Dr Paul Allen

One of the things that has continuously shocked me throughout my life is the relentless attack against God’s Word – especially from professing Christians.  Sometimes, these attacks are subtle, implying the Word of God is insufficient because it is too difficult to understand. Other times, the attacks are blatant, like the promotion of an evolutionary theory as an alternative to biblical creation. In the study of 1 Corinthians, this reality was essentially happening in Corinth, where those believers sought after worldly wisdom. They lived as if the Bible was insufficient for their needs or that Scripture was inferior to the latest philosophies or psychologies. They also judged men’s wisdom to be superior to God’s, which undermined and attacked the truth of His holy Word. Paul addressed this problem in 1 Corinthians 2:6-16, reminding the Corinthians that Christians have the mind of Christ, which is infinitely superior to worldly wisdom.  The mind of Christ is described as eterna...

Give us this day our daily bread. (Matt. 6:11) These words draw our focus to a particular time—this day. It is recurring, a petition to be made again with each sunrise. These words would have reminded Jesus’ hearers of the Exodus, a period in Israel’s history when God provided just enough manna daily for the people to survive (see Ex. 16). They were wandering in a wilderness on their way to a promised land where God would be their king. They would have loved a grand stockpile of food. But God taught them to trust him afresh each morning as they awakened to find new manna on the ground. Trusting God for basic necessities would form the foundation for trust in greater matters. Similarly, Jesus prepares his followers to trust God for what they need as they await the new kingdom that God is establishing through him. What was difficult for a first-century peasant may also be difficult for us, albeit for different reasons. Reliance requires that we see our position in the world clearly. We a...

We need to understand Genesis 3 if we are to understand the gospel. Everything else that follows in the Bible does so as a consequence of the events that took place in the Garden of Eden.  And they were events, not myths. Underlying all the actions of Jesus and all the teaching of the New Testament is the fact of human sin and the doctrine of the fall of man. By the Fall we mean man’s fall from the perfect condition in which he was created to a state of sin. Our responsibilit y Whilst it is clear from Genesis 3 that Satan is behind sin, this does not excuse us, nor does it remove our responsibility for our actions. The words which the Bible later uses to describe human disobedience to God emphasise this. • Sin means to fall short of the standard God has set. • Transgression is to trespass outside the boundaries God has set. • Iniquity means crookedness, not straight, moral distortion, and refers to our nature. Read Psalm 32:1–2 NKJV, where all three words are used. The three words ...

If our thinking about God is not correct, then every other doctrine we apply our minds to will also be incorrect. This is the most important doctrine, yet people seem to think they are free to make up their minds as to what God is like.  So some who call themselves Christians say, ‘My god would never send anyone to hell.’ Such a statement is only possible if you ignore all that the Bible has to say and just impose your own thoughts on the subject. This attitude is responsible for what is possibly the greatest sin a person can commit—to reduce God to terms that are acceptable to us (Psalm 50:21).  This is why in the Old Testament one of the sins that grieved God the most was idolatry. This is to substitute man-made objects and ideas in the place of the one true God (Jeremiah 10:3–5). It is a slander on the character of God, and all worship that flows from it is worthless. What is God like? The answer to this question is that he is not like anything we have known or experienced....

The question of who Jesus is is crucial to the validity of the Christian faith. It was a question important to Jesus himself, so in Matthew 16 we find him asking his disciples, ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’ The answers are interesting and, if spoken of anyone else, would be highly flattering.  Common opinion held that Jesus was either John the Baptist, Elijah or Jeremiah. People were so impressed with him that they thought he must be one of these great servants of God come back from the dead. Flattering though the answers were, they were totally inadequate to describe who Jesus is; the Bible leaves no doubt about Jesus' uniqueness and exclusivity. • ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created’ (Colossians 1:15–16). • ‘In Christ all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form’ (Colossians 2:9). • ‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being’ (Hebrews 1:3). Jesus is sp...

The word ‘trinity’ is not found in the Bible, but the idea it presents is seen everywhere in Scripture, from the use of the plural ‘us’ in Genesis 1:26: ‘Then God said, Let us make man in our image,' to the baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19: 'baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.' 'Trinity' means ‘threeness’ and speaks of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We do not believe in three Gods. Scripture is clear that there is only one God (Deuteronomy 6:4; 1 Timothy 2:5). There is no doubt that this is a very difficult doctrine to understand. Augustine, one of the great Christian leaders of the fifth century, gave a great deal of time to thinking about the doctrine of the Trinity.  One day, as he was walking along the seashore, he saw a boy digging in the sand. He asked him what he was trying to do, and the youngster replied that he wanted to empty the sea into his hole in the sand.  This set Augustine thinking: Am I not trying...

Should we pray to the Lord to deal with us according to our own righteousness? Should we ask, “Father, please help me because I’m innocent in this”? Can we humbly say, “O God, please give me what I deserve”? Our immediate, good, humble Christian impulse is to say, “No, of course not. I should pray that God will deal with me according to the righteousness of Christ, which is far greater than I deserve.” Amen to that. As David prays in Psalm 143:2, “Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.” But then we read some of the other psalms of David: Psalm 7:8 “The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.” Psalm 18:20 “The LORD dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me.” Psalm 26:1 “Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering.” So, which is it? Should we ...

  In the opening chapters of Acts, Luke offers what is likely the most comprehensive description of a healthy church in the New Testament.  Here we learn that as “awe came upon every soul” (Acts 2:43), the Jerusalem Church listened to the apostles’ teachings, broke bread in each other’s homes, and shared their resources generously while the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:42–47; 4:32–37). By any measure, the Church of Jerusalem was healthy and thriving. And yet, while it’s easy to think that the Jerusalem Church was nearly perfect, Luke disabuses us of any such notion when he describes a shocking episode of moral failure and instant judgment—God strikes two people dead three hours apart! Their names were Ananias and Sapphira. After selling some property, they laid the proceeds from the sale at the apostles’ feet. But what looked like a generous donation was a work of calculated deception. What they claimed was a total donation of the proceed...