Instead of fleeing temptation, we sometimes want to figure out where the technical sin line is, and then walk the line just on the right side of it. But dallying with sin in this way really is morally questionable. It may not be explicit sin, but it is teetering on the edge of it. The …
Vindication From the Presence
In a world full of bumps and conflicts, we all want vindication. This is entirely natural, but we have to remember that the people who were entirely in the wrong want vindication as much as anybody else. In fact, they frequently want vindication much more than the innocent or wronged parties do. They demand it, …
A Two-Fold Virtue
The principle of new life is given instantaneously. There is no middle ground between death and life. Once a man is regenerated, he is no longer dead in his sins. Until he is quickened, he is entirely dead. There is no gradation between death and life. This is why the Scripture teach us plainly that …
Name Tags and the Lord’s Supper
This is the Table of the Lord, just as the Bible is the Word of the Lord. Both the Table and the Word contain great and precious promises. But here is the question, one that has troubled many (in one sense) and not troubled near enough (in another). Are these promises for you? Is your …
Come, Let Us Reason
When God invites us to reason together with Him, He invites us to think about something that makes plain sense. When men are given over to what they call the pursuit of reason, they are often trying to manufacture something that doesn’t make sense except to a select few. God stoops and offers to wash …
The Politics of Christmas
Introduction The carnal, unbelieving mind always understands political rule in a particular way. The names may change—Pharaoh, Caesar, pope, or president-for-life—but the underlying realities are always the same. These realities have to do with tyranny and coercion, and the imposition of a right-handed power, the kind of power that is necessarily suspicious of biblical liberty. …
A Body That Could Die
The body that was broken for you was a body broken on the cross. But the body that was broken on the cross was the same body that was formed in the womb of the virgin. And that body was taken on by the eternal Word in order that it might be broken. The blood …
Christmas and the Philosophers
When Christ was born into the human race, He had come to rescue a race that was entirely lost. We were not entirely forsaken—because of His gracious intention for us—but we were entirely lost. This means that everything we had with us was lost too. When a hiker is lost in the woods, not only …
A Theology of Christmas Gifts
INTRODUCTION:One of the most obvious features of our Christmas celebrations is the gift-giving. How are we to understand this as Christians? What are the pitfalls? Are all the pitfalls obvious? Because our lives are to be lives of grace, and because charis means grace or gift, this is something we have to understand throughout the …
Christ Is Not at the End of a Supply Chain
The Puritan William Bridge noted that it is “man’s disposition to come to God at the second hand.” As we approach the Supper, we are sometimes tempted to think of God as the wholesaler, and the minister of the particular church as the retailer. But that is not how this is at all. God is …