Holiness is a glorious perfection belonging to the nature of God, hence he is in Scripture styled often the Holy One, the Holy One of Jacob, the Holy One of Israel, and oftener entitled Holy than Almighty, and set forth by this part of his dignity more than by any other (Stephen Charnock) In a …
Rejoicing in Gluten
“There are few actions you will ever take that have more of the stuff of history in them. A woman with her sleeves rolled up and flour on her hands is one of the most gorgeous stabilities in the world. Don’t let your family miss the sight” (Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, …
Basic Deception
The word apatao means to deceive, and is used four times in the New Testament. The first is in Ephesians. “Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience” (Eph. 5:6). The kind of vanity in view here is the vanity …
Dried to Death
“So long as the life of the sermon is strengthened by preparation, you may prepare to the utmost; but if the soul evaporates in the process, what is the good of such injurious toil? It is a kind of murder which you have wrought upon the sermon which you have dried to death” (Charles Spurgeon, …
Paganism at the Movies
“The cult of celebrity fills a religious hole dug by modernism . . . The machines of show business brought the gods back to life . . . Images are pervasive, emotionally captivating, and . . . dare I say it? Sacred . . . This is what it means to be a pagan. Our …
A Distinction to File Away
“The Bible says true marriages can be entered disobediently, while other forms of disobedience do not result in a marriage at all, but rather in perversions. There is a difference between a disobedient marriage, and a disobedience which pretends to be a marriage” (Her Hand in Marriage, p. 35).
The Homo Lobby and Hatred Inflation
A bit more on the topic of the previous post. I certainly believe that it is possible for Christians, standing for a biblical understanding of sexuality, to sin against homosexuals by means of verbal violence. Expressions of malice, pettiness, personal hostility, and so forth are prohibited in Scripture. “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, …
The Homo Thing
I have recently been reading The God of Sex by Peter Jones, and have been very impressed by it. Jones very ably shows, as his subtitle declares, “How Spirituality Defines Your Sexuality.” Homosex — not to mention all the other laundry list perversions that gender studies departments like to catalog for us — is a …
Coming into the Backstretch
The next chapter, Justice Schmustice, is now available to the reading public.
Hypocrisy and the Young
This exhortation is directed to the young people in our midst, to those who have grown up in the covenant. Here is the charge. Our unbelieving culture around us likes to pretend that hypocrisy, particularly religious hypocrisy, is the special province of elderly and crotchety Christians. But as one who has spent my entire life …