Dr Paul Allen

In airports you find those long moving walkway conveyor belts that look like a flat escalator propelling you forward. Some passengers step onto the belt and remain static, allowing the rubber to deliver them to their destination. Others prefer to keep up a steady gait while on the belt, causing a unique sensation of warp-speed walking. Still others eschew the mechanism altogether and, like Amish conscientious objectors, choose to plod on resolutely next to the belt. We all end up where we’re going but let’s face it: those who are serious about arriving sooner rather than later tend to be the businessmen who jog on the belt outpacing their fellow travellers by leaps and bounds. Sanctification is not passive. We can’t sit sprawled on an assembly line as the Spirit fits us with the next Christian virtue. Yes, God is overseeing every tweak and turn of the process, but the more we cooperate the quicker (and less painful) the progress. It may seem like a paradox to minds that prefer dicho...

John Piper (theologian) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Cage-stage Calvinists are identifiable by their insistence on turning every discussion into an argument for limited atonement or for making it their personal mission to ensure everyone they know hears—often quite loudly—the truths of divine election . Now, having a zeal for the truth is always commendable. But a zeal for the truth that manifests itself in obnoxiousness won't convince anyone of the biblical truth of Reformed theology. As many of us can attest from personal experience, it will actually push them away. Roger Nicole , the late Swiss Reformed theologian once remarked that all human beings are by nature semi-Pelagian , believing that they are not born as slaves to sin. In this country, particularly, we have been indoctrinated into a humanistic understanding of anthropology, especially with respect to our understanding of human freedom. We don't want to believe that we are burdened by negative inclinations an...