Dr Paul Allen

John 3:16 has become so familiar that we no longer find its words astonishing. But this remarkable verse reveals amazing truth that should delight us every time we hear it. A Remarkable Claim Jesus boldly asserts that God loves the world. God, the maker of heaven and earth, is self-sufficient and needs nothing outside of Himself. He is the Holy One whose pure eyes cannot look upon sin (Hab. 1:13). His desires are always upright, His love completely pure, and His affection never misplaced. How can such a God love the broken, sin-marred world? In the broadest sense, the world represents the universe that God created. God loves the creation that He spoke into being. His love for the sin-corrupted world is bound up in His plan to totally restore heaven and earth (Acts 3:21). More specifically, the world represents the human inhabitants of the earth, a race of rebels, traitors, and idolaters–objects far from deserving God's love. Because man sinned, God would have done no injustice b...

One of the most surprising twists of John 3:16 is that we are told God loves the world. We might be tempted to think that there is much about the world for God to love. After all, what's not to admire about cityscapes and farmlands, fine cuisine and backyard barbecues, classical symphonies and folk ballads, Renaissance paintings and kindergarten squiggles? The world we know is filled with texture, intrigue, opportunity, and cheer. The problem is that for all that is good and interesting and beautiful about the world, it is overrun with sinners.  Ever since Adam and Eve rebelled against God in the garden, the world has become a wasteland. No matter how wonderful the world may appear, it is not worthy of God's redeeming love. Understanding how undeserving the world is of God's love is the key to John 3:16. Only then will we appreciate the unexpected gift that God gives. This point was well made many years ago by the esteemed theologian Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield ...

The Trinity is a hot topic right now—because of its relationship to discussions about gender. John Calvin speaks about “eternal generation,” the idea that the Son of God has always been the Son—that though he is equal with God the Father , he stands in a relationship of “generatedness” to the Father, and he always has. This language comes ultimately from passages such as John 3:16, in which Christ is called the “only begotten” Son of the Father. www.hopecollege.com We tend to assume that the Reformers were mainly concerned about salvation, the church, and Scripture, that they weren’t so interested in “theology proper”—the doctrine of God. But Calvin, Ellis said, spent a great deal of time “wrangling” with others about the Trinity. He clearly felt it was important. Calvin was especially dedicated to arguing for the Son’s “aseity”—his self-existence, his “from-himself-ness.” The most explicit Bible passage teaching divine aseity is probably Paul’s stirring statement in Romans 11:...

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? (Rom. 8:35). The great comfort of every believer is that our salvation is secure in Christ . Nothing we do can change what the Lord has done in and for us. From first to last, our salvation is dependent on the grace of God and His promises. www.hopecollege.com Throughout the Scriptures , we find God’s assurances that those He has chosen out of the world will come to glory, will inherit the kingdom of heaven ( John 3:16 ; 5:24; 6:37, 40, 51). Jesus proclaimed, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:27, 28). While the Christian might be buffeted by the storms of sin in his own soul, by the onslaught of temptation from the world, like Peter , David, and other great saints of the Bible, God will hold them fast and bring them into His everlasting kingdom. This is the assurance, the p...

What is the greatest Protestant Heresy ? Have a guess?  Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) was a figure not to be taken lightly. He was Pope Clement VIII 's personal theologian and one of the ablest figures in the Counter-Reformation movement within sixteenth-century Roman Catholicism . On one occasion, he wrote: "The greatest of all Protestant heresies is _______ ." Can you complete Bellarmine's statement? How would you answer? What is the greatest of all Protestant heresies? Perhaps justification by faith? Perhaps Scripture alone, or one of the other Reformation watchwords? Those answers make logical sense. But none of them completes Bellarmine's sentence. What he wrote was: "The greatest of all Protestant heresies is assurance ." A moment's reflection explains why . If justification is not by faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone — if faith needs to be completed by works; if Christ's work is somehow repeated; if grace is n...

For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. ROMAN 5:10 It is not repentance that saves me; repentance is the sign that I realise what God has done in Christ Jesus . The danger is to put the emphasis on the effect instead of on the cause — “It is my obedience that puts me right with God, my consecration.” Never! I am put right with God because prior to all, Christ died. When I turn to God and by belief accept what God reveals I can accept, instantly the stupendous Atonement of Jesus Christ rushes me into a right relationship with God, and by the supernatural miracle of God’s grace I stand justified, not because I am sorry for my sin, not because I have repented, but because of what Jesus has done. The spirit of God brings it with a breaking, all-over light, and I know, though I do not know how, that I am saved. The salvation of God does not stand on human logic, it stands on the sac...

We all love being around up-beat people. They’re energetic, easy going, and just all round good fun. Their good attitude always seems to rub off on us. Not only do they rub off on our mood, they can also rub off on our character. If you spend enough time with them, you become like them. Attitudes can make or break situations. People with good attitudes make situations, and people with bad attitudes, break situations. As humans, our attitudes are a central part of our character. Our Attitudes shape our way of thinking and our attitudes can create life-giving or life-taking habits. Have you ever thought about your attitude and the way you think? In Matthew 5:13–16 , Jesus tells us why we are here on earth. He gives us 2 simple attitudes of thinking to live by. They are to be salt and light . To bring out the God flavours and and God colours in our world. He encourages us to be intentional with our thinking and our actions. He calls us to be salty, and full of God’s flavour. To brin...

Leviticus is full of gruesome, bloody rituals performed by priests on behalf of God’s people. Unless you’re a butcher (and maybe even then), the descriptions of the gory mess created by sin and guilt make for uncomfortable reading. Leviticus confronts us with the cost of our sin against God and others. It can be challenging to see past the brutality to redemption. We can find a new perspective on Leviticus by tracing the ideas of guilt and sin throughout the Bible. In the process, we will learn three steps that will allow us to transition Old Testament concepts into modern faith applications—without the need to burn a bull on an altar. www.hopecollege.com Step 1: Get a Sense of the Entire Book and Its Purpose To understand Leviticus, or any Old Testament book, we need to first get a sense of the book as a whole. There is no substitute for reading a biblical book in its entirety. It’s hard work—especially with a book like Leviticus. Yet it helps us understand God’s Word and his w...

God has given you so many limitations because he loves you. If you’re like most people, you don’t feel loved by your limitations. You feel confined, stunted, trapped, and exposed by them. You feel discouraged by how weak you are and how many things you can’t do well or at all. You might even be tempted to resent God for equipping you with what looks like a stingy allotment of abilities. But that’s only because you’re mainly looking at yourself from the wrong perspective, which is looking too much at yourself. God gave you your finiteness, your very limited strengths and weaknesses, in order that you might know and delight in his glorious love for you in as many of its manifestations as you possibly can. You are so limited because you are so loved. Where We Experience Love Most Our finiteness itself is not a consequence of the Fall , even though the corruption that infects it is ( 2 Peter 1:4). God created humans incredibly limited from the very beginning because we we...

Shortly before Christ was received up into heaven, having committed the preaching of the gospel to His disciples, He laid upon them this very solemn charge concerning the beginning of the great work He had committed to their hands: “Behold, I send forth the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on high .” (Luke 24:49, R. V.) There is no doubt as to what Jesus meant by the “promise of my Father” for which they were to wait before beginning the ministry which He had intrusted to them; for in Acts 1:4, 5, we read that Jesus “charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father ” which, said he, “Ye heard from me: for John indeed baptized with water: but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.”  “The promise of the Father,” through which the enduement of power was to come, was the Baptism with the Holy Spirit . (Comp. Acts 1:8). Christ then strictly charged His discipl...

The Westminster Shorter Catechism has an excellent definition of repentance in Question 87: " Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin , and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ , doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience." In the heat of the Christian life, however, that definition may seem more theoretical than practical, not particularly helpful when seeking to live a life of repentance (See the first of Martin Luther's 95 Theses : When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, " Repent " (Mt 4:17), He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.) We recognize that repentance is a grace. That is, it is a gift from God. It is not something we work up for ourselves. It is not turning over a new leaf. It is a turning away from sin and a turning to God that is fueled, as it were, by the Spirit of God at work with...