Sanctification

When we consider the Biblical doctrine of sanctification, it is important to recognize how the doctrine is often portrayed in Scripture. It is organized first around who we are and then second around how we should live. The Bible first establishes who the believer is in Christ and makes statements...
Today, Dr. Michael Allen is with us! He’s the professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. And he’s the author of Sanctification, part of the New Studies in Dogmatics series from Zondervan. His visit gives us the perfect sounding board to ask “Can our...
There is a functional perfectionism that can subtly creep into the minds and hearts of even those who adamantly reject any idea of instantaneous sanctification in a believer's life. On one hand, it is altogether possible for us to convince ourselves that we have out-sinned the grace of God or that...
I recently read of one man’s experience as a student in the classroom of a famous professor. One student asked the professor, “What one trait separates the great scholar from all the rest?” The students sat in anticipation. Would it be pedigree, proclivity for languages, resilience, intelligence,...
These days, it seems that almost every week social media uncovers another eruption along the Presbyterian Church in America's (PCA) volcanic fault line between social accommodation/compassion and biblical obedience. This week, a conference promoting strategies to address same sex attraction (SSA)...
Howard Griffith
Martin Luther was an outsized personality, with great faith and some great flaws. Living with this great person has a good effect on you. Let me commend his little book, The Freedom of a Christian . When he challenged the practice of indulgences in 1517, and when he debated Johann Eck a year later...
The book of Revelation can be thrilling. Not because of the charts and timelines often concocted to parse out the unknowable date of Christ’s return. No, it’s marvelous because it is filled with the gospel of Jesus Christ. But let me tell you what else it has going for it besides the fact that it...
I had been a professing believer for several years when I entered college, but I needed to learn holiness. As Christians, we always need to keep learning holiness, but it was a crying need for me at that point in my development. I needed to learn not just about it, of course, but how to live it –...
Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination of events to deliver a wonderful—even...
Did you know that you are an intricate integrated dispositional complex? At least that’s the way God created you in the beginning. When Adam and Eve came from the hands of the Lord they were holy, righteous, and knowledgeable. How do we know this? Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:24 and Colossians 3:10...