When Christians publicly confess the truths that the church has always confessed, God is distinguishing between the church and the world...
Christian service will also flow out of Christian discipleship. If we merely program service in the local church, we will end up creating a church full of Martha’s (Luke 10:38...
The Westminster Standards address many of the significant theological and practical matters for Christian discipleship better than we could on our own. If we are to equip congregants to be sound in the faith, fruitful in every good word and work, and to be prepared for potentially difficult days ahead, we should consider using the Westminster Standards as a guide in Christian discipleship. ...
Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28). He is the one who rested in the grave on the old covenant Sabbath...
The entirety of the believer’s life can only be lived in light of the priesthood of Christ. As the Mediator of the new covenant, Jesus preeminently functions as the Great High Priest over the house of God. In the words of James Henley Thornwell, “Priesthood is the perfection of mediation,” and we have such a perfect Mediator in Jesus...
the resurrection on the last day is built on the resurrection of Jesus Himself. Just as all mankind is originally in Adam, so believers have been brought into union with the last Adam, Jesus Christ (1Corinthians 15:21...
May we not fall into ritualistic, Christless, and imbalanced approaches to the means of grace in our churches. How we minister the means of grace in the context of public worship is more important than simply professing to be “an ordinary means of grace church.” May the ordinary means of grace be more than a Shibboleth to us....
A brief survey of the top fifty best-selling Christian books reveals what subjects are of the greatest and least interest to the majority of professing Christians. Books on purpose, finances, personality, self-esteem, love languages, and relational boundaries dominate the list. Books on the triune God, Christ, sin, the gospel, Scripture, preaching, the sacraments, prayer, church discipline, and the local church are woefully wanting. ...
In his book "The Problem of Pain," C.S. Lewis wrote, “The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. . . . Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”...
we need to learn to react to error in a way commensurate with the truth...
Evangelical repentance is not a one-time experience in the life of those who come to Jesus Christ in faith. Rather, as those trusting in Christ, we will spend the rest of our lives repenting of indwelling sin (Rom. 7:15...
Keep ReadingA significant number of mountaintop experiences also structure the life and ministry of Jesus. At the outset of His ministry, the Savior went up on the Mount of Olives in order to give the divinely inspired exposition of the law of the Kingdom of God (Matt. 5-7). As he prepared to draw near to Jerusalem, Jesus revealed His own divine glory to his disciples in his transfigu...
Keep ReadingRichard Sibbes, one of the most beloved English Puritan pastors and theologians, once wrote, “God knows we have nothing of ourselves, therefore in the covenant of grace He requires no more than He gives, but gives what He requires, and accepts what He gives.”1 With this statement, Sibbes conveyed the essence of the grace of God in the gospel. However, we still must ans...
Keep ReadingWhile the disciples and Apostles did exercise their gifts of preaching and teaching among the unreached in unique ways and circumstances, they did so with the goal of establishing local churches. The local church, in turn, became the typical way in which the world would be reached with the Gospel. The city-to-city approach of Jesus supports the conclusion that the Savior i...
Keep ReadingOn the night I proposed to Anna 15 years ago, she gave me a gift--an antiquarian edition of Thomas Brooks The Unsearchable Riches of Christ. It is a work to which I returned many times over the past 15 years. The section on the riches and excellencies of Christ, by itself, makes this work a must read. The opening section on humility and gifts is one of the most soul streng...
Keep ReadingMost of the types in the Fourth Gospel are rooted in Israel’s exodus and wilderness experience. Whether it was the incarnation of the Son of God typified in the tabernacle in the wilderness (John 1:14), Jesus’ miracle of turning water to wine (John 2:1...
Keep ReadingThough it has been a matter of no small debate in recent decades, it is right for us to say that all the saving benefits of what Christ has accomplished for us by his death and resurrection become ours "distinctly, inseparably and simultaneously" when we are united to Jesus by faith. Nevertheless, there is still a logical order by which the benefits of redemption are appli...
Keep ReadingAmong the litany of important and under-treated subjects that the Apostle Paul touches upon in his first letter to the Corinthians, John Calvin reflected on those concerning one believer taking another believer to court over personal or public injuries (1 Cor. 6:1-8). ...
Keep ReadingThough Jesus’ miracles of healing were complete healings, they were, nevertheless, selective and temporal. Jesus never purposed to heal everyone with whom He came into contact. Additionally, all those who were healed by Jesus ultimately died. Those facts lead us to the following vital questions: What purpose did Jesus’ miraculous healings serve? How are Christ’s mira...
Keep Readingt is right for us to both affirm that the Father never stopped loving the Son when he hung on the cross and that the Father was justly angry with the Son "because of the sins themselves which he took upon him, and because of the persons of sinners whom he sustained." It would be unorthodox to insist that within the Godhead, the love of the Father for the Son was ever dimin...
Keep Reading