Articles

Because of its shared faith and shared confession in the risen Christ, the worldwide confessing Church must maintain mutual accountability in the advance of the gospel. To safeguard faithful missions in the global Church is an act of faith and obedience to the Church’s Christ. To neglect a...

Toward the very end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, he enters Jerusalem—knowingly headed to the Lamb’s slaughter. With less than a week of his mortal life remaining, would-be kings or rulers would not have spent their time with the least influential in society. For example, what does a presidential...

Come Back! The recipients of the letter to the Hebrews faced uncompromising pressure to compromise. Ridiculed for abandoning their own religious heritage and for extracting themselves from their very own people, these early followers of Christ anguished under tremendous pressures to return to their...

Read Matthew 5:6-10 God’s benediction rests on you (you’ll have true happiness) if you are pure in heart . This blessing is not bestowed upon the intellectually keen or emotionally pious, but on those pure or clean in heart. Like poor “in spirit” pure is modified in this blessing by “in heart”—thus...

When my wife and I moved into our house in the early spring, the two trees in the back yard were charming, their trunks splitting and winding like strands of hair, their leaves just beginning to bud. From what we could see, they added allure to the property, which was complemented by the rest of...

Read Matthew 5:6-9 One of the keys to the spreading of the gospel is to have believers who make a difference in life—and who live differently. There must be some moral distinctiveness if we are to impact the world around us. Any church with an extraordinary constituency will make a difference...

Read Matthew 5:4-5 The opening theme of the Sermon on the Mount is that those who mourn over their own impoverished ability are in Jesus’ kingdom. The Pharisees do not fit. This was radical—it was like telling all those who thought they were “in” with God that they really were not. And then Jesus...

The Heart of the Insider Movement Paradigm Extreme practices of the Insider Movement Paradigm (IMP), like those missionaries who publicly convert to Islam in order to “reach” those in the mosque, [1] are rejected even by most IM advocates. But the concerns before the Church of Jesus Christ around...

Read Matthew 5:3-12 This first sermon in the first Gospel deserves the attention of all readers. In sum, the Sermon on the Mount is the constitution of the Christian’s life, desire, and character. Before we proceed to the Beatitudes, please recall that these are not the way to salvation, but are...

Introduction Missions is not what it used to be, because the study of missions and missions theories, called missiology, has taken a life of its own. In recent years, the attention of the international Church has been turned to controversial approaches in missions birthed in the missiological think...