Salt and Light: Lessons from the Puritans
This in the first in a multi-part series. Stay tuned over the next few months to read more on how the Puritans teach us to live in the world! Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt…
Tag New Testament
Seven Letters Seven Dangers: Christ-less Christianity
Dear Theophilus, I find that the greatest danger facing the church today is Christ-less Christianity. I realize that this expression will raise your eyebrows and well it should for what is Christianity if not Christ? But if I leave it…
Seven Letters Seven Dangers: Sincerity
Dear Theophilus, Since God’s word makes abundantly clear that the human soul is “deceitfully sick, beyond cure”—that is, human cure—and that God alone knows it (Jeremiah 17:9), we are wholly incapable, on our own, of accurately discerning the biblical validity…
Our Daily Bread
Give us this day our daily bread.—Matthew 6:11 In A Body of Divinity, Thomas Watson (1620–1686) presented over 150 sermons on essential Christian teachings, including a series on the Lord’s Prayer. Here is a brief section taken from his treatment of the fourth…
Edward Dering and His Stunning Lenten Sermon
Edward Dering and His Stunning Lenten Sermon Whatever Queen Elizabeth I might have expected by inviting Edward Dering to preach a Lenten sermon in her presence, it was certainly not an outspoken rebuke. Edward Dering was a young,…
The Apostles’ Creed: The Quick & the Dead
Tertullian and Irenaeus are the earliest witnesses to the Creed now known as the Apostle’s Creed. During their pastorates it was likely in its earliest form and known as the Roman Symbol. This early form of the Apostle’s Creed most…
The Apostles’ Creed: Ascended & Seated
The phrase in the Apostle’s Creed, “He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty” is packed with theological importance. Early on we learned that this creed was written to combat the theological deviance…
Study and Preaching
I am not sure where I first heard this wisdom, but I have heard it several times: a pastor does not need an office, he needs a study. Spot on. The bulk of pastoral work is not management behind a…
Union with Christ: Imputation: Calvin & Wright
According to N. T. Wright, it is now generally agreed that an overall theme in II Corinthians is “Paul’s defense, not of his apostolic ministry in itself, but of the particular style or character of that ministry.”[1] For Wright, these…
Union with Christ in Hebrews
When we think of the places in Scripture where we find the doctrine of union with Christ, most people, especially Biblical scholars, immediately think of all the material in Paul’s letters. Paul uses the words “in Christ” numerous times point…