Pharisees lived according to the strictest party of . . . religion.3 The name itself is probably derived from the root to separate. Pharisaism was essentially a conservative holiness movement. So
Love empowers the engine; law guides the direction. They are mutually interdependent. The notion that love can operate apart from law is a figment of the imagination. It is not only bad theology; it i...
Living in the Spirit means a daily commitment to please Christ and not to please self.
Karl Barth once wittily remarked, One can not speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice.
Here are wonders upon wonders: the Strong One is weak; the Infinite One lies in a manger; the Prince of Life dies; the Crucified One lives; the Humiliated One is glorified.Meekness and majesty, indeed...
Fast-forward to Calvary and the coming of the Spirit. As Moses ascended Mount Sinai and brought down the Law on tablets of stone, now Christ has ascended into the heavenly Mount, but in contrast to Mo...
Faith and repentance are not static, the decision of a moment; they are the lifelong realities of a new heart (8:10; 10:16).
Can you take in what you have overheard in the High Priestly Prayer of John 17? It is like a light momentarily switched on in a darkened room and then extinguished. Did you really see such treasures?...
But, as Paul is at pains to stress, the law is good, and just, and holy.50 And we need to understand, sense, feel, and then delight in the grace of law.51 For unless we are persuaded that God has show...
Antinomianism may be couched in doctrinal and theological terms, but it both betrays and masks the heart’s distaste for absolute divine obligation, or duty. That
There is a kind of orthodoxy in which the several loci of systematic theology, or stages of redemptive history, are all in place, but that lacks the life of the whole, just as arms, legs, torso, head,...
The real enemy is indwelling sin. And the remedy for sin is neither the law nor its overthrow. It is grace, as Paul had so wonderfully exhibited in Romans 5:12–21, and that grace set in the context of...
Peter's life can only be properly understood as the transformation of a man from what he was into what Christ intended him to be.
One day Christ will return in the full glory of His resurrection power. The light will be switched on permanently. The Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world will be present in the new heavens...
Notice what this means. Gospel assurance is not withheld from God’s children even when they have not shown themselves to be strong. What
In Christ we are no longer dominated by the flesh, but by the Spirit; but we are not yet delivered from the flesh. So long as this eschatological tension exists for the believer, so long will there be...
God’s covenant is his sovereign, freely bestowed, unconditional promise: I will be your God, which carries with it a multidimensional implication: therefore you will be my people.36 By contrast, a con...
God protects us from Satan even at times when we are not aware of His protection. But how can we develop Jesus-like discernment? By Spirit-aided digestion of the solid food of God's wisdom.
Go back to the school in which you will make progress in being a Christian. Study your lessons, settle the issue of ambition, make Christ your preoccupation-and you will learn to enjoy the privileges...
Faith is not the ground or basis upon which we are justified, but the means, the instrument, by which we are united to Christ, in whom our justification, our right-wising with God, has been accomplish...