salvation

The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act serves as a boost to ongoing efforts to legalize same-sex marriage across the nation. Christians believe marriage is defined by God and recognized by government. But many today believe marriage is defined by government and must be recognized by all. For this reason, I’m not optimistic about the trends concerning marriage and family in the United States. Neither am I sure of what all this means for those who, in good conscience, stand against the tide. But I am optimistic about the church of Jesus Christ. We’ve been through societal transformations before, and we’re sure to go through them again. For example, the conversion of Constantine to Christianity in 313 A. D. was certainly good for the church. (We didn...

Rachel Held Evans concludes her blog post If my son or daughter were gay with this paragraph: If God blesses Dan and me with a child who is gay, I would want that child to know without a doubt that he or she is loved unconditionally. I would want her to know nothing could separate her from the love of God in Christ. I would want her to know that she isn’t broken, she isn’t an embarrassment, she isn’t a disappointment.  May I be part of creating a world in which I will not have to protect her from the bullies. I believe Rachel’s motivation is to create a more welcoming and loving environment in the church for those who identify themselves as homosexuals, or who struggle with homosexual desire. I admire and agree with her motive, and must say that I’ve learned from her in this area of b...

Whenever the 4th of July weekend rolls around, I’m reminded of times I’ve traveled in countries where freedom is severely curtailed.  Or they were freshly freed from the chains of injustice, and the joy of their release was palpable. I was in Johannesburg on the tenth anniversary of the end of apartheid. I was in Korea when the border between North and South was electric with tension. My most powerful memory came from Moscow, where I was teaching shortly after the fall of communism. One night a group of us went to the famed Bolshoi Ballet.  It was a long, wonderful evening, but after we took the subway back to where we were staying, the students said, “Come and let us celebrate.”  The other two professors with me were as tired as I was, but they ...

Christianity.com: What is the rapture and why do Christians seem to talk about that so much?-Russell Moore from christianitydotcom2 on GodTube. What is the Rapture? The Rapture is not a word that’s found in scripture. But it’s a Biblical idea and a Biblical concept, which is that at the end of the age, Jesus returns and calls His people to Him in the air. So as Paul talks about in 1 Thessalonians, chapter four, those who are dead are raised first and then those who are still alive are caught up with the Lord Jesus in the air. Where Christians disagree is not over whether or not there is a Rapture. All Christians of every stripe believes there is a Rapture. The questions is when and so most Christians in the history of the church have believed in one singular coming of the Lord ...

As you drive home from church on Sunday afternoon, how do you evaluate your sermon? Do you aim for less droopy eyes than last week? Do you base it on positive comments from your congregation as they shuffle out of the sanctuary? When God judges the ministry of those who teach his word, God will not ask around to see how much people enjoyed your preaching. He is going to use two measurements. Titus 1:9 boils good preaching down to two things In Titus chapter one, Paul lists the qualifications for an elder. He itemizes several character qualities, and then ends with this: “He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). We learn the two things that the pastor must do in ...

A cartoon shows a sign in front of a café: “Specializing in meals that leave you bloated and lethargic, followed by self-loathing.”  A man says to his wife, “I liked it better when they called it comfort food.” I know the feeling, friend. A while back, I was in another state speaking for two nights. The first morning after I had arrived, I had gotten up early and found a downtown diner that catered to the locals. I met a lot of people and put away a big breakfast. A few hours later, my host and another pastor took me for lunch in a buffet restaurant. That evening, I spoke at a banquet where the food was plentiful, delicious, and memorable. Late that night, back in the hotel, I turned on the computer, read my email, and in answer to a question agreed that, yes, I would write an ar...

“I love my wife!” “I love hamburgers!” “I love my husband!” “I love the movie Nacho Libre!” Strange, how in our popular culture this word “love” can be used in such a trivial way, but then also be used to refer to the deepest of relationships. No wonder it’s so easy for us to miss the type of love God calls us to express toward, not just our favorite people, but toward all people. So radical is the love that God commands us to have for others, it includes loving our enemies and persecutors (Matthew 5: 43-48) and loving without expectation of receiving love in return (Luke 6: 27-36). But the most challenging call to love is the great commandment love God with all of our heart and love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22: 34-40). Love God, Love Others To truly love, we must first know God....

A couple of years ago, my wife and I went to see the disturbingly interesting film Contagion, which has been described as a “medical thriller disaster” movie. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the film is about the rapid spread of a virus that results in a pandemic, until a team of researchers are finally able to produce a vaccine. One of my friends who did his graduate work in infectious diseases said the film did a good job with the science, except the discovery of the vaccine was unrealistically fast. That’s pretty scary and enough to turn any normal person into a germaphobe. Maybe that movie wasn’t the best choice for a date night, after all.  The Contagion of Sin As scary as infectious diseases are, there’s a more deadly virus that you and I already have – the sin virus. As the 16th...

Satan hates God and therefore he hates God’s people, the church. His great plan for the church is to cause Christians—true believers who ought to be together in the gospel—to find ways of disagreeing among themselves, to divide, to be bitter and jealous, and ultimately to “bite and devour one another” (Gal. 5:15). Here are twelve ways that you can repulse Satan’s attacks. #1. Spend more time considering evidences of grace in other Christians than you do pondering their sins and weaknesses. You, as a Christian, probably have a much greater ability to see weakness in other believers than to see strength. It is as if you use a magnifying glass when looking for weakness and a telescope when looking for grace. Brooks warns, “Sin is darkness, grace is light; sin is hell, grace is heaven; an...

As the father of a young man, I know the talks parents have with their sons — or should have. I have had plenty of those talks, and I know them from both sides. But there is one talk I never had to have with my son, and my father never had to have with me. That is the talk about what to do when the police pull you over and you are a young black man. The talk about what to do when you are eyed suspiciously by people just because you are a young black male. The talk about how to act and how to respond when people watch just to see if you are trouble. America is divided once again in the aftermath of the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. The decision of the Florida jury to acquit Zimmerman on charges of murder and manslaughter in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin has reverberated...

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A lot of people are either unnerved or angry, or a combination of both, by the thought that the National Security Agency (the NSA) has evidently conducted extensive surveillance of American citizens, whether it be of their telephone calls, texts, e-mails, web-searches, or daily conversations. The ultimate outcome of it all, at least from a legal point of view, has yet to be determined. I find it intriguing that people are so concerned about the government knowing what in actual fact is very little about their lives but typically ignore altogether the fact that God knows everything, literally and exhaustively, everything about them. Does your knowledge of God’s knowledge of you frighten you? Or do you find in it comfort and security and strength? David, King of Israel, celebrated God’s know...