Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
A Study in Biblical and Practical Theology Sunday School Notes / Epiphany 2004 Introductory Note: January 6 is Epiphany in the traditional church calendar. Though Epiphany is often treated as a single day, with the Sundays following counted as “Sundays after Epiphany,” we will treat Epiphany as an extended season.…
Imagine someone from another world trying to learn to live in our society according to our customs. What if someone gave him a check for a hundred dollars for his birthday–the first check he had ever seen in his life? Would he immediately understand how a check was used? Perhaps…
According to Presbyterian doctrine, as articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, baptism is a baptized person’s “admission… into the visible church.” By referring to the “visible church,” the document makes clear it is referring to the present institutional Church with all her imperfections, as opposed to the future Church…
N. T. Wright claims that in the Apostle Paul’s writings “righteousness,” as it predicated of humans, denotes “covenant membership.” When he wrote this in the New Bible Dictionary edited by Sinclair Ferguson, J. I. Packer, and David Wright, no one thought this was too big a deal. However, when he…
It seems almost human nature to think that we can find something to do for God that will make Him do us favors. If we live more virtuously, or cut down on a vice or two, then God will have to reward us. But the problem with this notion is…
The First Commandment teaches us to trust in Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life. The First Commandment reads (I’m using NASB throughout): “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Obviously, trusting in someone or something else (even one’s own good works) for justification, sanctification, and eternal life”…
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In a 1953 speech delivered in New York marking the 20th anniversary of the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine, Raphael Lemkin retold the chilling story of the Soviet Union's deliberate liquidation of Ukraine's churches, its “soul” and its “brain.” “Going along with this attack on the intelligentsia was an offensive against…
Psalm 45 begins as a song of praise by a court poet for a victorious king. Halfway through it turns into an epithalamion. As a complete poem, it a rollicking ol' romance. After the opening promise to compose a “made-thing” (Heb., ma'asah ) for the king, the poet celebrates the…
On the third day after Jesus’ death, women came to the tomb to dress the body and found the tomb empty, heard from angels that Jesus had risen from the dead, and shortly after encountered Jesus Himself. It really happened. If it really happened, then the power of tyrants is…
Holy Saturday is the mystery of God’s silence, and it is a great mystery. But the Son of God cannot claim Sheol as its Lord without turning death upside down. Death cannot hold Him. He is too big. Silence cannot muzzle the eternal Word, not forever. His descent is harrowing…
Jesus’ death does not contradict His sovereignty. It is a revelation of His sovereign Lordship. Jesus’ life and death reveals that God is Lord not only over all things He is Lord in all things. He is not only Lord over the safe confines of heaven, but Lord in the…
Anthony Pagden is worried about the rise of religion in the past several decades ( The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters ). He fears “the outcome might indeed be something close to the nightmare dreamed up by the contemporary American philosopher and psychologist Daniel Dennett: ‘The Enlightenment is long…
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