Dr Paul Allen

Few things trouble the soul of the child of God as much as the presence of indwelling sin and the sober realization of the inability of the flesh to overcome it. True believers often come to the end of themselves and cry out: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24). Christians grieve over sin and spiritual weakness. They long for victory over it.  The Scriptures command us to be diligent in examining ourselves (1 Cor. 11:28), taking heed to ourselves (1 Cor. 10:12) and asking the Lord to “Search me and see if there be any grievous way in me” (Ps. 139:23–24); but they do not stop there. God’s Word reveals that the work of Christ is the source of pardon for sin as well as the source of power to overcome it. Believers possess this power by virtue of their union with Christ in His death and resurrection.  In order to grow in Christlikeness, the believer must remember that sin’s dominion was broken when Christ died and rose again. This is ...

Christianity is based on historical events. Something happened in history, and all that man is, believes, and does is based on these events—events that occurred in history. Chief among these historical events is the resurrection of Jesus Christ . As the Apostle Paul so aptly put it, if Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead, we are the world’s most pitiable fools, and rather than following Christ, we ought to “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor. 15:32). But because Christ has been raised from the dead, Christians frame their entire lives in the light of the resurrection. In short, we live resurrection lives—lives that reflect our hope in the resurrected Christ. As central as the resurrection is to the Christian life, however, it is not the end of the work of Christ. After Christ was raised from the dead, He “ascended up into heaven,” as is affirmed by both the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. The particular nuance of the ascension is that after the resurrection and...