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37 results for “Christian obedience”
Clear searchLabour, purpose, and faithfulness in a fallen world
…escribes that ability as God's gift. This corrects pride without producing false modesty. Christians need not pretend that competence does not matter. We may learn, practise, improve and take satisfaction in a task done well. But we should remember that intelligence, opportunity,…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
Have Evangelicals Become Neo-Gnostics? History, Heresy, and the Temptation of Private Christianity The accusation identifies real evangelical deformations—secret-key religion, escape rhetoric, elite conversion status, and churchless faith—but fails when it becomes a historica…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…m it. The People of the Gospel are told to judge by what God revealed within it. Yet when Christians open the Gospel they possessed for centuries before Muhammad, they find the Son who shares the Father's glory, gives His life as a ransom, is crucified under Pontius Pilate and ri…
Read article →Two accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God
…it against failure. The Bible also teaches a perfectly just judgement according to works. Christianity does not replace moral seriousness with divine indifference. Yet at the centre of the gospel stands an answer that no scale can supply: the Judge has provided a substitute, and…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…. Worldly sorrow may attempt to pay for sin through self-punishment. It may withdraw from Christian fellowship, prayer, Scripture, and anyone who speaks of grace. It tells us to hide from God until we can somehow make ourselves worthy to return. But we cannot cleanse ourselves be…
Read article →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…ion to love and freely express it when He creates. That answer should be taken seriously. Christianity does not need to prove the Trinity by defining love in a way which makes every alternative logically impossible. The biblical case is stronger than that. Jesus does not leave us…
Read article →The peace Christ gives in a troubled world
…ot make suffering unreal. Christ's peace was not the absence of grief. It was the settled obedience, confidence and communion which grief could not overthrow. That is the peace He calls My peace. The promised Comforter The promise of peace cannot be separated from the promise of…
Read article →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
The Earth's Great Sabbath Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ The Christian hope for creation rests neither in human effort nor in escape from the material world. The creation groans for the return of its rightful King, the revelation of the sons of God, a…
Read article →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…revealed by what it does when the beloved is undeserving and the cost is real. Islam and Christianity both speak of divine mercy, forgiveness and love. A fair comparison cannot begin by pretending that the Qur'an presents Allah as merciless or that Muslims worship a deity who ne…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
Does Romans 2:28-29 Make Christians "Spiritual Jews"? Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew Paul's description of the inward Jew is often treated as a decisive redefinition of Israel: "For…
Read article →Faith, assurance, and the unseen reality of God
…. There can grow within us a recognition that is difficult to convey to someone who knows Christianity principally as a subject of debate. God is no longer merely a proposition under consideration. We have come to trust Him. That does not mean every Christian must have a dramatic…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…ry later development apostolic. There is a particular accusation made against evangelical Christianity that I feel more deeply than might be expected. We are told that we are rootless individualists: Christians without a Church, readers without rulers, minds pursuing private illu…
Read article →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…A conversation with my son brought the strangeness of the incarnation freshly before me. Christians have heard the words so often that we can cease to feel their force. God became man. The Word was made flesh. The One who made the world entered it, accepted the limitations of a…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…Origen’s difficult position helps us distinguish what Scripture teaches from the language Christians gradually developed to defend it. Primary passages: John 1:1–3; John 5:17–23; John 8:54–59; John 17:5; Colossians 1:15–17; Hebrews 1:1–12; Isaiah 44:6, 24 --- In the previous stud…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…r an objection. It should enlarge our worship. The Incarnation is not merely a difficulty Christianity can survive; it is glory Christianity alone can proclaim. The Maker entered His creation. The eternal Son made our nature His own. The One whom the heaven of heavens cannot cont…
Read article →Trusting God when voices seek to weaken our confidence
…the king’s commandment was, saying, Answer him not.” —Isaiah 36:21, KJV Their silence was obedience. They had heard the challenge, but they were not obliged to enter an argument on the challenger’s terms. That is a lesson worth remembering when confident voices make faith appear…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…nd some of it while misunderstanding the rest? Did our words awaken a familiar picture of Christianity assembled from school lessons, political arguments, religious hypocrisy, painful experiences, and things Christians themselves should never have taught? The question is not whet…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…Prophet The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels Islam honours Jesus in ways which Christians should acknowledge accurately. The Qur'an calls Him the Messiah, describes Him as a word from God, affirms His virgin birth and attributes extraordinary signs to Him by God's perm…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…parts of this argument are sound. Israel's life in the land was conditioned upon covenant obedience. Gentiles are incorporated into the people of God without becoming Jewish proselytes. The Mosaic covenant and its Levitical order have become obsolete. No nation, including modern…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…ent comes. The future of Israel is therefore not a specialised controversy at the edge of Christian doctrine. It tests how we understand the faithfulness of the God upon whose promises the Church itself depends. The opposing case deserves to be stated fairly Most thoughtful super…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world To many Jewish people, Christianity appears thoroughly foreign. Its historic centres became Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, Geneva, and countless cities far from Jerusalem. Its Scriptures have been used to justi…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…His divine form, His refusal of self-advantage, His taking the form of a servant and His obedience to death. Verses 9–11 describe God’s exaltation of Him. The KJV’s “thought it not robbery to be equal with God” renders a famously debated expression containing harpagmos. A substa…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…confessed that He knew all things. He suffered, bled and died, although God is immortal. Christians rightly believe all these things because Scripture plainly teaches them. The difficulty begins when we try to explain how they can all be true of the same Christ. It is common to…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…xpressly records that God heard Ishmael, protected him and promised to make him fruitful. Christians have no reason to erase what Scripture affirms. But blessing is not the same as covenant election. God named the covenant heir before he was born. He repeated that choice after hi…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…hy the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body Why this is useful to know: Christians rightly confess that Jesus is God manifest in the flesh. Yet if “flesh” is imagined as a human body animated directly by the divine Word, Jesus can become less than fully human in…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…guity is real, but it cannot decide the identity of the one being named. English-speaking Christians, Muslims and Hindus may all use the word God while intending radically different conceptions of the divine. Arabic-speaking Christians and Muslims both use Allah. A common noun do…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…rument through which God acted? The problem is not confined to careless modern preaching. Christians were struggling with its underlying questions in the early fourth century, even as they defended the eternal deity of the Son. Eustathius of Antioch saw one danger with unusual cl…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…ise is certain in the divine purpose fulfilled through Christ, but it does not make every Christian Noah or give every believer the sign and historical commission given to him. God promised that Sarah would bear Isaac, that David would have an enduring royal house, that Mary woul…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…promised covenant includes national Israel transformed by an inward work of God. Present Christian participation demonstrates the power and inauguration of the covenant; it does not prove that its named national recipients have been permanently excluded from its complete fulfilm…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…ted day and night has spoken it. Christ confirms rather than dissolves the promises Every Christian interpretation must be centred upon Jesus Christ. He is Abraham's Seed, David's Son, the mediator of the new covenant, and the only Saviour of Israel and the nations. No promise re…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…nts. The Mosaic covenant made Israel's enjoyment of blessing in the land conditional upon obedience. The promises to Abraham and David, however, were grounded in God's oath and carried forwards even through national judgement. The new covenant finally provides the cleansing and t…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…red moral force is clear: prophetic truth produces watchfulness, not a countdown by which obedience can be postponed. If a visible, datable chain must run before the Church can be gathered, the practical suddenness is weakened. Once the final seven began, interpreters could at le…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
…ecy to the faithfulness of God Has the Church replaced Israel in the purpose of God? Some Christians answer yes, although they may prefer words such as fulfilled, transformed, or expanded. They believe that Israel's promises have reached their true meaning in Christ and now belon…
Read article →Seth D. Postell, Eitan Bar & Erez Soref · Messianic biblical theology · 2017
…ecially valuable, while the book's clarity opens questions about law, grace, Messiah, and Christian obedience to readers without specialist training. The relationship between the Mosaic Law and believers in Christ is deeply disputed among Christians and Messianic Jews. The author…
View recommendation →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…many false prophets are gone out into the world.” —1 John 4:1 Ecstasy is not exclusively Christian Certain features appear repeatedly in accounts of spiritual ecstasy: a diminished awareness of the body, the weakening of the distinction between self and world, extraordinary ligh…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…the prophets, the teaching of Jesus, Acts, Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, and the history of Christian interpretation, the cumulative answer is no. God has judged Israel severely. The nation remains largely in unbelief and cannot inherit saving blessing apart from Jesus Christ. Yet…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…d saving work within history? --- More than twenty years ago, during the early part of my Christian walk, one sentence in Scripture troubled me: “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” — Psalm 2:7; Acts 13:33 Acts appeared to connect this “begetting” with Christ’s resur…
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