Dr Paul Allen

  Titus 2. It is essential to understand the work of God’s grace not just in the past or the future, but also right here, right now. Sadly, many believers have a big hole in their understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They have a pretty clear understanding of the forgiveness they have received through Jesus's substitutionary work and of their future hope as children of God.  But they are not as clear about the right-here, right-now work of the gospel. Can you identify what God is doing now, between the “already” of Christ’s resurrection and ascension and the “not yet” of your final welcome into his final kingdom? Do you see the work of Jesus in the here and now?  Why did God plan a long period between when he first rescued us by his grace and when he will call us to our eternal home? Wouldn’t it be better for us to believe and immediately be taken into glory? Why must we endure a long, hard journey in this fallen world? The apostle Paul addresses these questions in...

  Jordan Standridge Are we supposed to care? Are we supposed to be sad? Are we supposed to pay attention to what is happening in the Roman Catholic Church? What are we supposed to do? I was hanging out with some Italian Believers, in Rome, when the news came out. One of the Major Basilica’s of Rome, “Saint Paul outside the City” was in the background as we were discussing the death of Pope Francis together. Mind you most of these people grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, have been baptized in the RCC and most still have many, family members in the Roman Catholic church. All these people have been impacted greatly by the Catholic Church. Perhaps no one on earth is more qualified to speak on the vicar of Rome, than a born-again Christian in Rome. And several people, in separate conversations all quoted Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven   will enter.   22...

Even though we may not be able to fully explain why Satan came into being, we know he does exist, and he was there from the beginning of mankind because he tempted Adam and Eve in the third chapter of Genesis.  We also know that Jesus commanded “the unclean spirits, and they obey him” (Mark 1:27), Which is a fantastic statement. He said to Satan in the wilderness, “Be gone!” and he was gone (Matthew 4:10). And we know at the end of history, God will throw Satan into the lake of fire so that he can’t influence God’s people anymore or harm us anymore (Revelation 20:10). So, from all this, we know God could have bound Satan completely the moment he fell or at any point in history in between. We know he doesn’t because, in the end, the whole New Testament is telling the story of Satan’s activity in this world and how he deceives, how he tempts, and how we need to do warfare against the principalities and powers. “Seeing and savoring the superior beauty of Christ is the way we defeat th...

According to Pastor Andy Stanley, Dr. Al Mohler’s “version of Christianity draws lines, and Jesus drew circles. He drew circles so large and included so many people in His circle that it consistently made religious leaders nervous. And His circle was big enough to include sinners like me, and I come from a long line of sinners like me.” Yes, “On one occasion, Jesus said, ‘Come to Me, all weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. You will find rest for your souls. All. That’s a big circle. That’s the invitation of our Savior. That’s the invitation of our church.” Indeed, as a church, Pastor Stanley stated, “We decided 28 years ago, we draw circles, we don’t draw lines, we draw big circles.” The truth is that Jesus drew both circles and lines and if we don’t do both, we hurt those we are called to help. On the one hand, God’s love, expressed in Jesus, is massive beyond words. Jesus died for our sins. He took the punishment for our guilt. He was pronounced guilty so that we could be p...

J. Cotrell Living in a physical world in material bodies, even Christians are constantly vulnerable to the error of materialism. Theoretically, we believe in spiritual realities—God, angels, demons, our souls. But on a practical level, we often live as if none of these spiritual realities are real. We limit our conscious lives to what can be perceived through our five senses—all of which are physical. Even in our relation to God, the physical often takes priority. In prayer, for example, we focus on physical blessings and needs. In group prayer sessions, when prayer requests are solicited, usually, the great majority of such requests are for some kind of physical healing of physical ailments. It is certainly not wrong to be fully aware of and thankful for this physical creation, and it is quite appropriate to petition and thank God for our physical well-being. However, we must always resist the temptation to limit our concerns to the material aspects of reality. I pray that those who h...

In the New Testament and across Christian tradition, baptism signals at least three realities: Identification with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection (Romans 6:3–4; Colossians 2:12) Purification from sin and its effects, which have separated us from our Maker (Acts 22:16) Incorporation into the body of Christ, the church (Acts 2:41; 1 Corinthians 12:13) Given these connotations, and given the assumption that Christian baptism is new with John the Baptist’s initiation — a baptism received by Christ at the beginning of his earthly ministry to signal its inauguration and association with the dawn of the new covenant — how does Christian baptism relate to Old Testament practices? Where did the idea of baptism come from? After overviewing the meaning of Christian baptism, this article seeks to briefly explore the connections between baptism and Old Testament ritual washings. Buried and Raised with Christ When considering the meaning of baptism, it is essential to distinguish the wo...

Philip Ryken When archaeologists dig through the ruins of antiquity, they have one certain way to identify a place of Christian worship. They look for a cross. When they find it painted on a wall, carved into stone, or even worked into a floor plan, they know they’ve found a church. Since the beginning, Christians have identified themselves with the cross on which Jesus died. And whether it’s carved in wood or etched on our hearts, the cross is the chief symbol and defining reality of the Christian faith. Why is the cross of Christ so essential? There are several reasons. Necessary to Fulfill God’s Plan First, the cross was necessary to fulfill God’s eternal plan. Not long after Jesus returned to heaven, his friend Peter preached to the people of Jerusalem. He said, “This man [Jesus] was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23, NIV). God knew about the crucifixion of hi...

There are twin dangers that we face as believers. The first danger is in viewing sin too highly. The second danger is in seeing sin too lowly. I have seen both errors within Christ’s church… and I have seen them both within myself. There is a fine line that we walk in this life, and it’s easy to fall on one side or the other. When someone views sin too highly and too regularly… sin, not Christ, becomes the focus. The consequences of such can be devastating. At that moment a person’s gaze isn’t fixed on Jesus in line with Heb 12:2, and whenever our primary gaze is on introspection that will lead to depression, anxiety, concern, and all sorts of doubt. Why? We were never made to hope in or meditate upon ourselves. We are to, as Paul says in Col 3:2, “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.”  The flip side of the coin is what I want to focus on here. It’s seen in viewing sin too lowly. While some teach the doctrine of sinless perfectionism, there’s some...

Some sorrows run so deep and last so long that those who bear them may despair of ever finding solace, at least in this life. No matter how large a frame they put around their pain, the darkness seems to bleed all the way to the edges. Perhaps you are among those saints whose lot seems to lie in the land of sorrow. You have not taken the bitter counsel of Job’s wife — “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9) — and by God’s grace, you will not. Yours is not a fair-weather faith. You know that God has treated you with everlasting kindness in Christ. You cannot curse him. But still, with Job, you stare at the fallen house of your life, where so many dear desires lie dead. And even with faith larger than a mustard seed, the brokenness seems unfixable in this world. The wound is incurable. The grief is inconsolable. The darkness defies the largest frames we could build. This is why, when God speaks to such saints in Romans 8, he does not bid them to merely look harder here below, squinting for a silve...

God is always at work in this world in everybody’s life. “He works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). And when we come to Christ, we are given a perspective on that prior work that is true and helpful. It is a cause for thankfulness in us, and it’s a cause for the benefit to others. In other words, we experience it as worship, and we experience it, hopefully, as witnesses. Double Brightness Before we turn to Christ, there is, so to speak, a veil over our eyes so that we can’t interpret what’s happening in our lives in its proper relationship to God before we’re Christians. In a profound sense, we are blind to what God is doing in our lives. So we can’t tell any true stories about God’s work in our lives before our eyes are open to see what he’s really doing in our lives. But when we come to Christ, the veil is lifted, and we see our past life for what it really is, both in its darkness and in the bright light of God’s work in it. So here’s the text that ...

Paul stresses in Galatians that his transforming encounter with the risen Christ was not dependent on any human being but came by direct revelation. In fact, his entire argument for his apostleship in the first two chapters of Galatians hangs on that very fact. Paul’s Unique Conversion Here’s what he says in Galatians 1:11–12: I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. And then, to underline the point of being dependent on no one except the risen Christ, he says in Galatians 1:15–17, When he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me. Still, I went away to Arabia and returned again to Damascus. So the poi...