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36 results for “Love for God”
Clear searchWhat the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
Eternal Love Before Creation What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God Before there was a universe, what was there for God to love? There were no angels, no human beings and no created or…
Read article →Dave Hunt · Devotional theology and biblical exhortation · 2000
…to separate Christian belief from Christian living. Hunt ranges across the gospel, faith, love for God, discipleship, doctrine, the Church, and the believer's heavenly hope, but the recurring appeal is intensely practical: take God at His word and let that truth govern the whole…
View recommendation →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
Two Revelations of Divine Love What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God Love is easily claimed. Its character is revealed by what it does when the beloved is undeserving and the cost is real. Islam and Chr…
Read article →Dave Hunt · Biblical polemic · 2002
What Love Is This? is certainly a polemic against Calvinism, but I value it for more than its rebuttal of a theological system. Read carefully, it also functions as an extensive study of the natu…
View recommendation →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
The Unshaken Truth of God's Promises One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel This series began with a question: has the Church permanently replaced Israel in the purpose of God? The answe…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
God's Unfailing Faithfulness Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail Israel's history presents a severe test of theology. God chose the nation, gave it His law, sent it prophet…
Read article →Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
Not Three Gods Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God The Trinity is often rejected before it is accurately defined. “The Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
Has God Abandoned Israel? What Do the Covenants Say? Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ Israel broke God's law, rejected the prophets, and nationally refused its…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
Was Muhammad Foretold in the Bible? Four popular claims tested in context The Qur'an says that the coming of Muhammad was written in the Torah and the Gospel possessed by Jews and Christians: "Those who…
Read article →Augustine of Hippo · Spiritual autobiography and prayer · c. 397–400
…s compelling because Augustine examines his own heart with unusual honesty. He traces the loves, ambitions, excuses, habits, relationships, and ideas through which he ran from God, while recognising the patient providence that pursued him. The result is both deeply personal and i…
View recommendation →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
Are Abraham's Seed and the Israel of God the Church? Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing Galatians contains two of the strongest arguments for identifying the Church as Israel. First, Paul s…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
Do All God's Promises Transfer to the Church? What "yea and Amen" in Christ means for Israel and the covenants Paul makes one of the most comprehensive statements about the promises of God: "For al…
Read article →The peace Christ gives in a troubled world
…ersation can overturn in minutes the security we spent years constructing. On the night before the cross, Jesus spoke to men whose circumstances were about to become terrifying. He did not promise to prevent their bewilderment or remove every approaching trial. He promised someth…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…eir lives bear His name Can a person possess true faith while showing no movement towards godliness? Can someone belong to Christ while remaining settled in the very iniquity from which He came to deliver us? These questions are often answered in opposite and equally dangerous wa…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…lly without surrendering conscience to a package deal Political parties do not merely ask for our votes. Increasingly, they offer an entire identity. Each side supplies its own account of the world: the dangers which matter, the injustices which deserve attention, the experts who…
Read article →Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation
Is the Beatific Vision the Whole Christian Hope? Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation The beatific vision is the Christian teaching that the redeemed will see God and find their perfect happiness in Him. It draws upon…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…ld 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 permission. It does not dismiss Him as an impostor or an insignificant religious teacher. But it draws an abs…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…1). The evidence has been heard. We have examined what Christians mean when they say that God is one. We have followed Jesus through the Gospels and asked whether He can be contained within the category of prophet. We have considered eternal love, the crucifixion, divine justice,…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…hristianity substantially intact. It is the historical event through which Scripture says God dealt with sin. The Qur'an appears to deny that event. Surah 4:157 says of Jesus' opponents: "But they neither killed nor crucified him - it was only made to appear so" (Surah 4:157, The…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…ion, regathering, cleansing, the kingdom of David's Son, and a restored relationship with God. A strong supersessionist response does not simply deny those passages. It argues that the New Testament teaches us how they were always intended to be fulfilled. The argument runs like…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…o the tree by nature. Does that mean Gentiles have been grafted into Israel and have therefore become Israel? The conclusion may appear obvious: there is one tree, believing Jews and Gentiles are branches within it, and unbelieving Jewish branches have been removed. Surely the tr…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…w Supersessionism Took Root in the Early Church A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension Supersessionism did not appear in one moment through one theologian. It developed as the Church became increasingly Gentile, separated socially from Jewish communities, int…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
Test the Spirits Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God Human beings have always sought to pass beyond the boundaries of ordinary consciousness. Across cultures and religions, people have reported visions, overwhelming sensations of unity, en…
Read article →Labour, purpose, and faithfulness in a fallen world
…ulness in a fallen world Modern culture often swings between two errors. Some people live for their work. Their job becomes their identity, their status becomes their worth, and achievement quietly takes the place of God. Others speak as though work itself were an indignity—an in…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…ble accounts. Brooke examined the beliefs being carried back from the brink: claims about God, judgement, reincarnation, universal salvation, spirit guides and the meaning of death. That remains the right question. A testimony may be moving without being self-interpreting. An exp…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…Christ's appearing. Revelation returns to Daniel's imagery and repeatedly uses periods of forty-two months, 1,260 days, and "a time, and times, and half a time". The question is whether these are disconnected crises or the developing parts of one prophetic structure. If the corre…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…ending what Scripture does not require Dispensationalism is often criticised by slogans before it is defined. It allegedly began with John Nelson Darby, turns the Church into God's failed contingency plan, ignores the fulfilment of prophecy in AD 70, baptises modern politics, and…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
…l's description of the inward Jew is often treated as a decisive redefinition of Israel: "For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in th…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…, 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 historical genealogy or a substitute for doctrinal argument. Imagin…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…l watches a confident Roman Catholic presentation of John 6. The argument appears straightforward. Jesus said that unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have no life in us. His hearers understood Him literally. Rather than correcting them, Jesus repeated the saying in s…
Read article →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…will receive the Holy Spirit. The empty life does not merely receive a cup to carry away. God makes it the channel of a river. A cry on the great day of the feast The setting gives Christ's words their force. The Feast of Tabernacles remembered Israel's wilderness journey and cel…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…The LORD, Zion, and the Meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5 “Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
Isaac, Not Ishmael The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ Did God choose Isaac or Ishmael? This is not a tribal debate. It is a covenant question. The answer does not require hostility towards Arabs, contempt for Muslims or denial of the blessings God…
Read article →Not escape from the body, but its redemption
…thing more like a ghost than a human being. Christians do have a real hope beyond death before the resurrection. Paul desired to depart and be with Christ, which he said was "far better" (Philippians 1:23). To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…e cleansed, believing, peaceful Israel described at the consummation of prophecy. It does force an important question: how should we read the many passages in which God promises to preserve Israel as a nation, gather its scattered people, restore them to the land, cleanse them, p…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…d the future of the nation Romans 9:6 is often used as a definition of spiritual Israel: "For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel." —Romans 9:6 The usual argument is straightforward. Physical descent from Jacob no longer identifies the Israel which matters to God. True I…
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