Dr Paul Allen

Does 1 Timothy 2:4 mean God wants every single person who ever lived to be saved? A closer look at verses 1-7 and the context helps us to get at the answer. Paul urges Timothy to lead the church to pray “first of all” — Paul wishes to give this exhortation first because of its great importance. The word “then” simply means “therefore” and resumes the thought begun in 1:18: “Because I am entrusting you with the pastoral duty to oppose false teachers (1 Tim. 1:18), you, therefore, need to pray (1 Tim. 2:1).” Thus Paul views prayer as one of the ways in which the church combats false teaching. Four different types of prayer Paul mentions four different types of prayers: supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings. He probably does not intend to give a precise delineation of different types of prayer but rather means simply to say that the church needs to offer all kinds of prayers for all people, and the type of prayer required will often be dictated by the need ...

Recently you may have watched three claims about Jesus worm their way into popular discourse: That Jesus was A). a person of color, B). an immigrant, and C). Palestinian. Obviously, the increase in these claims coincides with their perceived political value . Last Christmas, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez made these points as an appeal for Christians to advocate for different immigration policies. Just yesterday, the Washington Post ran a (particularly strange) column appealing to evangelicals to stop supporting President Trump—something about his connection to the youth group purity movement of the 1990s —but it closed with the author reminding Christians that Jesus was a “person of color” and “an immigrant.” As ironic as these statements are coming from people arguing for expanded legalized abortion, they are not confined there. We’ve seen authors, and church leaders repeat those three claims in contexts where politics don’t seem to be the goal. I fear that we are almost at a...

One of the most exciting times of my life was when I was first converted to Christ. I was filled with a zeal for evangelism. However, much to my consternation, when I told my friends about my conversion to Christ, they thought I was crazy. They were tragically amused, remaining unconvinced despite my sharing the gospel with them. Finally, they asked me, “Why don’t you start a class and teach us what you have learned about Jesus?” They were serious. I was elated. We scheduled a time to meet, and I got there a little bit early—but they never showed up. Despite my profound desire for evangelism, I was a failure at it. This realization came to me early in my ministry. Yet, I also discovered that there are many people whom Christ has called and whom He has gifted by His Spirit to be particularly effective in evangelism. To this day, I’m surprised if anybody attributes their conversion in some part to my influence. In one respect, I’m glad that the Great Commission is not a commission p...

Let’s put a couple of key passages in front of us about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit so we know what we are talking about. Here is Jesus in Mark 3:28–30: “‘Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ — for they were saying, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’”  In other words, they were attributing Jesus’s deeds to the devil instead of God. One more text, Luke 12:10: “And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.”  There have been several people — probably a lot more people don’t come forward, but these came forward — who came deeply convinced they had committed the sin against the Holy Spirit and were therefore beyond forgiveness. They were terrified, as you can imagine. Sure Salvation Now, it see...

The doctrine of penal substitution is under attack today—and that’s an understatement. From voices outside of evangelical theology to those within, the historic Reformation view of the cross is claimed to be a “modern” invention from the cultural West. Others criticize the doctrine as sanctioning violence, privileging divine retributive justice over God’s love, condoning a form of divine child abuse, reducing Scripture’s polychrome presentation of the cross to a lifeless monochrome, being too “legal” in orientation, and so on. All of these charges are not new. All of them have been argued since the end of the 16th century, and all of them are false. Yet such charges reflect the corrosive effects of false ideas on theology and a failure to account for how the Bible, on its own terms, interprets the cross. Given the limitations of this article, I cannot fully respond to these charges. Instead, I will briefly state four truths that unpack the biblical-theological rationale of penal...

Nearly 1600 years ago today, Augustine of Hippo passed out of this life and into eternity. Has any other thinker had such a profound influence on the course of Christian theology and philosophy? On the indwelling of God Confessions, Book I, Ch. 3: Do heaven and earth encompass Thee, then, since Thou fillest them? Or dost Thou fill them and still have something left over, since they cannot contain Thee? And where dost Thou overflow when, having filled heaven and earth, something more remains of Thee? Or dost Thou have no need of a container, Thou who containest all things, since what things Thou fillest, Thou fillest by containing them? It is not the vessels filled with Thee which hold Thee in position, for, even were they to break, Thou wouldst not spill out. And when Thou dost flow out over us, Thou dost not fall to the earth; rather, Thou dost lift us up. Nor dost Thou scatter Thyself; rather, Thou dost gather us in. Dost Thou fill all the things which Thou fillest with T...

Few texts are more misunderstood in our day than Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, that you be not judged.” It often comes up in conversations when one dares to make a moral assessment of another person that rubs the hearer the wrong way. “Who are you to judge?” comes the retort. What kind of “judging” is Jesus talking about? As in all cases, the context is a great help in understanding what Jesus is getting at. This text is in the Sermon on the Mount, which demonstrates the nature of true righteousness versus superficial religion. In this text, Jesus is concerned about the hypocrisy of the double standard. The proof of His point is in the illustration that follows in verses 3–5: Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to ...

  Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. 5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10who died for us so that whether we a...

Revival tourism is a thing. Scenes of revival receive a constant stream of visitors. People want to step into the pulpit in Sandfields, South Wales, where Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones exercised a powerful ministry that ushered in revival to that blighted working-class community. In Dundee, Scotland, the grave of Robert Murray M’Cheyne beside St. Peter’s Church has been a veritable pilgrimage destination for hundreds if not thousands of people over the years. There is an irony in that man who lived by the maxim that they would only give the glory to another bask in unwished-for, postmortem glory. Revival is also an obsession with some. There are conferences and ministries dedicated to the celebration of past revivals. Now, it is a good thing to think of days of old. In an age of chronological snobbery, we need more reflection on past events rather than less. A walk to the Northampton, Mass., of Jonathan Edwards in the 1740s, would take us to the rarefied atmosphere where God wa...

The most important question, of course, is “What were the middle ages? What was the character of them?” In textbooks, maybe a hundred years ago, they were often referred to as the “Dark Ages” and that was a wonderful way of being able to say nothing important happens and we can skip it. And there’s a, particularly, a Protestant tendency to do that. Okay, Augustine died, when exactly did Luther come along? Let's go from one good guide to another and let's ignore the fact that there are only about eleven hundred years between them and surely nothing much could have happened in those eleven hundred years. Let's get to the Reformation. Well, they weren’t a Dark Age. They were, in fact, an age of a great deal of cultural and intellectual and ecclesiastical accomplishment that is very important and we need to take a serious look at. Dark Ages (ca. 1200–800 BC): Mass Migrations and Development of Homeric Epics. The Dark Ages were a time of great migrations and devel...

Fear is a curious and powerful emotion. It can debilitate. Fear can stop our mind, shut our mouth, and stay our hand. Yet fear can also set us into action. As much as fear keeps us from taking risks and being effective, fear can also be an incredible motivator. The right kind of fear is also one of the best motivators for our evangelism. FREEZING EVANGELISM FEAR When it comes to evangelism, Christians tend to view fear as purely negative. Many of us have come to believe that fear is the primary factor that keeps us from speaking the gospel to others. Fear freezes us. When we sense the Spirit leading us to talk with our neighbor, friend, or family member, we get the same feeling that many of us experienced on a Friday algebra exam. We struggle to focus. Our hands perspire. We don’t even know where to begin. THE PROMISE The good news of Jesus promises us both honor and a home (Matthew 10:32; John 14:1–3). Only when Christians recognize this will they be able to overcome the sh...

For the first 300 years of Christianity, there was barely a breather from violent persecution. Roman emperors harangued Christians by confiscating church property, arresting worshippers, and even executing them in arenas like the Colosseum as entertainment. That persisted until the glorious year of 313 AD. Christians were granted by their government an unprecedented relief from persecution and even encouragement to convert others to their faith. On 28 October, 312 AD Constantine and Maxentius clashed in a military battle outside Rome for the highest position in the Empire. The day before, while mustering his troops, Constantine observed a pattern in the clouds that looked to him like the overlapping of two Greek letters Chi and Rho, what to us would be an X with a P over it. These two letters happened to be the first letters of the Greek word “Christ.” He saw this portent as a divine communiqué in which Jesus was promising him victory. He immediately ordered his troops to em...

The difference between regeneration and conversion is a slight difference, but it’s an important one. Regeneration is the work of God the Holy Spirit as He supernaturally and immediately changes the disposition of the soul from spiritual death to spiritual life. Conversion is a result of regeneration. When we are converted, we’re turned around and we move in a different direction. Sometimes we get confused about this, because particularly when people give their testimony, they often say, “I was born again on February the 13th, 1975,” and so on. That person is testifying to a conversion experience. They may have been regenerated earlier than that but only became aware of their state of conversion at a later time. So I think it’s important that we make sure that we distinguish between those concepts.

Richard Sibbes, one of the most beloved English Puritan pastors and theologians, once wrote, “God knows we have nothing of ourselves, therefore in the covenant of grace He requires no more than He gives, but gives what He requires, and accepts what He gives.”1 With this statement, Sibbes conveyed the essence of the grace of God in the gospel. However, we still must answer the questions: What is it that God requires of us? And what is it that God accepts upon the fulfillment of what He requires? The seventeenth-century scholastic theologian Francis Turretin spoke of the covenant conditions in Scripture as being either legal or evangelical. According to Turretin, the legal condition of God’s covenant is “entire and perfect obedience to the law,” and the evangelical conditions are “living and sincere faith and repentance.” Whenever we come across any “if/then” statements in God’s Word, we must determine whether they belong to the law or to the gospel—whether they are legal or ev...