The Spirit’s Role: Regeneration
Have you ever wanted a fresh start? Perhaps you fumbled in some area – a marriage, a parent-child relationship, a job – and you longed to reset. Or something happened to you that made you wish for a complete change…
Tag Christian Living
The Apostles’ Creed: I Believe
The Christian school student began his argument with an unassailable assertion: “I feel like I knew the answer.” Funny, though, he marked an incorrect answer. In fact, the question was about a factual statistic recorded in the text we had…
Francis Gomarus and the Synod of Dordt
Tempers ran high at the Synod of Dordt. By January 1619, Francis Gomarus, Reformed minister and veteran professor at the University of Leiden, had come to take some Remostrants’ opinions on the extent of Christ’s atoning sacrifice as a personal…
For the Joy Set before Him
It is one of those ‘stop-you-in-your-tracks’ type statements that crops up in the Bible from time to time. ‘Who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the…
Macrina the Younger – The Fourth Cappadocian
The Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus) are well known for their theological contributions to the doctrines of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. Basil’s and Gregory of Nyssa’s sister Macrina is less…
The Apostles’ Creed: An Introduction
Many have known the Apostle’s Creed from youth. Likely, it is the most popular creed in Christendom. The Anglican Prayer Book simply calls it, The Creed, like Thomas simply called Aristotle, the Philosopher. It has primacy of place. And Christians…
Being a Pentecost Christian: Monergism
It is in that well worn and wonderful passage of John chapter 3 where the apostle tells us that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish…
Joy that seeks us through our Pain
The French Jesuit priest and philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) said, ‘Joy is not the absence of pain’. Others have made the same observation repeatedly, either quoting de Chardin, or else expressing the same thought from their own perspective. It…
Being a Pentecost Christian: Sanctification
The third person of the Holy Trinity is no less zealous in applying redemption to us than was the second person in accomplishing it for us. Like our Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit is perfectly ambitious toward the children of…
John Newton as Father – Through Joys and Pains
The first part of John Newton’s life is well known. Born in 1725 in Wapping, London, he lived a turbulent youth, dominated, from age 17, by compelling feelings of love for Mary Catlett, known as Polly. The impulsiveness of these…