The battle against sin is lost when the pastor thinks he is in a separate class, impervious from the spiritual warfare faced by all believers. First and foremost, he must see himself as a Christian who must endure to the end.
With one foot in systematic theology and the other in church history, historical theology can be the bridge to take our study of God to the past or our study of the past to God.
It’s a privilege to pray to someone who is infinitely wiser than we are, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who loves us more than any human father ever could.
God communicated to us through a book, through the written word, and, therefore, he expects us to read.
When I consider many of the pastors in our region today, I see men who have become dear friends and I see brothers who are on the same team. It’s so much harder to walk away from that.
Jesus proved to be a masterful chess player. He simply refused to get caught in verbal or intellectual traps, and in fact always managed to turn the heat back on the one who posed the challenge in the first place.
What’s the heart issue behind slander and gossip? The narcissistic duo of self-love and self-promotion. When we traffic in slander and gossip, we tear others down and build ourselves up.
The Holy Spirit works through the preaching of the Word to accomplish far more than a pastor will ever know, even in opposition.
At the heart of Sola Scriptura, is the recognition that fallen humans are always looking to replace God’s authority with some other human/creaturely authority
To say God’s mercy ultimately originates as a response to foreseen faith or mercy is to affirm election does depend on human will and exertion, rather than on God (contrary to v. 16).
To lament the decline of cultural Christianity is to lament not simply the loss of a Christian consensus, but the loss of the social capital born of common grace that secular society was borrowing from.
Like a good doctor, pastors must strive to present difficult truths in a clear, kind, compassionate manner. May we guard against our tendency to allow the tone of our message from hindering the truth from being heard.
During my time at SBTS, I’ve realized that I needed to leave ministry temporarily and give myself to studying the things of God full-time
If we ever appear to have exhausted our knowledge of God, we’ve certainly committed idolatry because we’re no longer talking about God.
Hyperbole and exaggeration can be effective rhetorical devices, grabbing our attention and constraining us to see what we didn’t see before, but they can also be used for ill and to mislead.
We’re beggars because the words of man will never fill our spiritual appetite. We need food from heaven. We need to hear from God.
Until heaven, our motives will never be as pure as they should be. But how can we know if they are carnal unless we first know ourselves?
The enemy would love God’s people chasing abstract and far-fetched untruths rather than sharing the good news of the gospel with their neighbors.
