Dr Paul Allen

And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you can number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” And he believed the LORD and counted it to him as righteousness. (Gen. 15:4–6) Even though Abram and Sarai cannot have children, God assures Abram that his “very own son” will be his heir. Taking him outside to look at the stars, God promises Abram that his offspring will be equal to their number. The New Testament quotes Abram’s reply four times: “And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6).  This verse reveals a key scriptural pattern. God regards Abram as righteous in grace and accepts him because of his faith. Paul agrees: “For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8). In the following two verses of Ephesians, Paul says God did not save us because of our wor...

The Stages of Spiritual Maturity: Introduction by Robb Brunansky In my estimation, one of the most pastoral passages in the entire New Testament is 1 John 2:12-14, where the apostle John stops his flow of argument – where he has been giving tests of salvation – and speaks to his readers from his heart. We can see John speaking directly to his brothers and sisters in Christ, sharing his heart with them about their common salvation. Scholars and Bible students have often puzzled over the purpose of this passage, especially as it finds itself situated in 1 John 2 – after several tests of salvation and before the first imperative in the letter in verse 15 (do not love the world). The passage seems quite repetitive, where John addresses children, fathers, and young men – and then he addresses all three groups again. Why does he call out these three groups? Are there three groups, or are these all designations for every believer looking at Christianity from various angles and lenses? And how...

Words are weapons. They are either weapons used in the service of God and His kingdom—weapons that are brandished in love for God and our neighbour—or they are weapons used in the service of the kingdom of this fallen and sinful world—weapons wielded in the love of self and hatred of God and neighbour.  This is simply the reality of what words are.  This reality powerfully confronts us in our current context, and we struggle with how to wield our words. We live in the middle of a swirling vortex of political conflict, social unrest, clashing values systems, a culture war, and a global pandemic, and the power of words as weapons through social media has exponentially increased.  Through various forms of social media, words as weapons are used to mobilize, encourage, scare, advocate, anger, inform, judge, punish, reward, lament, and rejoice, all on a massive scale and with dizzying speed. How do we navigate through this daunting and sometimes overwhelming reality, and how ...

When Mark’s Gospel opens, Mark highlights the ministry of John the Baptist (1:2–8). But then Mark zeros in on the baptism (1:9–11) and temptation of Jesus (1:12–13) since those things preceded Jesus’s public ministry (1:14–15). The language of Jesus’s temptations fascinates me because Mark mentions the presence of wild animals, and Mark is the only Gospel writer who does this. 12 The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him. Why would the presence of “wild animals” be worth mentioning? First of all, the location of the wilderness explains the presence of wild animals. The wilderness was understood as a place for wild animals. The opening verses of Mark’s Gospel introduced the “wilderness” idea (1:3, quoting from Isa. 40). John the Baptist was baptizing “in the wilderness” (1:4). Now in 1:12, we read that the Spirit drove Jesus out into “the...

Sinners rescued from the road to hell love to rehearse and celebrate the mercy of God. Where would we be today without mercy? Where would we be  for eternity  without mercy? Without mercy, we would be dead in our sin, a death worse than death. Mercy called us from the tomb. Mercy lifted us out of the pit. Mercy opened our blind eyes. Mercy gifted us with faith, repentance, and joy. We deserved every possible ounce of rejection, punishment, wrath, but God gave forgiveness, love, and life instead. All that we have, we have by the mercy of God. Is there any other god, in all the religious imaginations on earth, who deals so gently and compassionately with sinners? “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,” Jesus says, “for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” ( Matthew 11:29 ). Knowing how we’ve treated him, all the endless ways we’ve each ignored and insulted him, he has every righteous reason to be severe and merciless, but he’s gentle with us...

This Sunday, I experienced a contrast between the beautiful worship I had experienced earlier in the day — the holy presence of God, the purity of the Word, the glory of the Spirit — and the filthiness of this carnal world. I turned on the TV when I arrived home from church. The headlines were not only filled with bad news. They were also filled with venom and malice. They were meant to provoke and enflame and divide. They were earthy, carnal, “of this world.” They were defiling. We are Manipulated by Biased News Let us drink from healthy, pure, beautiful, and glorious streams. Not only will we ourselves thrive and bear much fruit, but we will be able to give nourishing drink to others as well. The truth be told, and more than we would like to admit, we are manipulated and defiled by the news — by which I do not simply mean the latest reporting of the facts. I mean the biased, partisan news that bombards us every day. It does not build our faith. It does not bring us closer to God. It ...

At the end of Psalm 86, David even fears for his existence, and the main message of the psalm is how to lay hold of God in times of personal need. The key to the whole psalm is the last phrase of verse 11: “Unite my heart to fear your name.” There is nothing like pressure to show how divided our hearts are. It is as if the circumstantial pressure exposes the spiritual fault lines of our hearts. The structure of the psalm is like a sandwich; verses 1–7 and verses 14–17 are a cry for help, and in between, in verses 8–13, is the meat with a section on the praise of God. The psalm begins with David pleading for God to answer him:  “Incline your ear . . . answer me . . . be gracious . . . gladden my soul” (Ps. 86:1, 3, 4). He addresses himself to the “LORD,” using the name that God revealed to His covenant people. David recognizes that he is in a relationship with God. It is as if he is saying: “This is who I am, and this is who You are, so Lord, be all that You are to me.” As we move i...

In 1963, when Andy Williams released his song, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” he had the Christmas season in mind. Despite the song not mentioning Jesus Christ or his birth—which I see as a departure from the “reason for the season”—I do agree with Him: Christmas is a wonderful time of the year. When rightly appropriated, it is a blessing that there is a time that is set apart for remembering a pivotal moment in history, the incarnation of our Savior. It’s the time when, as John says in John 1:14, “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” There is such value in marveling at the weight and gravity of verses like Paul’s, where he writes, “Have this way of thinking in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men.” Philippians 2:5–7 What a balm this is for our souls when we consider the cond...