Dr Paul Allen

The term amen was used in the corporate worship of ancient Israel in two distinct ways. It served first as a response to praise given to God and second as a response to prayer . Those same usages of the term are still in vogue among Christians.  The term itself is rooted in a Semitic word that means “truth,” and the utterance of “amen” is an acknowledgement that the word that has been heard, whether a word of praise, a word of prayer or a sermonic exhortation, is valid, that is, sure and binding.  Even in antiquity, the word amen was used in order to express a pledge to fulfil the terms of a vow. So, this little word is one that is centred on the idea of the truth of God. The truth of God is such a remarkable element of Christian faith that it cannot be overlooked. There are those who think that truth is negotiable or, even worse, divisive, and it, therefore, should not be a matter of passionate concern among believers.  But if we are not concerned about truth, then we have no reason

“For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” [Luke 7:8] When Martin Luther and other Reformers began to preach the doctrine of justification by faith alone, they were speedily challenged by leaders in the Roman Church . The pope and his representatives taught that the church dispensed saving grace. Faith in Christ meant obedience in all things to the priests and bishops. The teaching that someone was saved by faith, whatever his or her relation to the church, was a frightening development. Such a doctrine must be in error. The Reformers replied with another statement that was even more frightening: “Tradition takes second place to Scripture. People, even popes, can be wrong; only the Bible has absolute authority.” Finally, when the Reformation was an established fact, the church clarified its position at the Council of Trent . Trent maintai

Can you imagine a Christian couple actually praying about living together before marriage? Can you fathom a young woman who professes Christ even bothering to pray about whether she should marry an unbeliever? Can you grasp a Christian businessman having to pray about whether he should tell the truth in a transaction? When the Word of God is so clear, praying to discern God's will becomes a convenient excuse—or even a prolonged filibuster—to avoid doing what Scripture commands. Many who profess Christ today emphasize a wrong view of grace that makes it a free pass to do whatever they please. Tragically, they have convinced themselves that the Christian life can be lived without any binding obligation to the moral law of God. In this hyper-grace distortion, the need for obedience has been neutered. The commandments of God are no longer in the driver's seat of Christian living, but have been relegated to the backseat, if not the trunk—like a spare tire—to be used only in ca

Sooner or later we will all have to face the death of a loved one. Christians meet this reality more than most because we belong to a bigger family: the church. In the body of Christ , God blesses us with many brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers — all dear loved ones whose spiritual bond with us will never be severed (Mark  3:31 –35). We must all reckon with death. Some day we will all confront our own end, but along the way, we will also witness beloved friends and family pass from this life into the next. Death is a real enemy — a frightening enemy. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians  15:26 ). I have watched people die in front of me. I have lost friends, young and old. Death is always ugly. Death always brings sorrow. And there is nothing wrong with grief in the face of death. Jesus himself wept over the death of his friend Lazarus (John  11:35 ). God has so designed us that death is unnatural to us. We were meant to live. But when we lose a l

The Latin word credo means simply "I believe." It represents the first word of the Apostles' Creed . Throughout church history it has been necessary for the church to adopt and embrace creedal statements to clarify the Christian faith and to distinguish true content from error and false representations of the faith. Such creeds are distinguished from Scripture in that Scripture is norma normans ("the rule that rules"), while the creeds are norma normata ("a rule that is ruled"). Historically, Christian creeds have included everything from brief affirmations to comprehensive statements. The earliest Christian creed is found in the New Testament , which declares, " Jesus is Lord ." The New Testament makes a somewhat cryptic statement about this affirmation, namely, that no one can make the statement except by the Holy Spirit . What are we to understand by this? On the one hand, the New Testament tells us that people can honor God with thei

The new sexual morality did not emerge from a vacuum. Massive intellectual changes at a worldview level over the last two hundred years set the stage for the revolution in which we currently find ourselves. We are living in times rightly, if rather awkwardly, described as the late modern age. Just a decade ago, we spoke of the postmodern age , as if modernity had given way to something fundamentally new. Like every new and self-declared epoch, the postmodern age was declared to be a form of liberation. Whereas the modern age announced itself as a secular liberation from a Christian authority that operated on claims of divine revelation, the postmodern age was proposed as a liberation from the great secular authorities of reason and rationality. The postmodern age, it was claimed, would liberate humanity by operating with an official “incredulity toward all metanarratives.” In other words, postmodernity denied all of the big narratives that had previously shaped the culture and spe

One of the great Christian classics is a devotional booklet written by Saint Thomas à Kempis called The Imitation of Christ . In that book, he talks about the struggle that so many Christians have with habits that are sinful . He says that the struggle for sanctification is often so difficult and the victories that we achieve seem to be so few and far between, that even in the lives of the greatest saints, there were few who were able to overcome habitual patterns. We’re talking about people who overeat and have these kinds of temptations, not those who are enslaved to gross and heinous sin. Now Thomas à Kempis’s words are not sacred Scripture, but he gives us wisdom from the life of a great saint. The author of Hebrews says that we are called to resist the sin that so easily besets us and that we are admonished and exhorted simply to try harder to overcome these sins. You say, How do we escape these pockets of sin that we have such great struggles with, that we have an honest a

“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” ( Romans 8:37 ) The first verse of the well-loved hymn “Faith Is the Victory” describes preparation for the battle between the forces of light and darkness. The second verse tells of marching into battle, and the third of the actual attack. For the soldier of faith, empowered by love and obedience to the commandments of God , the victory is assumed. The last verse relates the rewards of victory and a commitment to wise governing once the battle is over. To him that overcomes the foe, White raiment shall be giv’n; Before the angels he shall know, His name confessed in heav’n. Then onward from the hills of light, Our hearts with love aflame; We’ll vanquish all the hosts of night, In Jesus ’ conq’ring name. Jesus, when the apostle John saw Him in His present glorified, victorious state, made this promise to the churches: “He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not