A Site for the Teaching Ministry of Nick Batzig
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...
In my last TCC post, I sought to introduce a subject that I realized would be entirely new to some. Knowing this, I thought that it might be beneficial to give a few more examples of how Jesus would have read the Old Testament as the Covenant revelation of God written to Him. Many have come to the right understanding that the Old Testament isabout Christ, but have perhaps ...
Keep ReadingThere has been something of a biblical-theological revolution over the past several decades. It is not a revolution in which new doctrines are being uncovered so much as it is one by which our understanding of a Christ-centered and redemptive-historical interpretation of Scripture is being refined. Many in Reformed and Calvinistic churches have welcomed this deve...
Keep ReadingIn the previous post we briefly considered the biblical teaching on what is commonly called definitive sanctification. In this post we want to briefly consider yet another aspect of the biblical teaching on sanctification which has been equally overlooked or downplayed--namely, positional sanctification. The idea of positional sanctification has sometimes been co...
Keep ReadingWhat is the most important overlooked biblical doctrine? Without hesitation, I would suggest that it is the doctrine ofdefinitive sanctification.1 It was the late Professor John Murray who first articulated and popularized this doctrine. As he studied the exegetical statements of the New Testament that spoke of believershaving beensanctifiedthrough the death of Christ (e.g...
Keep ReadingWhy does so much of the Old Testament seem so foreign and irrelevant to those living in the New Covenant era today? Why do we so often struggle to understand how the events in the Old Testament apply to us today? How can we make sense of what seems to be disconnected biographies of saints in the Old Testament? How do events like Israel's exile into Babylon and pr...
Keep ReadingOne of the more spiritually edifying questions that I remember debating with several brothers in seminary (and there were certainly plenty of spiritually unedifying ones!) was, "Does God the Father love us because of Jesus?" It might not seem like an obviously difficult question on the surface. The instinctive answer would seem to be, "Absolutely!" After all, when I think ...
Keep ReadingI am the prodigal son. I ran as far and as fast away from my heavenly Father as I could until He, by His utterly undeserved and lavish grace, drew me back to Himself. Not long after I was converted, many would tell me how my life was a beautiful picture of what Jesus had spoken about in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-31). It wasn't until years later that I cam...
Keep ReadingIf you were hoping to read a post about the temperance movement, wineries, micro-brews or an illegitimate use of the Bible to fuel the health food revolution (or perhaps I should have said, "health food religion") then you could very well be disappointed. If, however, you are looking for an explanation about what the Scriptures tell us that Jesus drank when He spoke of "th...
Keep ReadingThe Puritan theologian, Thomas Manton, once said: "The great skill of Christians is to find the New Testament prefigured in the Old, and the Old Testament fulfilled in the New Testament." What helps us most in this endeavor is that it doesn't take long when reading through the NT to come across one of the 250+ citations of the OT. As we study the way in which the Apostles ...
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