Tag: Gospel
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No Other Gospel
After learning I would be beginning a new sermon series this week, a study of the book of Galatians, a friend and colleague who is an Army Chaplain asked me if I had read the relatively new book, No Other Gospel. Though I had seen it, I admitted I was not really familiar with it. …
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Christmas Gospel: Glory Triumphs Over Tragedy
What happens when the glory of God’s grace collides with the tragedy of man’s sin and consequential brokenness? Paul Tripp’s answer: “Christmas!” God’s glory triumphs over the tragedy of our brokenness.
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Evidences of a Backslidden Condition
Through the prophet Jeremiah the Lord dispenses a treasury of wisdom and insight. Perhaps among the most valuable of those insights, at least to my thinking, is found in Jeremiah 17.9: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? The Lord also reminds us, through Jeremiah and scores of…
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REAL Christians Waltz
Listen to how Bob Flayhart, Senior Pator at Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL, describes a Gospel-centered Christian Life: A Gospel-centered life is the Christian Waltz. A waltz is a dance made up of three steps. Christians need to consider the Christian three step when it comes to growth. In the first step, we…
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6 Gospel Aspects
As I teach and preach – and even talk to people – it is not uncommon for someone to ask for clarification of what I mean when I casually and frequently use the term “gospel”. For some the word has very little meaning. Folks are confused, wondering if it is a style of music, a…
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Fascinations that Lead Away from the Cross
by Michael Horton Martin Luther opposed the “theology of the cross” to all “theologies of glory.” The latter can be generally placed into three categories: three types of “ladders” we try to climb in order to see “God in the nude,” as Luther put it. These ladders were mysticism, speculation, and merit. I would like…
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Gospel Warning Signs
Noted 19th Century Anglican Bishop J.C. Ryle offers a handful of warnings about counterfeiting the gospel: 1. Substitute anything for Christ, and the Gospel is totally spoiled! 2. Add anything to Christ, and the Gospel ceases to be a pure Gospel! 3. Put anything between a person and Christ, and that person will neglect Christ…
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Inebriated by the Gospel
Great grace laced imagery from Robert Capon: The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievilism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred-proof grace – of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God…
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Appropriating Grace
Here is an important reminder and challenge from Richard Lovelace, from his monumental Dynamics of Spiritual Life: Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives… Many… have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their…
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Uneasy ‘Calvinist’
I feel no little uneasiness when labeled a Calvinist. It is not that the description is unfitting. Nor is it because I have any disaffection for Calvin. Quite the contrary. My reservation is that there is much baggage that accompanies that label – baggage assigned by those who reject the tenants of the Faith associated…
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Losing Our Gospel Grip
Evidence abounds all around that the current Spiritual climate of the typical Evangelical church is rightly described by sociologist Christian Smith as “more akin to Moralistic-Therapeutic-Deism than anything resembling historic Christianity.” I paraphrased Smith there, but it reflects the essence of Smith’s assessment. (If you want a refresher on what Moralistic-Therapeutic-Deism is click here & here.)…
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2 Mistakes Christians Make
People tend to make two mistakes when they think about the redeemed life. The first is to underestimate the sin that remains in us; it’s still there and it can still hurt us. The second is to underestimate the strength of God’s grace; God is determined to make us new. As a result, all Christians…
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Justified: Profound & Practical
…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. ~ Romans 5.8-9 Matt Chandler passionately proclaims the profound practical benefits of God’s grace…
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Sailboat Spirituality
Do you sometimes have difficulty understanding or remembering who does what in our Spiritual maturation? We get that it is God who must make us alive to believe (regeneration), and that he gives us the gift of faith to believe, which leads to salvation (justification). But then what? Surely there is something we must do. …
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Fighting the Sin in Our Hearts
In Colossians 3, the Apostle Paul commands us: Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (v. 5) His list should not be seen as exhaustive, but rather suggestive. There are many other things that could be included in this list – things which…
