Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Your first born is a novelty. Everything seems special and unique. No one’s child is like yours. Then, over time, you begin to make mistakes. Some strategies don’t work on the additional personalities born into your family, or they simply don’t scale from a practical perspective. With maturity, you realize…
Could Jesus have sinned? Before answering the question, it's best to run through a couple of qualifiers. First, scripture clearly teaches He did not sin. Second, I realize the seeming futility when discussing hypothetical situations. The question of the peccability of Jesus, or Jesus's capacity to sin, is in reality,…
The first time I saw the inside of a prison was in 1999; I was 16. I hadn’t knocked over a fruit stand or been caught stealing hubcaps, I was just an unsuspecting teenager playing piano for a Louisiana gospel group. One Wednesday evening in October, my pastor and leader…
The act of naming carries a lot of weight in the Bible. Naming denotes authority and possession; the namer signifying that he understands the thing named, and therefore possesses the requisite wisdom to rule over it. God set the stage for naming when he named the domains during the first…
This short essay makes an obvious point: Church growth is a matter of the rate of entry into a church relative to the rate of exit from that church. Perhaps church growth literature has long recognized that fact. Yet given the greater focus in church – at least in my…
If you’ve not yet heard of Aaron Renn’s three worlds framework , here’s the quick version: once upon a time, being a Christian was a net social good in American society. Whatever was going on behind the scenes in elite institutions, the general rank-and-file perception of Christianity was positive. That…
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In a 1987 article in CBQ, Frank Matera deploys a highly technical narratological apparatus to draw the astonishing conclusion that “the plot of Matthew’s gospel has something to do with salvation history, the recognition of Jesus’ identity, his rejection by Israel, and with the preaching of the gospel to the…
In the current issue of Mars Hill audio magazine, Ken Myers, quoting from Craig Gay, makes the important point that modernity is defined not so much by its aspiration to control as by the means it uses to achieve control. Instead of seeking to control reality with magic or prayer,…
In his Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford), Christopher Butler points out that postmodern art and postmodern theory arose at different times and had different sources of inspiration. Postmodernism in art is evident in the postwar period as art becomes “deliberately less unified, less obviously ‘masterful,’ more playful or anarchic,…
Full Disclosure: I’m always borrowing from James Jordan, but this outline borrows from him more than most. INTRODUCTION We tend to read the Bible as if it were only about God working out our salvation from sin. But that is too narrow an understanding of God’s purposes in creation. As…
Prayer has an effect in the same way that all other causes have their effect. Prayer is just as much a cause as any other secondary causes in creation. Do you believe that hitting a ball with a bat causes the ball to fly through the air? But how can…
Matthew 7:11: If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him. We have been looking this morning at how our prayers fit into God’s sovereign government of…
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