The sin that struck Ananias and Sapphira dead was not stinginess and not even mere lying to men; it was hypocrisy before God — the loss of the sense that God inspects the heart — and that sin is as deadly to a congregation now as…
The Lord chose twelve very different men to lay the foundation of His church, and in their variety He teaches every congregation that He has a place and a work for every kind of faithful disciple. We are tempted to look at the apostles as giants…
When God’s people borrow the world’s religious vocabulary, they soon borrow the world’s religious ideas; faithfulness therefore requires that we hold the pattern of sound words and call Bible things by Bible names. This is a lesson about words, and someone will object that words are…
All authority in religion belongs to Jesus Christ; therefore His word, and His word alone, settles every religious question, and to refuse to hear Him is to be cut off from the people of God. Every religious dispute, when traced to its root, is a dispute…
Faith is easy to praise and easy to talk about. It sounds noble. It sounds safe. But James refuses to treat faith like a badge you wear or a word you say. He treats it like a force that moves a life. Jesus did the same. He told us to count the cost, to carry the cross, and to give up what we cling to. So James presses the question we would rather avoid: not “Do you believe?” but “What has your belief made you do?” Abraham laid Isaac on the altar. Rahab walked away from her old world. Real faith always lays something down. And if your faith costs you nothing, James says plainly, it is worth nothing.
Entrance into God’s kingdom requires new birth from above—water and Spirit—received by believing that obeys, centered on the lifted Son and expressed in a life that says, “He must increase; I must decrease.”