Posts by Stephen Unthank

  1. Posts by
  2. Posts by

Posts by

The Trinity: Why the Church Should Believe in God's Simplicity

Stephen Unthank
Jul 7, 2016
Why does my church - the mourning widow, the lustful high-school jock, the overworked dad, or the tired homeschooling mom - need to relish in the doctrine of God’s Simplicity? Why do I as a pastor have a duty to ground my people in this seemingly obscure doctrine? Before I answer I want to briefly...

Confession and History: Listening Backward and Looking Ahead

Stephen Unthank
May 27, 2016
If there really has been a trend (resurgence? revival?) recently toward recovering the truths of reformed theology then it is most likely and not hard to miss that there has been a millennial flavor to that trend. Of course, all believers in every age have their own cultural moorings which they...

The Westminster Confession of Faith: Good & Necessary Consequence

Stephen Unthank
Apr 11, 2016
The Westminster Confession of Faith begins with one of the most well articulated statements concerning the doctrine of Scripture. And incorporated right into the Confession is an ever so brief clause on how one might do theology. The clause was placed there to be an expression defending the...

Old Princeton: Samuel Miller on Public Prayer

Stephen Unthank
Feb 12, 2016
Samuel Miller (1769-1850) was a noted pastor-theologian remembered for his wise council concerning revivals as well as his fervent commitment to praying for authentic revival (as opposed to the pelagian-styled revivalism of Charles Finney). His keen theological mind was used by God in training up...

John Bunyan: Prison & Prayer

Stephen Unthank
Jan 5, 2016
John Bunyan is no doubt best known for his Pilgrim’s Progress, a beautiful allegory of the Christian life, a book which has lasted the test of time. And in his own day Bunyan was well known as an excellent preacher. He often preached at John Owen’s church in London, where Charles Doe remarked that...

Worship: Self-Denial, Simplicity, and Context

Stephen Unthank
Nov 15, 2015
Corporate Worship, the gathering together of the saints to hear God’s word read and preached, to pray, sing, and commune together around the Lord’s Supper, is central to what it means to be a worshipping church (Hebrews 10:29; Acts 2:42). Within the Protestant tradition, as the Rev. Terry Johnson...

Catechizing: Grounded in Scripture

Stephen Unthank
Oct 31, 2015
The act of catechizing, though somewhat foreign to the ears of modern evangelicals, was part of the regular diet of our early Christian forbearers. The word catechize comes from the Greek word katecheo simply meaning to teach, or instruct. In the Old Testament we see God commanding older...

Knowing Christ: Very God of Very God

Stephen Unthank
Sep 29, 2015
In the year 325, over 200 bishops met in the city of Nicea in order to settle what was then the most pressing issue of their day: who is Jesus Christ. What was astounding about this council of Christian theologians was that just thirty years earlier many of those same Bishops were in hiding, or if...

The Seeds of Union with Christ

Stephen Unthank
May 31, 2015
From whence does Paul’s understanding of a believer’s union in Christ come? Much recent work has shed some light upon this question and many have pointed to Paul’s actual encounter with Christ when on the Damascus Road. [1] And indeed it seems that it was in his Damascus road experience where the...

Definite Atonement and The Triune God

Stephen Unthank
May 14, 2015
At the heart of the gospel is the penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. And though this is properly the work of the incarnate Son of God who died upon the cross, the Trinity is wholly involved in this event - it is the Father who sent the Son and it is the Son who dies through the power...

Psalm 62:8: A Model for Prayer

Stephen Unthank
Feb 6, 2014
Thomas Brooks, in his work The Secret Key to Heaven, gives a brief but wonderful insight into the nature of true prayer. He writes, God looks not at the elegancy of your prayers, to see how neat they are; nor yet at the geometry of your prayers to see how long they are; nor yet at the arithmetic of...