Dr Paul Allen

by Robb Brunansky  As we covered last time, 1 John 2:12-14 is, in my opinion, one of the most pastoral passages in the entire New Testament. John affirms that his readers are those who have eternal life, distinguishing between spiritual maturity and salvation, and directing all believers to grow spiritually. John tenderly comes alongside those who are younger in the faith – those who are less mature, comforting them by reassuring them that their lack of maturity is not a sign of a lack of salvation. John gave us three groups by which we can evaluate where we are spiritually, where we need to go, and how we get there – Spiritual Children, Young Men, and Fathers.  Today, we will look at the first group, spiritual children. We all begin the Christian life as spiritual children, as John notes in verses 12 and 13. Spiritual children are typically those who are newly converted. This phrase has no reference to your physical age. If you were converted at 5 or 50 years old, then you we...

Have you ever tried to summarize for those in your care what the Scriptures teach about the behavior of real disciples, about the everyday lives of those who follow him? It’s an important subject, most of us would agree. But nowadays it’s hard to discuss without people interpreting such summaries as volleys in the culture wars. Summaries of Cross-Shaped Discipleship The Bible is full of moral admonition for disciples—abiding in Christ, putting his kingdom above all, living by its ethics even among our enemies, and so on. It seems to me, though, that when we look to the New Testament for summaries of genuine discipleship, three kinds stand out: (1) statements about the way of the cross (and the cost of discipleship), (2) summaries of the Law and the Prophets, and (3) new commandments about practically fleshing out love for God and neighbor. I want to underscore what Jesus said of cross-shaped discipleship—the first of these three kinds of summative pronouncements: If anyone comes to me ...

Cover of Basic Christianity The love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized. I do not think that what the Bible says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God—to mention only a few nonnegotiable elements of basic Christianity . There is a powerful tendency “to present God through characterizations of his inner states, with an emphasis on his emotions, which closely resemble those of human beings.…God is more likely to ‘feel’ than to ‘act,’ to ‘think’ than to ‘say.’ With such sentimentalizing of God multiplying in churches, it does not take much to see how difficult maintaining a biblical doctrine of the love of God can be. Some elements of the larger and still developing patterns of postmoderni...

Portrait of Pascal (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Augustine,Confessions). “There is a God -shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus” ( Blaise Pascal , Pensées). Certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me: “ Son of man , these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces… . Therefore speak to them and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him as he comes with the multitude of his idols, that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols.’” ( Ezek...

Christ in Gethsemane (Christus in Gethsemane), oil painting by Heinrich Ferdinand Hofmann (Heinrich Hofmann). The original is at the Riverside Church (Riverside Church, New York City). (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Discrimination is an unlovely idea in the modern world. In some spheres, it is even a criminal one. Racial, sexual, and class discrimination are rightly acknowledged as evils which need to be purged from society. It may, therefore, come as a surprise to find that God exercises a discrimination in His love for His creatures. That He does so is put beyond doubt in such a statement as Paul quotes in Romans 9:13, from Malachi: “ Jacob have I loved , but Esau have I hated.”  It is also reinforced in Hebrews 12:6 where we are assured that “whom the Lord loves He chastens.” Neither the chastening nor the love, however, are indiscriminate. They both refer to “every son whom He receives.” Again, in 1 John 3:1, the apostle marvels at the depth of the love the Father has bestow...

Early Christians celebrating Communion at an Agape Feast, from the Catacomb of Ss. Peter and Marcellinus. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit , whom He has given us (Rom. 5:5). The fruit of the Spirit : Paul lists the fruit in Galatians 5:22–23. Love is listed first as the preeminent fruit of the Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 13 , Paul magnifies love over faith, hope, and spiritual gifts . God sometimes gives spiritual gifts to those who are not truly His, as we see in the case of Balaam ’s prophecies in Numbers 22–24 and in the case of the healings wrought by Judas when he was sent out by Jesus with the other disciples. Unless these gifts and talents are accompanied by love of God and love for God, they are ultimately of no value to the gifted person, though they may be used by God to help others. Love, in the sense spoken of by Paul, is uniquely Christian. The Greek word for it is...