Our God is truly good. The only attitude that does not see Him that way is unbelief—the twisted view that there could be another source of good, an alternative take on it, another way. But only God is good. This means that anyone who would be good also must come to Him on His terms. …
But He Invited Both of You
We have been called to liberty, but this liberty is no occasion for the flesh. We are granted full forgiveness, but this is not granted so that we might begin sinning with impunity. How can we who died to sin still live in it? The works of the flesh are plain, Paul tells us. But …
Needed: More Wodehousian Treatments of Local Arts Groups
“In a media-driven culture in which status is granted according to progressive tastes, many otherwise conservative folks are only too eager to participate in local arts groups as a hedge against being called philistines. Some take a real interest in art, even apart from the social aspects, such as the wine and Brie parties at …
Ford and Chevy
“We tend to bond to all the wrong things. Picture a four-lane highway, two lanes headed to heaven and two lanes to hell. Alongside one another, a Ford and a Chevy are driving to heaven, and on the other side of the road a Ford and a Chevy are heading the other way. If the …
Trying to Get the Center to Hold
“When a culture’s sacrificial rituals ‘work,’ they transfer the existing rivalrous antagonisms onto one figure against whom all can unite, an act that miraculously dissolves existing tensions and replaces them with a social bond” (Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, p. 88).
Westminster Twenty: Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience
1. The liberty which Christ hath purchased for believers under the Gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the curse of the moral law (Tit. 2:14; 1 Thess. 1:10; Gal. 3:13); and, in their being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of …
Westminster Nineteen: Of the Law of God
1. God gave to Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound him and all his posterity, to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience, promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of it, and endued him with power and ability to keep it (Gen. 1:26–27; 2:17; Rom. …
True Authority Is Obedient
I have learned far more in Narnia than I can ever begin to explain, and so all I am going to try to do here is give you a small taste of some of the more important lessons I learned there. I hope that readers of these small sketches will be able to do what …
Father Hunger
Introduction: We live in fatherless times. The symptoms are marked, and they are everywhere. In some ways, we have adjusted to it, and in others, we in the conservative Christian world have overreacted to this vacuum by trying to manufacture our own solutions to the problem, which invariably make it worse. The Text: “Behold, I …
Which Instrument Are You Practicing?
This is a covenant meal. This means that the covenant features of blessing and cursing run right through the middle of it. In this covenant, God demands what He has always demanded from covenant-keepers, and that is faith in the only one who was a covenant-keeper completely, that is, the Lord Jesus. That is it—simple …