Reformation21

The debates surrounding catholicity and theological retrieval do not seem to be slowing down any time soon. With all the back and forth about Thomas, Aristotle, and Van Til, one theological topic seems to be overlooked more often than others—namely, common grace . Often, the discussion of common...

Editor’s Note: This post has been adapted from a longer article set to be published in a forthcoming edition of the Puritan Reformed Journal. It will come as little surprise to many readers on this site that the state of theology in the contemporary North American church is fraught with weakness...

So far in our study of chapter 13 in the 1689 London Baptist Confession, we have seen how sanctification is properly both decisive at conversion and ongoing throughout life . Simply put, the Christian is holy, and is being made holy. In the second paragraph of the chapter, the Confession asserts...

Israel was envious. The nations around them had flesh-and-blood kings, while their ruler was only the eternal spirit-without-a-body Creator of the universe, Yahweh. The people obstinately demanded that God give them a king like all the other nations—and God, in a display of His immense patience,...

Spoiler alert: If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk, a straw, a broom, crayons, and eventually another cookie . The lesson of the story is simply that actions have consequences, which then lead to new circumstances demanding new actions. Every effect becomes itself a...

Iain Murray describes biblical revival as consisting of “…a larger giving of God’s Spirit for the making known of Christ’s glory… a sense of God… not only in conviction of sin but equally in the bewildered amazement of Christians at the consciousness of the Lord who is in their midst" ( Revival...

The matter of sanctification can be simply stated. It has been defined as “the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness” (WSC 35). The manner in which this work progresses in a...

If you are already holy, can you be made more holy? So far in this series, we’ve seen that a biblical view of sanctification sees the doctrine under two distinct-yet-inseparable aspects. Sanctification is initial and definitive in the moment we are saved, and we see this especially in the way the...

Jesus began his ministry in his hometown of Nazareth in Galilee. But when he spoke of Elijah and Elisha ministering to citizens of alien nations rather than within Israel, the people of Nazareth prepare to kill him (Luke 4:28–29). Following his ministry in Nazareth, Jesus continued in Galilee,...

In college, I attended a men’s group Bible study that met Thursdays, dark and early. Over burnt coffee and powdered donuts, our rag-tag band of Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, non-denoms, and everything in between read and discussed the Bible. It was a catalyst of spiritual awakening and...