Topic Archives: Salvation
God is infinite; he therefore has supreme authority over all his creatures, and it is their duty to submit absolutely to him in everything he requires. Adam and Eve showed this degree of respect for God immediately after the creation; they submitted completely to him in all their thinking, in their entire motivation, and in […]
ReadAn extract, with slight editing, from Memoirs of the Rev James Fraser of Brea.1 Being at the University, and being at the age of 17 or 18 years, our minister proposed to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, of which he gave warning the Sabbath preceding the celebration thereof. I purposed (I know not […]
ReadAnd God blessed them, saying, ‘. . . fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ (Genesis 1:22) On the fifth day of creation Elohim created swarms that swarm in the sea and flying birds that fly in the sky. In his commentary on Genesis, John Currid says that the […]
ReadConsider a sinner making his way through this life. Sooner or later, he must die and enter the eternal world. But can he, at that solemn moment, be accepted into heaven? This implies another question: Has his sin been forgiven? It should be obvious that, if the holy God against whom he has sinned is […]
ReadGod is gathering a people for Himself. He finds them in Satan’s kingdom and calls them effectually by the Holy Spirit in His infinite grace. He convinces them of sin and makes them willing and able to believe in Christ and to follow Him along the narrow way which leads to everlasting life. But will […]
ReadDuring my seven years as a campus minister, there were two different women in our ministry who became pregnant out of wedlock. In these cases, since they were associated with a group of students, it was among those students that they had most of their relationships. Of course, a campus ministry group is not a […]
Read‘A prayer for one who feels that he is approaching the borders of another world’, from Alexander’s Thoughts on Religious Experience),1 pp.259-262. Most merciful God, I rejoice that Thou dost reign over the universe with a sovereign sway, so that Thou dost according to Thy will, in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants […]
ReadFor several months now the financial world has been in crisis. Banks large and small, particularly in Europe and the USA, have been in dire straits. Many have had to go cap in hand to their respective governments for massive bailouts; these have included the second-largest American bank Citigroup, which has been granted $306 billion […]
ReadAbraham was brought up in the city of Ur, not far from the River Euphrates, in what is now southern Iraq. It was presumably very much a heathen environment. Yet even there the Lord appeared to him and called him ‘to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance’ (Heb. […]
ReadJohn Calvin was not a man who would readily draw attention to himself. When he gave some details of his early life in the preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, his purpose was to draw attention to God’s activity. His father had intended him for the priesthood but, says Calvin, God, by the secret […]
ReadFor the past year or so I have been making my way slowly through the reading of a series of sermons preached on Hebrews 11 by the Puritan, Thomas Manton. The book containing these sermons is titled By Faith and it is published by The Banner of Truth Trust1. Most recently I have been reading […]
ReadChristianity is the religion of the Gospel. The Gospel was defined by William Tyndale, the Bible translator, as ‘good merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him to dance and sing and leap for joy’. ‘Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, evermore his praises sing’, we might add. But as time […]
Read‘All have sinned’, Paul reminds us (Rom. 6:23). Because of our fall in Adam, we are all coming short of the glory of God; there is never a moment in our lives when we meet God’s demands for perfect obedience to his law. While we remain in a state of nature, our sin leaves us […]
ReadJohn the Baptist, incarcerated in the prison of Machaerus east of the Dead Sea, sent some of his disciples to Jesus with a question, which Luke reports twice. So it must be a question to which Luke wants to draw our attention. It is the most momentous question that should exercise minds now as it […]
ReadDavid sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her. (2 Samuel 11:4) Recently a former Presidential candidate admitted to an adulterous affair against his wife who has been diagnosed with an incurable cancer. The National Inquirer broke the story last October but the candidate vehemently dismissed the story, […]
ReadHow did awareness of heavenly councils between him and his Father shape Jesus’ sense of earthly mission? Every phase of our Saviour’s life was shaped and styled by his self-conscious sense that he had come from heaven ‘not to do (his) will but to do the will of him who sent (him)’ (John 6:38). Indeed, […]
ReadLuke 6:43-45 ‘No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognised by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn-bushes, or grapes from briers. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings […]
ReadJohn 3:1-8 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no-one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” […]
ReadIt was a remarkable testimony that God gave of Enoch: ‘He pleased God’ (Heb. 11:5). Enoch was a sinner and, if God was to mark iniquity against him, he could not stand. At best, his works were imperfect; they could never satisfy the demands of God’s holy law; so he could not earn a right […]
Read‘Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.’ [Ephesians 5:25-27] For fifty years I have believed that […]
ReadIn his address ‘Modern Theories of the Atonement,’ given in 1902, B. B. Warfield observed the revolt against penal substitution that gained momentum in the late nineteenth century. He noted that this revolt prompted an immediate and equally powerful defence. However, ‘this defense only stemmed the tide, it did not succeed in rolling it back.’ […]
Read…and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things. Ephesians 3:9 The 16th century Reformation, which brought so much good to Europe, which delivered people from ignorance, poverty, superstition, and the darkness of paganism and idolatry, had a catch phrase […]
ReadHorace Bushnell, the 19th-century Congregational minister from Hartford, along with Universalist Hosea Ballou, and Unitarian William Ellery Channing altered the way many people thought about Christ’s atonement. Until that time, the conventional view in the church of Christ was God-centred and objective. That is, the sovereign Triune God who created man requires obedience from mankind. […]
ReadThroughout my 63 years as an evangelical believer, the penal substitutionary understanding of the cross of Christ has been a flashpoint of controversy and division among Protestants. It was so before my time, in the bitter parting of ways between conservative and liberal evangelicals in the Church of England, and between the Inter-Varsity Fellowship (now […]
ReadWe stood on the green grass sloping towards the deep-blue sea. Below us a burn meandered downwards until it became lost in the sand of the beach which skirts the ocean, while a huge bank of cloud dominated the horizon. It was a beautiful scene. But death cannot be kept out of even a beautiful […]
Read