God has always drawn a line between his people and the world — and that line is not man’s to erase, soften, or ignore. The call to come out and be separate is not an old covenant peculiarity; it is a permanent feature of the God…
Timothy’s life is the story of what faithful parents, a mentor-apostle, and willingness to be sent can produce. He was the son of a mixed household — Greek father, Jewish mother — with no obvious path to apostolic usefulness. By the end of Paul’s ministry he…
Prayer is not the whole of the Christian’s responsibility to the thing prayed for. Prayer opens the transaction; action completes it. The person who prays for the sick and does not visit them; who prays for the gospel to spread and does not share it; who…
The tetelestai of John 19:30 marks the completion of the atoning work — not the end of Christ’s activity. The risen, ascended Christ is presently reigning as king (Col. 1:13), interceding as mediator (Heb. 7:25), governing as head of the church (Col. 1:18), adding the obedient…
This lesson from 2 Peter 1:10–11 explains where true assurance of salvation is found and where it is not. Assurance does not rest on feelings, perfect knowledge, perfect obedience, or good works, but on being in Christ and walking in the light. God promises confidence and stability to those who are diligent and faithful in their walk with Him.
The church was in the eternal purpose of God and the mind of Christ from the beginning; it is the true Israel, the saved remnant, the “little flock” that receives the kingdom — so that there is no Christianity without the church. People speak today of…
Everything in Christianity hangs on faith — “without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Heb. 11:6) — yet faith is one of the most misunderstood words in religion. Some make it a leap in the dark; some make it mere opinion; some make it a…
Every person who has ever faced his own sin has had to say the same three words: “I have sinned” — but what those three words mean depends entirely on the heart that speaks them. “I have sinned.” The phrase runs through Scripture like a wound….
Everything God has done — creation, redemption, Scripture, church, eternal life — is an act of love. God is love, and his every act must be interpreted in terms of that nature. Some themes are too large for words to do them justice. The outline says…
Sin did not originate with God. God created beings with the power to choose; some chose to disobey. The origin of sin is the misuse of freedom, not a failure in the design that produced the freedom. The first sins were angelic; the first human sin…