In his small book, What Is An Evangelical?, Martin Lloyd-Jones says a number of helpful things (along with some pretty unhelpful ones). But one of the helpful ones was this — “The next thing, clearly, about the evangelical is the tremendous emphasis that he puts upon the rebirth. This is absolutely basic to him . …
The Sacramental Story
The alternative to believing in the real presence of the Lord in the Supper is believing in His real absence. That can’t be right. So perhaps a better way to frame the debate should therefore be local presence versus a rightly understood covenantal presence. One of the great problems with local presence has to do …
Ugly Dies
George MacDonald once famously said that obedience is the great opener of eyes. But obedience has to come from an obedient heart, and in order to have obedient hearts, we must have new hearts. This brings us (yet again) to the foundational necessity of the new birth. Without that reality, there is absolutely nothing we …
Immediate Grace
Peter Leithart does a great job raising questions about B.B. Warfield’s book The Plan of Salvation here. I agree with just about all of Peter’s concerns, and would echo them. I certainly agree with him that at the very least a Warfieldian minimalism needs to be be filled out, and questions need to be answered. …
A Catholic Evangelical
When I write, as I often do, about the absolute necessity of the new birth, one question that has arisen is this — who or what am I arguing with? Here is a quick answer, or at least as quick as a four-fold answer can be. First, as Chesterton noticed, when Satan fell, he fell …
Silver on Top, and Black on the Bottom
It is bad when a blogger gets in over his head, or when a theologian does, or when a pamphlateer does, or when a connector-of-the-dots does. But, with all necessary qualifications made, it not bad when a preacher does. It is a preacher’s calling to get in over his head (2 Cor. 2:16). But he …
Three Cheers for “Moralistic” Applications of the OT
In recent years, it has become de rigeur to say that the stories of the Bible ought not to be read in ways that reduce the message to simple little Sunday School lessons. And of course, as with all such things, there is a sense in which this is perfectly acceptable, and in certain ways …
Break, Blow, Burn
Let us try to forget the word evangelical as a demographic description. Let us try to forget the word liturgy as a description of the boring church you grew up in. Let us try to forget the word doctrine as it was handled by the 19th century divine, the Rev. Dr. Snodgood, in three volumes. …
Missing Heaven By Eighteen Inches
Okay, I am saying this as a preacher, but I still want to maintain that sin is bad. But what kind of bad? We often know that something is bad, but don’t spend enough time thinking about why it is bad. Here in Moscow, we spend a lot of time attacking dualism, which is certainly …
Our Doctrinal and Liturgical Bramble Bushes
I am fond of saying that grace has a backbone, but I think it is time to explain what I mean by that. The context of these remarks is the general and current ongoing discussion about the worrisome trajectories of all those incipient legalists and antinomians out there. The incipient legalists are the ones the …