Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In my last essay, we saw how consumer culture has gutted the familial category necessary to understand the church. When a consumer visits a church, he expects another service-provider, such as a hospital or a restaurant. He doesn’t understand the role of men in ministry, and thus, not the role…
First time visitors to our church sometimes express their surprise that children, even the youngest, participate with their parents in the entire worship service. Many congregations created an expectation for the parents (and children) of Sunday School or Child Care being available during the entire worship service or during the…
Quantifying the Love of God “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” ~ John 3:16 This most beloved verse in all the Bible was spoken by the Savior himself to Nicodemus. As…
While The Lord’s Prayer enjoys wide recognition throughout the Church, its richness and depth may be unrealized due to a lesser familiarity with, what I will argue is, its primary inspiration: the Tabernacle. There, Christ’s intent can rightly be discerned. The Prayer’s methodological correction to the Jews and Gentiles wasn’t…
The Consumption of the Covenant Idea of the Church Last time we saw consumerism, having canalized its attitudes in our culture, shapes what the consumer sees when he or she steps into a church. Here, we’ll see how it has eviscerated the covenant and familial ideas necessary to understand the…
The ignoble Jayber Crow can stir your appetite for the noble. It’s the simplicity of a good ol’ Port William boy that builds the charm of the book. In fact, the elitists in Port William receive the harshest blows and severest outcomes, as they should. But before delving into the…
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INTRODUCTION Jesus comes healing, casting out demons, raising the dead, preaching the good news to the poor (Matthew 5-9), and He sends His apostles out to do the same (Matthew 10). How will Israel respond? That is the story of Matthew 11-12. THE TEXT “Now it came to pass, when…
It really happened. Some 2000 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth died on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem and was placed in a nearby tomb . On the third day after His death, women came to the tomb to dress the body and found the tomb empty, heard from angels that…
John 20:3-8: Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple, and were going to the tomb. So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not…
The God of the Bible is Lord of history. He shows who He is in what He does for His people. In the Old Covenant, Yahweh was the God of the patriarchs, the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, and finally the God who brought Israel back from exile.…
In their introduction to Engaging with Barth: Contemporary Evangelical Critiques (Apollos/IVP, 2008), editors David Gibson and Daniel Strange express their appreciation for Barth’s work in “awakening a new interest in the Bible” and sparking “a massive recovery of the Reformed tradition within academic theology.” Appreciative though they are, they worry…
Patristic trinitarian theology has been seen as a symptom of the radical Hellization of the church. Barth recognized that the opposite is true: The formulations of the Trinity were designed to preserve the biblical confession that God is a personal Lord. He says, “it follows from the Trinitarian understanding of…
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