Dr Paul Allen

Proverbs 28:13 “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” Although many people try to deny their sin and suppress their guilt feelings, no one can totally escape the weight of transgression. We cannot finally escape the truth that we have broken God’s law and stand under His just condemnation (Rom. 1:18–3:20). We have missed the standard that our Creator has established for us and have incurred a debt to Him that we cannot possibly repay (Matt. 18:21–35; James 4:17).  Sin and guilt are real, and the only hope we have is to find the real answer to our fundamental problem of estrangement from God. Happily, Scripture gives us a real answer to our problem—namely, real forgiveness. Humanly speaking, we see how sin weighs on others and know how it can burden our own consciences. The ramifications of sins committed years ago can last into the present. Parents feel remorse for their failures. As people approach death, t...

  “The sinfulness of sin” sounds like a vacuous redundancy that adds no information to the subject under discussion. However, the necessity of speaking of the sinfulness of sin has been thrust upon us by a culture and even a church that has diminished the significance of sin itself. Sin is communicated in our day in terms of making mistakes or of making poor choices.  When I take an examination or a spelling test, if I make a mistake, I miss a particular word. It is one thing to make a mistake. It is another to look at my neighbour’s paper and copy his answers in order to make a good grade.  In this case, my mistake has risen to the level of a moral transgression. Though sin may be involved in making mistakes as a result of slothfulness in preparation, nevertheless, the act of cheating takes the exercise to a more serious level.  Calling sin “making poor choices” is true , but it is also a euphemism that can discount the severity of the action. The decision to sin is...

What do you do if you get a sudden, unexpected opportunity to teach or preach God’s Word? I often turn to what is for me one of the most precious of Jesus’ parables, the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant—a passage one of my favorite writers on the parables (Klyne Snodgrass) groups with parables of “Grace and Responsibility.” The “grace” is truly an amazing one: the master in the parable forgives a massive, unpayable debt—ten-thousand talents. The “responsibility” is a serious one: Jesus ends the parable with the promise that the dire consequences visited on the unforgiving servant will be visited on us all by God “if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” ( Matt. 18:35 ). I think readers may not feel the weight of the grace (or the responsibility) because we subconsciously substitute “dollars” for “talents” while reading Matthew 18. Ten-thousand dollars is not really that big a debt for most of my readers. It’s certainly not an unpayable one for middle-class people in tod...

“Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” ( Matthew 20:28 ) The thought that the death of Jesus and His shed blood were somehow the ransom price paid to redeem lost sinners from an eternal prison in hell has been a stumbling block to many of those very sinners. Yet that is the teaching of Scripture, whether it appeals to their reasonings or not. “Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold. . . . But with the precious blood of Christ” ( 1 Peter 1:18-19 ). In the Old Testament economy, ransoms were paid for various reasons, such as freeing slaves. The last use of “ransom” in the Old Testament, however, seems to foreshadow the New Testament concept. “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death” ( Hosea 13:14 ). But to whom was the ransom of Christ to be paid? Not to the devil, of course, or to any human king. It can only have been paid to God H...

Image via Wikipedia Greece and the other debt -burdened European countries are merely the first little carriages in the derailment of the Sovereign Debt Express. A train service to nowhere. The big carriage has " USA " painted on it in red. To understand the US financial position, just remove eight zeros and pretend it's a household budget : Annual family income: $21,700 Money the family spent: $38,200 New debt on the credit card : $16,500 Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710 The US is trying to bring their budget under control. This year they implemented total budget cuts of $385. Assuming they don't spend more than they raise in taxes, it will take them 370 years to pay back this debt. The bi-partisan US Super Committee is currently discussing proposals to cut spending by $12,000 over 10 years. At $1,200 in saving per year and assuming they balance the budget, it will then take them a mere 119 years to pay back the debt. That should ...