Lane has taken a moment to answer my question here, and so I guess it is now my turn to respond. This is the way the controversy is framed by our opponents, and there are some basic structural problems with it. They say that if you want to affirm the gospel in the way our …
Real Ambition
INTRODUCTION: So we have considered desire, envy, and competition, and we now come to ambition. To address the subject rightly, we have to recall what we learned thus far. There is a certain kind of desire that every human being has to deal with, and this is a desire that tends to veer toward envy. …
The Great Transaction
The two times the word hamartia appears in 2 Corinthians it is in that great passage talking about the great transaction that occurred on the cross. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (5:21). Christ knew no …
Lost Fire
“There is, no doubt, such a thing as feeding the brain at the expense of the heart, and many a man in his aspirations to be literary has rather qualified himself to write reviews than to preach sermons. A quaint evangelist was wont to say that Christ hung crucified beneath Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. It …
Gimme Gimme
“All true needs—such as food, drink, and companionship—are satiable. Illegitimate wants—pride, envy, greed—are insatiable” (Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction, p. 107).
Careful . . .
“Although a firm believer in predestination, he did not fall into the errors of those who get hold of only one end of a truth, and who then wave it around until they hurt themselves” (For Kirk and Covenant, p. 105).
Enough Troubles
Hamartano is used a number of times in 1 Corinthians, but hamartia doesn’t come up until chapter 15. Paul first tells believers to flee from fornication because every other sin is outside the body, while sexual sin is a sin against one’s own body (6:18). But to marry is not to commit a sin (v. …
So Spit on Your Hands, and Throw Your Necktie Over Your Shoulder
“If we are not zealous, neither will they be. It is not in the order of nature that rivers should run uphill, and it does not often happen that zeal rises from the pew to the pulpit” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 306).
And It Encounters a Lot of Realities
“Envy cannot be assuaged any more than cancer can be; they are both pathologies whose very being requires expansion to their neighbor’s territory. There is no fence that will ever be respected, no limitation that will be recognized as legitimate, no sense of proportion or humility sufficient to smother a sense of inferiority. By its …
A Bountiful Eye
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 138 “He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor” (Prov. 22:9). The duty of almsgiving is assumed in this text, and it is reinforced with the promise of blessing for …