“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” — 2 Corinthians 5:21 This verse, found at the end of chapter, sums up the entire fifth chapter. In fact, the verse sums up the entire book of 2 Corinthians. One could go […]
As we serve the Lord in our Reformed congregations across the country, we need to remember that the leaven of theological liberalism is still with us. In this sense the dawn of the twenty-first century is not much different from the beginning of the twentieth. “The battle cry of modern culture,” Wolfhart Pannenberg observes, has […]
Christian unity is important. In the previous article we underscored four reasons, witnessed by Scripture and experience, why Christian unity should be important to you. First, unity is a good and pleasant thing. Second, disunity is a bad and unpleasant thing. Third, unity is at the center of the Christian’s calling. Fourth, God promises to […]
Genesis has been and continues to be a book of beginnings. The first eleven chapters provide us with the beginning of creation, the beginning of mankind, the beginning of sin, and the beginning of grace. We even saw the beginning of nations as the children of Noah had their tongues confused at the Tower of […]
The beginning of Genesis 12 is so much different from that of Genesis 11. Genesis 11 begins with the construction of a secular building. It shows a people going about their business without God as they try to make a name for themselves without God. Genesis 12, on the other hand, is about what God […]
We like to think that, when we are where God wants us to be, things will go well for us. After all, we are trying to follow God’s will for our lives, so we expect life to be free from testings and trials. But now we see something different taking place in the life of […]
Paul wrote, “Whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap.” Nowhere is that better illustrated for us than in the life of Abram. God had told the patriarch to leave his father’s country, his father’s people, and his father’s household to go to the place that God would show him. That was the call […]
A few years ago, a Christian friend who is a film producer shared an insight with me that changed the way I watch movies. He observed that most good stories—those that resonate with an audience—seem to have similar plot elements. They open by portraying life lived in happiness and joy. All is well. Conflict soon […]
Theology affects practice. Practice affects theology. That is inevitable. Reformed theology has a practice of worship and evangelism that is consistent with its theology, and that sort of evangelism and worship reinforces Reformed theology. Many in the broader Christian world would say that Reformed theology affects evangelism by killing it, but we simply believe that […]
In the outline of his Reformed Dogmatics, Bavinck follows the usual sequence of doctrinal topics of Christian theology in the western tradition.1 As we have seen in previous articles, after an introductory volume on theological prolegomena, which treats at considerable length the formal questions of the nature of theology as a science and the doctrine […]