The Bible and Religious Cults
Almost every book in the NT has something to say about false beliefs and those who advocate them. We are warned, e.g., about false prophets (Matt. 7:15–16; 24:11), false christs (Matt. 24:5, 24; Mark...
Resources
Articles
Review: Fundamentalism and the Word of God by J.I. Packer
In his book Fundamentalism and the Word of God, J.I. Packer explains that the terms ‘evangelical’ and ‘fundamentalist’ originally served to distinguish the Christianity of the reformation and the spir...
Identifying Heresy
This is vital to note: a person who embraces heresy is not a Christian according to Christian tradition. Thus, when an author very critical of an historical Baptist figure described his teaching as be...
Cultural Myths About Truth and Love
A witness for Christ in any age--and certainly in this present age--requires a prayer-saturated, Christ-centered, Gospel-motivated, Bible-shaped, Spirit-filled and God-glorifying commitment to "speak...
The Reformation: A Return to the Primacy of Preaching
Christ-centered preaching is the source of hope, comfort, and life for the regenerated believer. Those touched by the love of God desire above all to hear faithful preaching which directs them to thei...
Why We Don’t See Church as ‘Essential’
Ever since the world went on COVID-19 lockdown and stay-at-home orders were issued, the terms “essential” and “non-essential” have loomed large in our discourse. Businesses and services deemed “essent...
The Four-Hundred-Year Flower
At its very heart, the Canons of Dort are about the nature of grace – supernatural, unilateral, sovereign, effecting, redeeming, resurrecting grace, with all of its angularity, all of its offense to h...
Why We Need to Rethink “In Essentials, Unity; In Nonessentials, Liberty”
It’s true that not everything in the Bible is of equal weight. But I am worried that we have drawn too stark a line between “essentials” and “nonessentials;” in fact, I am convinced that this maxim le...
Evangelicalism is Not Enough
In that book the author challenges the slogan “No creed but the Bible" (no authoritative confessional texts besides the Bible) — a position that is prevalent in many denominations and congregations. H...
Cultbusters?
Invoking the vague concept of ‘cult’ is a lazy way of attacking one’s opponents. If I label your group as “little more than a cult” I can avoid having to assess and come to terms with your teaching. I...
Explicatory Preaching with Phillip Jensen
Under Phillip’s leadership and influence, Sydney Anglicanism has become a ministry well-known for its faithfulness and gospel-centeredness. Listen to this 9marks Interview on his experiences of doing...
What Is a Reformed Understanding of the Gospel?
What makes a Reformed understanding of the gospel is the desire and the passion that God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son receive the fullest measure of the glory they should receive i...
What Must Someone Believe in Order to Be Saved?
What are the most basic things a person needs to believe in order to be saved? Paul says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." He says, "If you confess with your lips that Jesus i...
Pastoral Authority in an Anti-Authoritarian Age
What does the Bible have to say about the rights and responsibilities of leaders to exercise authority? The New Testament speaks clearly of the existence and exercise of authority in the world. The bi...
Thinking Biblically about Authority: An Interview with David Wells
Jonathan Leeman interviews Dr. David F. Wells on the subject of authority.
Confessions of a Bog-Standard Evangelical
Recently, a fellow historian at another Christian institution commented to me about the growing number of Presbyterian prophets who make their reputations on the back of bashing evangelicalism, while...
The Limits of Fellowship
Let me commence by saying that the title “the Limits of Fellowship” is misguided. I know I chose it myself, but it is the wrong question. It starts us off looking for the negative when the theme of th...
5 Metaphors for Your Church Membership
The term “membership” is misleading because of how it’s commonly used. Often it connotes privilege in a club. Costco members get access to deals. Country club members get reduced green fees. If you pa...
The Worth of Waiting: A Word to Aspiring Elders
Waiting is a challenging lesson. The better we perceive something to be, the stronger the desire. And the stronger the desire, the harder the wait tends to be. I'm keenly aware of this because I'm pra...
The Healthy Church: Embodying Leadership
Churches are often distinguished from each other in terms of their theological position or worship tradition. A further, significant distinguishing characteristic of a church, however, is the nature o...
The Invisible and Visible Church
Are you a member in good standing at your local church? More importantly, are you a member in good standing of the invisible church? In this message, Dr. Sproul teaches us the distinction between the...
What Would An Ideal Polity Look Like From a Christian Perspective?
There is no ideal polity, at least not in the way most Westerners would think about the matter. Following in the Greek tradition of Plato and Aristotle, democratic Westerners think in terms of one con...
Proposal for a New Seminary
In the early days of American Protestantism, the training of ministerial candidates was carried on by pastors of churches. A young man feeling a call of God to the ministry would associate himself wit...
Committed to Marriage, Committed to the Church
Wedding season is here. Are you committed to your church? That may seem like a rather abrupt shift in topics, but they are actually closely related, especially if we consider a certain popular wedding...
Judgment of God
JUDGMENT OF GOD. The belief that God passes judgment on the lives of his human creatures is important for Christianity, as it is for most of the world?s religious traditions (see, e.g., S. G. F. Brand...
Three Lessons for Cross-Cultural Evangelism
The answer is, there is no “cross-cultural key.” In our evangelism, we don’t do anything differently here than we would anywhere else. Our evangelistic methods are singularly uncreative. To suggest th...
Christianity, Liberalism and the New Evangelicalism
For Christians, the past should always be instructive. When we look back to the Old Testament, we see how much of Old Testament faith and life was nurtured by remembrance of times past. The Passover,...
Why (Some) Reformed People Are Such Jerks
The Oxford American Dictionary gives this informal usage of the noun jerk: a contemptibly obnoxious person.
The Crisis of Evangelical Christianity
The Reformation was, more than anything else, an assault on faith in humanity, and a defense of the idea that God alone reveals Himself and saves us.
To Be or Not To Be: The Uneasy Relationship between Reformed Christianity and American Evangelicalism
The ambivalence expressed by Warfield cannot help but be felt today by those who are convinced of the persistent truth and vitality of the catholic faith as it is expressed in the confessions and cate...
Abandoning Evangelicalism?
"Now, with new Reformation categories, I was able to see some of the problems inherent in American evangelicalism as I had experienced it over the past few years. I no longer considered myself an evan...
Do You Worship Your Weekend?
We see nothing in Jesus? life that would pass the approval of a life coach's prescribed 'ideal week'. Should church staff strive for a 'balanced' life, or a full life?
Do You Have an Accountability Partner?
R. C. Sproul Jr. talks about being asked by a deacon at church twenty years ago if he had an "accountability group." When it was explained that this would be "a group of men who are active in your lif...
Testing the Glue that Binds Churches Together
Are denominations dying? That seems to be the common wisdom. Certainly the mainline denominations are bleeding out; people are leaving those churches en masse. But what about denominations of evangeli...
A Church and Churches: Independence
What is the relationship between your local church and every other church in the world? In the companion piece to this article, I consider how different churches should integrate together. Here we wan...
A Church and Churches: Integration
What is the relationship between your local church and every other church in the world? In the companion piece to this article, I consider what makes different local churches independent from one anot...
Churches Cooperating in Discipline
Yes, autonomous local churches really can cooperate in church discipline. No, they typically don't. But, yes, they should! The first step my own church takes to cooperate with other churches in discip...
Who Governs the Church?
A Presbyterian and a Baptist discuss how they derive their polity and who calls the shots.
Gospel-Centered Ministry
I am here to talk to you about what ministry shaped by the gospel, profoundly shaped by the gospel, really looks like? In this letter, Peter was not writing to the same type of situation Paul addresse...
Keep It Complicated
I am sometimes told, when discussing how to present the gospel to a non-believer or how to formulate a sermon or Bible study, to "keep it simple." Sometimes the admonition is "to keep the cookies on t...
Submit to Jesus, Submit to His Bride
Church membership can feel boring, secondary, extrabiblical, and unimportant. Aren't there plenty of more pressing things to talk about? Not really, suggests Jonathan Leeman in "Church Membership: How...
Gospel Centrality: A Warning and a Recommendation
How do you move beyond the gospel without moving on from the gospel? On the other hand, if the gospel is so all-important, do we need to "move beyond" the gospel in any sense at all? Those are two of...
The Gospel is Insufficient
At a seminar I gave last week, I used the tried and true method when facing a crowd outside of my usual comfort zone. Three points nobody could disagree with, a fourth point that might have raised som...
A Fresh Look at the Regulative Principle
The "regulative principle" is the Reformed view of how God regulates our worship and provides that worship is by divine appointment. Everything we do in worship must be divinely warranted. And since S...
The Corporate Component of Conversion
If your doctrine of conversion is missing the corporate element, it's missing an essential piece of the whole. A covenant head comes with a covenant people.
Six Ways to Give Your People False Assurance
As a pastor, I interact with a lot of people who struggle to have confidence in the authenticity of their conversion. To their mind, their sin clings closely and their failings are always at hand. Mos...
The Ethics of Share Investment: Should a Christian Invest in the Share Market?
The emergence of capitalism in the 1700s sparked off a fierce debate which continues to this day. This debate was highly visible, with a dramatic polarising on the world stage. On the right were the f...
Homosexuality in Scripture
The brief I have been given for this paper is to set homosexuality in the context of God's purposes for us as men and women. The source material I am to draw on is Scripture (the Old and New Testament...
God Glorified in Man's Dependence
God Glorified in Man's Dependence was Edwards' first published work. He originally delivered the sermon in Northampton in the fall of 1730; on July 8, 1731, he preached it to a meeting of clergy in Bo...
