What We Miss When We Skip the Prophets
Aside from missing out on a fifth of God’s word, here are five specific treasures we miss when we consistently neglect the reading and study of the prophets.
I don’t have any recent data or research to back me up. But when I talk to other Christians about what they’re reading, the prophets come up the least. If someone mentions the prophets, it’s usually because they’re following a read-through-the-Bible plan. (And they’re usually eager to get to Matthew!) From what Biblical book... Continue Reading
The Non-Trump Evangelicals
Some evangelicals want to wean their brethren off unconditional support for Donald Trump.
Doug Birdsall, the organiser of the Wheaton meeting, who is honorary chairman of Lausanne, an international movement of evangelicals, says that many believers are tired of seeing Christians who praise Mr Trump being held up as representative of the faith. They are also tired of themselves being portrayed as racist and misogynistic because of other... Continue Reading
Surveying Sanctification: What About God’s Holiness?
The call to holiness is rooted and grounded in the triune God.
In the middle of winter temperatures are below freezing and it snows. Yet I can look outside and see young people standing at the bus stop in shorts! These young people are not living in light of winter. They are actually living indifferently or even in rebellion to winter! They are certainly not living in... Continue Reading
Why Legalism Destroys Churches and Kills Christians
The law as a guide to salvation is a terrible taskmaster.
While few of us today seek to follow the Pharisaical model, this level of misery is alive and well among those who misunderstand the complementarity of law and gospel and seek to earn favor with God through both keeping the law and misappropriating it to extrapolate a set of personal convictions—often related to modes of... Continue Reading
Heaven Would Be Hell Without God
To be with God — to know him, to see him — is the central, irreducible draw of heaven.
Surely no one who had actually been in heaven would neglect to mention what Scripture shows is its main focus. If you had spent an evening dining with a king, you wouldn’t just talk about the place settings. When John was shown heaven and wrote about it, he recorded the details — but first and... Continue Reading
How to Lose a Pastor in 10 Years
I don’t want us to lose any more pastors.
It’s painful when a pastor leaves a pulpit in question or disgrace. There is no side, despite what the news reports. There is a circular pain without an exit ramp. No Jesus follower wants the kingdom of God to be tarnished, and maybe that’s the only thing any of us can agree on, but at... Continue Reading
Defending the Faith; Denying the Image – 19th Century American Confessional Calvinism in Faithfulness and Failure
How 19th century Presbyterians simultaneously faithfully defended historic Christian orthodoxy against Enlightenment rationalistic anti-supernaturalism, and accommodated (indeed undergirded) America’s original sin: race-based chattel slavery (and later segregation).
In Old School Presbyterianism, especially in the South, theological orthodoxy was deliberately wedded to the culture’s socio-economic structure, indeed, theological orthodoxy became its main proponent and defender, so that, as the twentieth century dawned and theologians looked for ways to break the link between the Presbyterian Church and segregation and Jim Crow, they felt they... Continue Reading
Rosaria Butterfield: Christian Hospitality Is Radically Different from ‘Southern Hospitality’
It has nothing to do with entertainment—and everything to do with addressing the crisis of unbelief.
Entertainment is about impressing people and keeping them at arm’s length. Hospitality is about opening up your heart and your home, just as you are, and being willing to invite Jesus into the conversation, not to stop the conversation but to deepen it. Hospitality is fundamentally an act of missional evangelism. And I wouldn’t know... Continue Reading
Another Downside Of Pietism: Christ’s Bodily Resurrection Is Marginalized
Pietism is not to be confused with piety, which describes the Christian life and worship; pietism describes a retreat into the subjective experience of God.
Dale W. Brown, who writes from a perspective sympathetic to pietism, identifies five central motifs: 1) a turn to the practical; 2) a primitivist reading of Scripture, which is described as Biblicism; 3) an emphasis on sanctification and ethics; 4) an emphasis on religious experience; 5) acts of mercy (Dale W. Brown, Understanding Pietism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,... Continue Reading
Why Do Christians Put Up With Trump?
Despite efforts to caricature him, President Trump presents a complex picture of sound and unsound policies and personal virtues and vices.
To be sure, Trump’s rhetoric and personal behavior — his denunciations of Hispanics, tasteless remarks about women and sex, and marital infidelities — were negatives for many of us who voted for him. But, though sometimes excessive or offensive, his brash style was effective because it showed that he understood the feelings of those alienated... Continue Reading