Scripture teaches us to come boldly to the throne of grace, so that we might find mercy there (Heb. 4:14-16). Notice the possible tensions here—the first is between throne and grace. Grace is not a kindly senility. Grace is not soft or indulgent. Grace is regal, grace is majestic; grace sits on a throne. Like …
Exhortation as Softener
Exhortations are intended to stir God’s people up in their resistance to sin. Exhort one another daily, it says, lest anyone be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Heb. 3:13). We see that sin hardens and, extending the metaphor, exhortations soften. We sometimes in our folly think to reverse this. We blame exhortations for hardening …
Reading tjhe World
We are supposed to love and revere the Word of God, but we are also told to love not the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Almost all of us know that loving the Scriptures means reading them, but few people know that not loving the …
You Might Be Envious If . . .
Envy is one of the sins we are most likely to hide from ourselves. This is because of the nature of the sin itself—it compares to others, and when you are looking at others it is hard to see yourself—and it is also one of the sins we most despise when we see it in …
Biblically Normed
Technology is a gift and blessing from God and, as such, it is a form of wealth. We are not permitted to think that wealth is sinful in and of itself, but we are required to remember at all times that it presents to us a peculiar set of temptations. Because the Bible doesn’t mention …
Stay at Your Post
When a nation offends God, the Bible teaches that He marches through the land in indignation. Blessings and disasters are a function of providence, and not a function of a random event dispenser in the sky. And the response to any and every event is always to be the same—repentance and faith. Now repentance and …
Plain Distinctions and High Theology
Clear thinking is a virtue, and murky thinking is a sin. Muddy confusion is one of the characteristic sins of our unhappy age. Now some with a pretense to clear thinking draw sharp and crisp lines in all the wrong places, and that folly is then pointed to by advocates of fuzzy thinking as a …
A New Set of Ancestors
One of the most maligned words in the Bible is “begat.” This is because we stumble over the long lists of them, not recognizing their importance. But to understand this word is to understand the nature of our salvation. James says “of his own will begat he us” — we were begotten into salvation. Regeneration, …
A Star in a Black Sky
We are evangelical Christians, which means a number of things. First, we profess our faith in the evangel, the Greek word for gospel, or good news. This is in evidence every week when we declare the good news summarized in the Apostles’ Creed. Second, we hold that in order for a man to be saved, …
Take Your Hands Away
The central lesson we must learn as we approach God in worship is the lesson of honesty. Confession of sin is agreement with God over what constitutes sin, and in order to do this we have read two things rightly. We have to read the text rightly, which is harder than it looks, and we …