“The surest way to maintain variety in to keep to the mind of the Holy Spirit in the particular passage under consideration. No two texts are exactly similar; something in the connection or drift of the passage gives to each apparently identical text a shade of difference. Keep to the Spirit’s track and you will …
The Font of Envy
“However, people who think like this do so because they have asked the wrong question, or looked down the wrong end of the telescope. They have asked where poverty comes from instead of where wealth comes from. You might as well ask how ignorance of cardiac surgery ever came into being, rather than knowledge of …
The Demands of the System
Andy Webb tries to take us to task, but it doesn’t come out very well. He says: “There are so many non-Reformed doctrines floating around in the FV that one hardly knows where to begin addressing them. But the idea that everyone in the covenant is ‘saved in some sense’ regardless of whether they are …
The Flying Scroll
Up to this point, the visions have been greatly encouraging. But God is a holy God, and covenant blessings are never poured out blindly, apart from God’s recognition of our obedience or lack of it. The blessings are utterly inconsistent with continued sin. “Then I turned and raised my eyes, and saw there a flying …
Culpable Ignorance
Although ignorance is sometimes exculpatory, the Scriptures frequently describe spiritual ignorance or blindness as both causing sin and exacerbating the fault of it. The word is agnoeo. Christians can struggle with blameworthy ignorance. Paul warns the Romans that he does not want them to be ignorant of the mystery of Christ, which would result in …
Spiritual Nutrition
“Whatever else may be present, the absence of edifying, instructive truth, like the absence of flour from bread, will be fatal” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 71).
First Things First
“It is from social prejudice that one learns social virtue. Metaphysical thought and reflection come later” (Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice, p. 83).
Teachers Must Be Students
“In order to teach, the Church must first be taught. Writers must be readers. ‘A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself’ (Prov. 18:2). The Church will never have a shortage of people who want to ‘say a few words.’ But mere talk, or writing, or publishing, is worthless. …
If the Shoe Pinches, Throw It Away
“But if you look into the church and consider the dissensions there, there is an additional reason for them, for usually many hypocrites are mingled in with the godly there. They take up a profession of religion and so creep into the church; they find spiritual things unsuitable to them, hence they fly off. Their …
Sins of Ignorance
Once a year, on the day of atonement, the high priest of Israel would enter into the holiest sanctuary in order to offer blood for his own sins, and for the errors of the people (Heb. 9:7). The word rendered errors here is agnoema. It is a broad term, encompassing sins generally, and has reference …