To run, to work, the law commands, The gospel gives me feet and hands. The one requires that I obey, The other does the power convey.
Our problem, like Jonah's, does not lie in the parts of Scripture we find difficult to understand. Like him, we turn away from the word of the Lord that we do understand. We do not read it, we do not...
Failure to deal with the presence of sin can often be traced back to spiritual amnesia – forgetting our new, true, real identity. As a believer, I am someone who has been delivered from the dominion o...
As the early church fathers delighted in saying, Christ took what was ours so that we might receive what was His.
True Christian liberty, unlike the various freedom or liberation movements of the secular world, is not a matter of demanding the rights we have.
This is the key to the enjoyment of assurance precisely because assurance is our assurance that he is a great Savior and that he is ours.
These considerations give us some clues as to why legalism and antinomianism are, in fact, nonidentical twins that emerge from the same womb. Eve
The Church’s Confession of Faith remained unaltered. But it would be naïve scholarship that extrapolated from what was professed to what was preached and indeed from what was preached to what was poss...
An inability to encourage someone else is usually rooted in an absorptionwith self that is blind to the needs or gifts of others, or a pride that cannot bring itself to praise God's grace in them.
So long as Jesus Christ is there, in heaven before God for us, our salvation will last.
Sincerity on its own is always inadequate before God. But faith without it is impossible.
Inconsistent Christian living leads to lack of assurance. At least, it leads to a lack of true assurance (although, alas, not necessarily to a lack of self-assurance). Where there is no actual obedien...
If I insist on knowing exactly what God is doing and what He plans to do with my future, if I demand to understand His ways with me in the past, I can never be content until I am equal with God.
The fruit of the Spirit is love. But love is the most costly of fruits.
The Marrow Controversy raised a major question about how the gospel is to be preached. But the answer to that question depends on our answer to a more fundamental one: What is the gospel? Contemporary...
That life begins with God's working, not with our doing.
So we are Ephesians 2:15–16 Christians: the ceremonial law is fulfilled. We are Colossians 2:14–17 Christians: the civil law distinguishing Jew and Gentile is fulfilled. And we are Romans 8:3–4 Christ...
Whatever form, however, Antinomianism may assume, it springs from legalism. None rush into the one extreme but those who have been in the other.
Thus, for example, fruitful Christian service will encourage assurance; we recognize the work of the Spirit creating new desires and dispositions. We
These considerations give us some clues as to why legalism and antinomianism are, in fact, nonidentical twins that emerge from the same womb. Eve’s rejection of God’s law (antinomianism) was in fact t...