“Which is easier: to say, âYour sins are forgiven,â or to say, âGet up and walkâ? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.â So he said to the paralyzed man, âGet up, take your mat and go home.â Then the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority…
I am the Lord your God, who has set you apart from the nations. You must therefore make a distinction between clean and unclean animals and between unclean and clean birds. Do not defile yourselves by any animal or bird or anything that moves along the groundâthose that I have set apart as unclean for you. You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart…
The Puritans left behind a great store of wisdomârigorously theological, warmly devotional, and always centered on Christ and his gospel. Sadly, given the diminishing attention paid to language, grammar, and the humanities, they are less accessible to modern audiences than they deserve. Still, there are a few Puritan works that are short and simple enough that I wouldnât hesitate to suggest every English-speaking Christian read them. John Bunyanâs The Pilgrimâs Progress would head the list,…
I love to garden. When Iâm outside planting or weeding or pruning, it reminds me that I was made to garden. I feel like Iâm back in Eden, worshiping the Creator by stewarding his creation. Occasionally I even feel Iâm imitating my Fatherâlike the son who follows behind with his toy lawn mower while Dad actually mows the grassâby using the creativity heâs given each of us to design and develop (I wonât say create)…
In the short essay âAfter Ten Years,â which serves as prologue now to Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes an astute observation: It is one of the most surprising experiences, but at the same time one of the most incontrovertible, that evilâoften in a surprisingly short timeâproves its own folly and defeats its own object. That does not mean that punishment follows hard on the heels of every action; but it does…
God takes idolatry very seriously. The first of the Ten Commandmentsâand they are given in order of priorityâis about idolatry: âYou shall have no other gods before me.â Nothing else should get pride of place in our lives. He alone deserves our highest devotion, he alone is of infinite worth, and he alone can provide us with the ultimate meaning we seek. But our hearts are idol factories, as John Calvin wisely noted. You…
I always enjoyed walking the streets of BogotĂĄ because of the remarkable variety of goods available for sale by innumerable street vendors. In fact, my wife and I began keeping a list of things we saw being sold, because we were so surprised by the spectrum. From toys to housewares, from food to technology, we could purchase just about anything we wanted without getting out of our car. There was a small danger though:…
Throughout his first epistle, John declares his unwavering expectation that Christians will grow in obedience and love. For example, in one particularly strong passage, he writes, âWe know that we have passed from death to life because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in himâ (1 John 3:14-15, NIV).…
Mark concludes this series of short stories by giving us a collection of Jesusâ sayings about the cost of discipleship. He begins by warning those who cause immature believers to âstumbleââthat is, fall away from the faithâin very strong language. It would be better for them to die a painful, public death than face the wrath of God in the age to come. But, of course, we usually donât need anyone elseâs help to…
Some time ago I noted the importance of âcultural discernment,â the willingness to judge the culture in which we reside and minister lovingly and incisively. Paul did so with Crete especially (cf. Titus 1:12-13). This is simply a tangible acknowledgment of the doctrine of total depravity, that all have sinned and fall short of Godâs glory, that there is no one righteous, not even one. If this is trueâand it seems to be empirically verifiableâthen…