Many of you who are reading this can probably remember life without a smartphone. You know what it’s like to not have the internet, email, maps, apps, and texting available whenever you want and wherever you are. In some ways, these things are useful. You can read an email while waiting in line at the […]
How do you respond to a Christian man who is in his twenties and says he doesn’t really want to get married? What if he says he’s unsure of marriage? Similarly, what if there’s a young Christian woman you know who has serious reservations about marriage? These types of questions aren’t always easy to answer. […]
When you consider the topic of wisdom, do you think of intellect or philosophy? Perhaps Solomon or the book of Proverbs comes to mind. Maybe it is time we dust off our old definitions of wisdom, evaluate them, and adjust them as we walk through Scripture and attempt to grasp the essence of wisdom. The […]
“Satan would gladly kill me if he could. Every moment he is pressing me, is treading on my heels. Yet what he wishes will not be done, but what God wills.” (Martin Luther) I Peter 5:8 gives a description of Satan that is horrifying and vivid. It is too easy to read over Peter’s words […]
The work of an elder in Christ’s church is a noble and holy calling from God. The elder has reason to rejoice greatly while overseeing professions of faith, baptisms, and celebrations of the Lord’s Supper. It is also, at times, a very distressing and sorrowful task; yet we are comforted knowing that Jesus is the […]
“The entire Scriptures consist of two parts, of the law and the Gospel.” This unambiguous distinction between the law and the gospel in Scripture was relentlessly taught by Martin Luther from about 1517 until his death in 1548. Phillip Melanchthon (1497–1560), Luther’s colleague, also taught the difference between the law and the gospel. He said, […]
The doctrine of the covenant of works has come under fire once more in Dutch Reformed churches. Some Dutch Reformed Christians have called the covenant of works an unscriptural theory that must be rejected outright. The covenant of works, they say, has traces of Arminianism or Roman Catholicism in it. Of course, the battle rages […]
“God can only be found in suffering and the cross.” Martin Luther (1483–1546) wrote these words in 1518 as he was preparing for the Heidelberg Disputation, a discussion of his “new” evangelical teachings. At Heidelberg, Luther used the terms “theology of glory” and “theology of the cross.” From there, although his theology developed, Luther never […]
John 1:35–51 “What’s in a name?” Names usually mean a lot, don’t they? We love naming our children and our children love naming their toys and animals. We have nicknames, middle names, and last names. Names are important. Naming is what we do by nature. We do not want our family names defamed; we want […]
“Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, ‘Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city.’” (Acts 8:9, 10) The world is a visual place. The world […]