We have already seen that Christ is the foundation of every true form of liberty. Civic liberty is an impossibility for a people who are enslaved to their lusts. For such a people, constitutional liberties are nothing but paper liberties — the kind of thin surety that tends to satisfy slaves who need to be …
A Longing for Liberty
One of the things that the Holy Spirit gloriously does in this sorry world of ours is His liberating work. The Holy Spirit is an agent of liberty. The Spirit sets men free, and He does it through the gospel. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; Because the Lord hath anointed me …
The R2K Crucifix Problem
Carl Trueman recently wrote A Church for Exiles for First Things, which you may read here. If you would like, a good response from Joel McDurmon can be found here. But my response to Carl will be a tad shorter than Joel’s — just enough to register a few basic concerns. First, it is undeniable …
The Willies and the Fantods
One of the things I do from time to time is draw lessons for the United States from the history of Israel in the Old Testament. I know that this must exasperate some good folks, making them dance beside their computers in frustration, exclaiming to their ceiling fan that I clearly don’t know that America …
Like a Fist
As Iraq continues to spiral toward chaos, and is doing so in the Facebook era, the one thing we should want to avoid is directionless or aimless outrage. Anger under such circumstances is certainly appropriate and necessary, but like a fist, it needs somewhere to land. I am writing primarily about the treatment of Christians …
On the Lam for Jesus
And of course we should all know that Christians ought not to be scofflaws. We are to be among the best citizens a magistrate ever had — we should be diligent and hard-working, dutiful and responsible, so that we might put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. We should bake the best cakes in …
The Mind of a Free Man
Villainy is not honest. I mean, c’mon. This means that when rulers are ungodly, we should expect them to be like their father, the devil, who is the father of liars (John 8:44). When they lie, they speak their native language. Bitterness and cursing are under their tongue, but of course never at the press …
A Covenant of Salt, or The Politics of Envy
The Lord Jesus compares His followers to two things, salt and light (Matt. 5:13-14). Salt that loses its saltiness is despised by men, and as a consequence is walked on. Light that is hidden from men is not something they respond to at all—because it is hidden from them. So we either have a no …
Love and Loyalty: A Meditation on the Fourth
The other day I tweeted this, and it drew more than the usual number of comments, and I thought I needed to develop it. Here is the tweet. “Feel uncomfortable at a patriotic worship service? Don’t feel superior if you would also feel uncomfortable at a Fourth of July parade.” The comments were mostly generated …
Uplift and Sunshine
This article is long enough and ignorant enough to be pretty tedious, but if you want to know how “what passes for journalism these days” is dealing with issues over on what they consider to be the Hard Right, you need look no further. “Throughout Scripture,” Leithart declared in a passage from his 2012 book …