in Warfield’s day was the reality that much of Christianity had jettisoned the gospel—for a host of reasons, and beyond the scope of Warfield’s answer to... Continue Reading
Diversity is Not a Virtue
Modern calls for focused diversity efforts in American churches are often problematically shallow.
Just as bodies in pews aren’t hard evidence of heart change, neither is a certain type of bodies in pews evidence that a church is racist or self-absorbed—or that a church has practiced true hospitality. Christ builds his Church. Christ is already building a diverse Church from every tribe, tongue, and nation. It’s our job to celebrate and... Continue Reading
Submission to God’s Will
In our submission, as we trust and lean on Him, God strengthens us and equips us for whatever He calls us to do.
Matthew 26, Jesus sets the pattern for His people. We present our requests and desires to God in prayer as He has invited us to do (Phil. 4:6). When it appears that His answer is no, we continue to pray, affirming His answer and our desire for His will to be done above all. And in... Continue Reading
A Robust Depravity – A Return To Calvinism
Our understanding of the glory of God’s grace is directly proportional to our understanding of man’s fallen condition.
The profound truth of this doctrine is the very backdrop for the glory of God’s saving grace in Christ; yet do we confess the totality of Total Depravity? I believe we are in need of recouping the biblical teaching that there is no mild antithesis between the seed of the woman and the seed of... Continue Reading
Your Fathering Legacy
The importance of building a godly fathering legacy and identifies a few practical suggestions about how to do it.
For Guys With Kids at Home Invest time with them one-on-one. Jesus appointed the twelve so that they might be with him. Our spiritual heritage is our influence. It requires time. Seek to understand them. Ask questions: What is going on in their world of experiences, feelings, and ideas? Jesus became flesh to enter our world. Empathize with them. Jesus,... Continue Reading
Without Natural Affection – The Dismantling of Faith & Family
In his book Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents, Rod Dreher writes about the many interviews he conducted with Christians who made it through the totalitarian regime of the former Communist Soviet Union.
Dreyer refers to learnings from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was a dissident of the Soviet communist regime. Solzhenitsyn wrote to his fellow countrymen before he was exiled from his home in Russia in 1974 for exposing the inhumane repression of his fellow countrymen, particularly by its repressive Gulag system. In his open letter, titled “Live Not By Lies”, he... Continue Reading
The Way is Shut: Evangelical Compromise and the Illusion of Virtual Church
You will not find a scriptural text where Christ or His apostles hid from the diseased and destitute, the lonely, depressed or dying in the interest of loving and saving them. If ever Christians should be wearied by empty evangelical platitudes to justify our inaction, it’s now.
The notion that the church can manage just fine online on any kind of ongoing basis is a fatal error. It is an unscriptural theology of creation and incarnation that believes the body of Christ can exist and function equally well in an abstract digital world, reducing the Lord’s Table to relative unimportance, and the... Continue Reading
Teaching Others to Sing Sweetly
We sometimes wonder what difference one person can make to a church.
Amidst all the dissonance, one woman sang clearly, calmly, and perfectly in tune, her sweet voice rising just above the din around her. She was undistracted by the flat notes and grating tones, undistracted by all the unskilled singers that surrounded her. As that musician stood and listened, he noticed with fascination that first one voice... Continue Reading
Modern Cultic Tendencies
Christians are no longer regularly taught the foundational truths of the Christian faith and are therefore left vulnerable to cultists and others who cleverly twist Scripture.
The church must then work to change the patterns of thought that contribute to the spread of cults and cultic tendencies. The church must reject irrational anti-intellectualism and embrace the God whose word is truth. Christians must regain both the desire and the ability to think—loving God with all of their heart and mind. Since... Continue Reading
Know Who You Work For, and Work Like You Know It
If you claim that Jesus is Lord of your life, your work will look different because of it.
Seldom do we think of how our work reflects our submission to Christ as Lord. But here’s the reality: Disgruntled workers have a bigger issue than just a bad attitude. When we serve in such a way, we bring reproach upon the God who called us to do that work. The Christian’s charge is simple:... Continue Reading
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