Topic Archives: Theology

I spoke on the phone yesterday with a south London vicar whose parish had been hit by rioters. Actually, ‘rioters’ is not quite the word. The disorders straight after the death of Mark Duggan may have been riots with the associations of protest that brings, but by now a better word than rioters is looters, […]

Deuteronomy 29:29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may follow all the words of this law. In this chapter God is reminding the people that they are in covenant with him. He is their God and they […]

. . . to be cast into the eternal fire. (Matthew 18:8) One of the big questions today is this, ‘Does God send people to hell? Why would a loving God do that?’ How should you respond to such a question? First of all, since the Bible is God’s inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word, it […]

Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? (John 21:15) One of the more glorious promises in Scripture is John 10:28-30, And I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish. No one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater […]

Some verses in the Bible are deeply disturbing, and unexpected. As Paul commends Timothy to the church in Philippi, he tells them, ‘I have no one like him (of like soul), who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare (Phil. 2:20). So far, so good. But then Paul continues, ‘For they all seek their own […]

Are you the Coming One, or shall we look for someone else? (Luke 7:19) I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. (John 14:6) There are at least three questions that often surface in today’s contemporary world concerning the person of Jesus: Was Jesus an impostor who did not fulfil Messianic prophesies? Are Christianity’s […]

The Lord Jesus told the parables of the shepherd who left the ninety-nine in the open country and he went after the lost sheep, and the woman lit a lamp and swept the house and searched carefully for the lost coin. Neither of them shrugged their shoulders and thought, ‘Only one . . . we […]

PART I Thy word is truth. (John 17:17) So many today have so many different views about Jesus. Who is the contemporary Christ? Some view him as a mythical figure, a sort of modern day Robin Hood or Santa Claus, one akin to the tooth fairy. Others believe that he was a wonderful, compassionate man, […]

I want to focus on three influences which shaped the so-called ‘Authorised Version’: King James himself, the translators, and the printers. Such attention to the human aspect of the making of a Bible translation in no way conflicts with belief in the Bible as the infallible and inerrant Word of God (Isa. 40:8). The Bible […]

If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15:19)1 So think of it like this – if the disciples and these three women were travelling around the countryside telling people that Jesus had been raised from the dead, when he really had […]

What is a true coming to Christ? There are three things involved: i) Coming to Christ always involves an awareness of my spiritual need of him. That is the only reason to come from where you are to be where he is. That is why he left his Father, became incarnate, lived a holy life, […]

First published 1667 This book is an exposition of Romans 7:21, ‘I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present within me.’ In essence this is a book to help Christians know themselves and their enemy. The original was written by the great Puritan theologian John Owen and first published […]

There are some profound and practical implications contained in the way that the Ten Commandments are stated. One of the easiest things that anyone reading them can observe is how they are cast in negative terms. We are not to have any gods before the Lord God our redeemer; we are not to make and […]

Some people may feel that, if Christ was still present in the world, spiritual conditions would be very much better than they are. They may imagine that he, now exalted to heaven, seems remote from them and their needs – but if they could meet him in a Jerusalem street, for instance, or by the […]

And they laughed him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. (Luke 8:53) These words record the reaction of certain people to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the days of his flesh. In different forms they are the words which are to be found constantly in the Gospel records of his life and […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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, […]

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 […]