Topic Archives: Theology

He has risen; he is not here. (Mark 16:6)1 Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus. Why do Christians say that? Because the Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly prophesied it, both directly and through typology! King David said that God would not allow his Holy One to undergo decay, to see hell or what the […]

The concluding part of a paper delivered at the 2009 Theological Conference of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. See here for the first part of this paper. 3. Echoes of the downgrade movement The echoes we can hear of the downgrade movement which destroyed the orthodoxy of the old Free Church, and indeed brought […]

Extracts from ‘Definitive Sanctification,’ (pp. 277-280, 284) and ‘Progressive Sanctification,’ (pp. 294-296, 299), in The Collected Writings of John Murray, Volume 2.1 When we speak of sanctification, we generally think of it as that process by which the believer is gradually transformed in heart, mind, will, and conduct, and conformed more and more to the […]

Introduction Martin Luther is not merely a key figure in the unfolding of events in the Protestant Reformation; he also played a major role in moulding its ideas. ‘Perhaps more than any other person, Luther shaped the presuppositions that define Protestantism.’ (Stephen J. Nichols) These presuppositions are known to scholars in their Latin form as […]

John Brown was one of the most illustrious Bible commentators of the nineteenth century. The Banner of Truth publishes his commentaries on Galatians and Hebrews in the ‘Geneva’ series, and his 3-volume work on The Discourses and Sayings of our Lord. Also published by Banner of Truth, but currently out of print, is his 2-volume […]

Owen’s teaching1is based on Romans 8:13: ‘If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live’, although he also alludes to the other New Testament reference to mortification, notably to Colossians 3:15, where the Apostle Paul exhorts his readers: ‘Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, […]

If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city, has not the Lord done it? (Amos 3:6) The mammoth earthquake, 9.0 on the Richter scale, that struck northern Japan on March 11, and the ensuing tsunami, captured so dreadfully and spectacularly on video, has, […]

God expressed the Moral Law in the Ten Commandments. Those commandments list ten specifications of our duty to our redeeming Lord and to our fellow man. When Jesus was asked which of the Ten Commandments should be regarded as the greatest he answered in terms of man’s duty to love the Lord and to love […]

A sermon taken from Assurance: An Exposition of Romans 5,1 a volume in Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ series of sermons on the book of Romans, published by the Trust (pp. 14-29). Dr Lloyd-Jones died thirty years ago today, on March 1 1981. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord […]

An extract from Words Old and New: Gems from the Christian Authorship of all Ages (pp. 140-141).1 1. When we come to be religious, we lose not our pleasure, but translate it. Before we fed on common notions, but now we live on holy truths. 2. The whole life of a Christian should be nothing […]

An extract from Words Old and New: Gems from the Christian Authorship of all Ages (pp. 137-139).1 1. In justification we are liberated from the chains of our sins, so far as they bound us for condemnation, yea, even so far as they held us under the dominion of Satan; and this suffices for its […]

The first part of a paper delivered at the 2009 Theological Conference of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The concluding part can be found here. Attacks upon the doctrine that there are no errors in the Bible are not new. As the history of the Scottish Church in the late nineteenth century demonstrates, they […]

The aim of this book is to show the relevance of the Bible’s teaching on the sovereignty of God to our daily lives. In 10 chapters Fred Leahy shows how the sovereign Lord is the hand that creates, governs, provides, redeems, keeps, guides, chastens, blesses, enables and judges. Mr. Leahy writes in an accessible, yet […]

An extract from Words Old and New: Gems from the Christian Authorship of all Ages (pp. 82-83).1 1. The law sheweth us our sin; the gospel sheweth us a remedy for it. The law sheweth us our condemnation; the gospel sheweth us our redemption. The law is the word of wrath; the gospel is the […]

Watch over your own heart with diligence, for from it flows the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23) I have known men who began well, who began their careers and families with a steadfast commitment to honour God, to be faithful to their wives and children, and to keep a lid on their fleshly desires. Sadly, […]