Oh Night Divine
Years ago, one of my favorite Rainer Maria Rilke poems gave me a new perspective on the night, and I’m reminded of this at Christmas time whenever we sing “Oh Holy Night,” one of the most beautiful songs that has…
Tag Jesus Christ
Perseverance of the Saints: John 6
The wonderful thing about the grace of God is that the grace that saves is the grace that causes perseverance in the saint. That may take some clarification. Perseverance of the saints (or believers) does not mean that the saint…
Ministerial Godliness: Faith and Life
This little trilogy of posts relates to godliness and the Christian ministry. It arises out of Paul’s counsel to his young ministerial protégé, Timothy, the then pastor of the church in Ephesus. As with many a young pastor, Timothy was…
Irresistible Grace: The Lord Opened Her Heart
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ given to mankind in the Gospel is of course resistible. We noted this very truth a few weeks back when Place for Truth covered man’s Total Depravity. In our fallen nature, men…
Irresistible Grace and Condemnation: Who Are We?
When I was a child there were times when my mother, exasperated by my behavior, would ask: “Who do you think you are!?” My unruly and arrogant conduct revealed that I was not thinking rightly about myself. Understanding salvation from…
Limited Atonement: What is Limited?
The third point in Reformed theology’s famous acrostic suffers from something of an identity problem. As it has been often observed, the preferred way to describe the doctrine in question is that of either definite atonement or particular redemption, owing…
Limited Atonement: A Walk Through the Basics
How many people do you know who wear glasses? Perhaps you yourself wear them. Glasses are a wonderful help for people who are near or far sighted. When the lens of our eye fails to bring the image into focus…
A God Thing
Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination…
Wednesday @ Westminster: What’s in a Name?
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” (“Romeo and Juliet,” II, ii, 1–2) Juliet expressed her love for Romeo in these words. Her point was not that she…
The Necessity of a Human Mediator
We really have a crazy-sounding religion. We confess that God exists as one, yet three. Totally irrational! We confess that one of those three, the Son, became a human by being born of a virgin. What a fantasy! We confess…