May 16th, 2012
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We exist to glorify and enjoy God. But that begs the question of whether there are reasons for belief in a god in the first place. There are three offered in Q&A 2: the light of conscience, the light of creation, and the light of the canon.
May 9th, 2012
“What is the chief and highest end of man?” This is our ultimate question and should be the heartbeat of who we are, thinking of it daily. This is what it is all about as a Christian. To have a “chief end” means that we were made for something, that we have a main purpose in life. And we have a “highest end,” among the many goals and accomplishments of our lives.
April 11th, 2012
Foreign missions is undoubtedly one of the primary tasks of the church. After all, it was Christ who commanded his church to evangelize the nations in the Great Commission. Moreover, we know that the apostle Paul was one who had a great zeal for missions.
March 20th, 2012
The New Testament has no category for someone who is a believer in Jesus Christ but who is not also a member of a local church. The reason is so obvious that we take it for granted. Since all true believers become members of the body of Christ by virtue of their union with Christ through faith, the New Testament assumes that those who are members of Christ’s body will naturally identify with a local assembly of those who likewise believe in Jesus and confess him as Lord before the unbelieving world. Sadly, many Americans have completely different assumptions.
March 13th, 2012
Closely related to the doctrines of justification and sanctification is the subject of good works. One of the most common objections raised by critics of the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone is this: “If we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, what place does that leave for good works?” Even apostle Paul had heard a similar objection from Christians in Rome.
March 6th, 2012
It is not until we understand what it means to be justified, that we are in any position to discuss sanctification, which is that life-long process through which the old habit of sin (what we call “indwelling sin”) is progressively weakened and the new nature (given us by virtue of regeneration) is progressively strengthened.
February 28th, 2012
Reformed Christians affirm without hesitation that the doctrine of justification is the article of faith by which the church stands or falls. Although the oft-cited comment is attributed to Martin Luther, it was actually the Reformed theologian, J. H. Alsted (1588-1638), who first put these words to paper–no doubt echoing Martin Luther in doing so.
February 21st, 2012
As Americans raised in a democratic republic, we cling tenaciously to the principle “one person, one vote.” It is very easy (and almost natural) to carry over this principle to our understanding of the doctrine of salvation.
February 14th, 2012
When Christians speak of the “ordo salutis” we are referring to the “order of salvation.” While we should qualify any discussion of such an “order” by affirming that an omniscient God does not need to do things in sequential order as we do, nevertheless there is a logical order to the way in which God saves us from sin and its consequences.
February 7th, 2012
All of us on the faculty of Westminster Seminary California are shocked and saddened by John Frame’s book, The Escondido Theology. Several of us were colleagues with John and several had been his students. We have appreciated particularly over the years his teaching of the apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, his critique of open theism, and his strong defense of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. (The statement of Andrew Sandlin on p. xxxi of this book claiming that John had been a polemicist against inerrancy is surely a mistake.)
Although often identified as a Lutheran distinctive, the law-gospel distinction has been recognized by the Reformed tradition as well. Reformed theologians such as Louis Berkhof have spoken of the Bible as containing two parts–the law and the gospel.
January 31st, 2012
As redemptive history unfolds in the Bible, the story of God’s saving purposes takes a number of surprising twists and turns. The New Testament opens with an angel announcing to a young virgin that God’s promised Savior was at long last coming to visit his people with salvation.
January 24th, 2012
The diagnosis is not very good: we are ignorant, guilty, and corrupt. But the prognosis is far worse. We are under the curse and face certain death. As fallen sinners ravaged by a threefold consequence of our sins, our hearts are darkened (Romans 1:21) and our thoughts are continually evil (Genesis 6:5).
January 17th, 2012
With the language of the eighth Psalm clearly in mind (“you have made [man] a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” v. 5), Reformed theologian Cornelius Van Til once declared that Adam was created to be like God in every way in which a creature can be like God.
January 10th, 2012
Much indeed can be known about God from creation. We know that God is eternal, all-powerful, and good (cf. Romans 1:20). Yet, whatever we learn about God through nature (general revelation), will always be limited by the very nature of revelation through finite created things.
August 26th, 2011
Christians often speak of important doctrines in the abstract. People speculate about election and predestination, the extent of the atonement, and so on, without making any connection between these doctrines and the person and work of Jesus Christ.
August 22nd, 2011
A recent article appeared over at MSNBC and it’s certainly provocative.
August 19th, 2011
At the very heart of the Christian faith we find the doctrine of the Incarnation–Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity and the eternal son of God took to himself a true human nature for the purpose of saving us from our sins.
August 10th, 2011
It has been said that covenant theology is at the center of Reformed theology. No doubt, this is correct. In Eden, all of humanity fell when Adam, the first of our race, rebelled against his creator and plunged the entire human race into sin and death.
August 5th, 2011
Most Americans operate on the sincere but completely misguided assumption that deep down inside people are basically good. When we compare ourselves to others, we might be able to measure up pretty well. Sure, there are some who we might begrudgingly admit are better people than we are, but we still do pretty well in most of our self-comparison tests against others.
