This pattern of the Cross means that the world’s glorification of power, might, and status is exposed and defeated. On the cross Christ wins through losing, triumphs through defeat, achieves power thr...
This means that when facing unavoidable and irreducible suffering, secular people must smuggle in resources from other views of life, having recourse to ideas of karma, or Buddhism, or Greek Stoicism,...
The same year that Dawkins’s The God Delusion was published, Francis Collins published The Language of God. Collins is an eminent research scientist and head of the Human Genome Project.
The remedy is to read, re-read, deeply ponder and learn to live out of the truths of verses 18-30!
The reason for this persistent story line in the Bible is not simply because the writers like underdogs. It is because the ultimate example of God’s working in the world was Jesus Christ, the only fou...
The manger at Christmas means that, if you live like Jesus, there won’t be room for you in a lot of inns. In
The lesson is that the medium is not the message, that we must not ignore uncomfortable truths just because they come through an unimpressive messenger.
The law has the power to show us that we are not righteous; but it cannot give us the power to be righteous.
The harmony and perfection of the completed heavens and earth express more adequately the character of their creator than any of the separate components can.
The essence of other religions is advice; Christianity is essentially news. Other religions say, This is what you have to do in order to connect to God forever; this is how you have to live in order t...
The Swiss theologian John Calvin, in his commentaries on the Hebrew prophets, says that God so identifies with the poor that their cries express divine pain. The Bible teaches us that our treatment of...
Some years ago, a man who regularly listened to my preaching made a shrewd observation. He said, When you are well prepared for your sermon, you cite a great variety of sources, but when you aren’t we...
So we can see all cultural production (and remember, everything we do at work is some form of cultural production) as a dialogue between our innate, affirming response to God’s common grace and the id...
Sin can only grow in the soil of self-pity and a feeling of owed-ness. I’m not getting a fair shake! I’m not getting my needs met! I’ve had a hard life! God owes me; people owe me; I owe me! That’s th...
Prayer upon Beginning One’s Work or Study My good God, Father, and Savior, grant me aid by your Holy Spirit to now work fruitfully in my vocation, which is from you, all in order to love you and the p...
Prayer brings perspective, shows the big picture, gets you out of the weeds, reorients you to where you really are.
Prayer both requires and empowers the abandonment of self-justification, blame shifting, self-pity, and spiritual pride.
Over and over and over again God says, I will choose Nazareth, not Jerusalem. I will choose the girl nobody wants. I will choose the boy everybody has forgotten. Why? Is it just that God likes underdo...
No one is so good that they don’t need the grace of the gospel, nor so bad that they can’t receive the grace of the gospel.
Many interpreters try to list prayer as one of the items in the armor, along with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Word of God. That won’t work, however, because every other item...