God has a purpose in all that he does. The first advent was purposeful: the prophets expressed it, Christ stated it, and he accomplished it completely — “It is finished” (John 19:30). The second advent is equally purposeful: not to establish a kingdom (already established), not…
Jesus established one church; it has never ceased; and because it was established at a definite time, place, and foundation, with definite terms and marks, it can still be identified today — and any body established otherwise cannot be it. Hundreds of different churches all claim…
Jesus’ attitude toward His enemies — holding no grudges, bearing injury without malice, returning kindness for hostility, and forgiving freely — is a window into His heart and the pattern His followers must not merely admire but imitate. Character is best measured not by how we…
Sanctification is the setting apart of the Christian from the world and unto God — accomplished by the Spirit, through the truth, by the will of God, in Christ. It is not achieved by the Christian’s moral effort alone; it is the Spirit’s work applied to…
Every person who encounters the crucifixion takes one of three postures: sympathy (deliberate, costly love — those who stood near by choice), apathy (presence without personal investment — those who were there by command, chance, or curiosity), or antipathy (open contempt — those who came to…
When Jesus said “I will build My church,” He spoke of a body still future — built on Himself, not on Peter — which He established at Pentecost; Peter merely used the keys by announcing the terms of entrance, and the church is entered as a…
Within God’s commands there is a difference between the essential — what He specified and bound — and the incidental circumstances He left to human judgment; faithfulness keeps the essentials exactly while allowing liberty in the incidentals, neither binding what God left free nor loosing what…
The Bible must be divided rightly: the three dispensations are distinct, the New Testament is the law by which people living now will be judged, and within the New Testament there are two kinds of instruction — what God requires of sinners to be saved, and…
The word of God is not one power among others; it is the power through which God has always worked — creating the cosmos, sustaining it, ending it, and in the interval producing the new creation of souls through the gospel. “The gospel is the power…
The first gospel sermon ever preached included the resurrection of Christ. Peter did not work up to it, hedge it, or place it at the end as a supplement to a more comfortable message. It was the message. The sermon’s burden is to show why: not…