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25 results for “Righteousness by faith”
Clear searchHow the Law reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ
…Christian discussions of the Law than Romans 10:4: "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." —Romans 10:4 Does Paul mean that Christ terminated the Law? Is Christ the goal towards which the Law was always moving? Does end mean fulfilment,…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
No Shadow of Turning What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises This series has examined covenants, prophecies, apostles, thrones, tribes, branches, seeds, kingdoms, and the difficult word…
Read article →Two accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God
…ospel stands an answer that no scale can supply: the Judge has provided a substitute, and righteousness is given to the believer through Christ. The contrast is not simply “Muslims believe in works; Christians do not.” Both traditions speak about judgement, mercy, faith, and obed…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…al How the Lord knows His own—and how their 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 answe…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…he Church permanently replaced Israel in the purpose of God? The answer cannot be reached by asking whether Christ fulfils the promises. He does. Nor can it be settled by asking whether Gentile believers inherit in Him. We do. The decisive question is whether fulfilment in Christ…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…le was destroyed, and the Jewish people were scattered among the nations. Does covenant unfaithfulness permit us to conclude that God has permanently abandoned the nation? The answer depends partly upon a distinction Scripture itself makes. Not every covenant contains the same pr…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…ligious institution. He hears a demand for conformity to a human organisation, reinforced by threats about the afterlife. For someone else, God means a powerful being who inhabits the universe and insists on obedience. The immediate question is understandable: Why should this bei…
Read article →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…however, the book of Daniel described an anointed figure who would be “cut off”, followed by the destruction of Jerusalem and its sanctuary. That creates a serious question. If Jesus is the Messiah, and if Daniel’s prophecy speaks of the Messiah being cut off before the Second Te…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…dual questions matter. But now we must ask what they mean together. A case is not decided by leaving every item of evidence in a separate room. The witnesses must be brought together. The competing explanations must be compared. Each faith must be required to account not merely f…
Read article →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…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 Christianity both speak of divine mercy, forgiveness and love. A fair comparison cannot begin by pretending th…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…Qur'an says that the coming of Muhammad was written in the Torah and the Gospel possessed by Jews and Christians: "Those who follow the messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel (which are) with them" (Surah 7…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…rried to the LORD. Throughout Scripture, the LORD is Israel’s covenant husband. The land, by contrast, is Israel’s covenant inheritance. Nevertheless, Isaiah deliberately uses marital language to describe the restoration of Israel’s people to their promised territory. The relatio…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…h inherit every promise previously associated with Israel? Second, Paul closes the letter by pronouncing peace and mercy upon those who walk according to the rule of new creation "and upon the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:15-16). Is that expression Paul's name for the whole Church…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…live tree. They now share its nourishing root alongside branches which belong to 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 branc…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…chart work. That criticism begins at the wrong end of the Bible. The case does not start by counting backwards from Revelation. It starts with a measured programme in Daniel concerning Israel and Jerusalem. Jesus takes Daniel's abomination of desolation and places it at the head…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…God: "For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." —2 Corinthians 1:20 Every promise of God is certain in Christ. Nothing God has pledged can reach fulfilment apart from Him, and nothing secured in Him can fail. This truth is sometim…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
…nd outward circumcision no longer identify a Jew. Anyone whose heart has been circumcised by the Spirit is now a true or spiritual Jew. Since Christians possess that inward work, the Church has become spiritual Israel. That reading takes Paul's contrast seriously. Outward privile…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…egraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation In an article published by the Christian Research Institute, Hank Hanegraaff argues that the pretribulation rapture has no biblical basis. He presents it as a system in which God has two unrelated peoples and desti…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…speak. We may feel guilt, grief, shame, fear, or even disgust with ourselves. Yet sorrow by itself is not repentance. The Bible presents two sobering examples in Judas Iscariot and Simon Peter. Both men were disciples of Jesus. Both enjoyed extraordinary privileges. Both failed…
Read article →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
…choose between worshipping the creature and treating it as disposable. Both errors begin by forgetting God. The biblical doctrine is neither environmental utopianism nor careless dominion. The earth belongs to the Lord. Man governs it under delegated authority. Sin turns dominio…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…, his language can open onto a horizon that the immediate circumstances do not exhaust. A faithful reading must therefore ask a further question: Does the historical event exhaust the language of the prophecy? Isaiah 32–35 provides a particularly instructive test. Hezekiah belong…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…of Israel's God fulfilling Israel's Scriptures through Israel's Messiah, first proclaimed by Jewish witnesses in Jerusalem and then carried to the nations. Gentiles do not enter by replacing that story. We are welcomed into blessings which came through it. Recovering this setting…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…ow in Romans 9 is therefore not a change to an unrelated subject. Romans 9-11 defends the faithfulness of the God proclaimed in Romans 8. The verbal links are important: those whom God foreknew in Romans 8 are secure in His purpose, and Paul later insists that God has not cast aw…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
…the safety of an academic seminar. They were suffering. Paul commends their “patience and faith” in all the persecutions and tribulations they endured (2 Thessalonians 1:4). He then writes: “Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble yo…
Read article →Earth-dwellers, heaven-dwellers, and the literary structure of the Apocalypse
…:13; 11:10; 13:8, 12, 14; 17:2, 8). The phrase describes more than geographical location. Faithful saints also stand physically upon the earth. "Earth-dweller" is a moral and eschatological identity: those whose allegiance, security, and hope belong to the rebellious world-order.…
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