Michael Kruger nails it at The Gospel Coalition: When it comes to our justification — our legal standing before God — our own good works are in no way the grounds of God’s declaration that we are “righteous.” Indeed, the gospel is good news because we are saved not by what we have done, but […]
Archives for 2014
11 Objections on Giving to the Poor Answered by Jonathan Edwards
One of the best sermons of all time is Jonathan Edwards’s “The Duty of Christian Charity: Explained and Defended.” In it, he argues that helping the poor is one of the highest duties of the Christian. It is not a just a small duty, but a great duty — and even heaven and hell lie in the […]
The Nature of Pastoral Authority in One Sentence
This is really, really important to understand: “The true picture in the New Testament is not that of a congregation under the authority of the preacher; but of both preacher and congregation under the authority of God’s written word” (Eric Alexander, What is Biblical Preaching).
Jesus' Absolute Calls to Discipleship
These are hard texts, but the are good news because they show that Jesus is God, and therefore worthy of all allegiance. For if Jesus is not God, he could not have called for absolute allegiance. But if he is God, then anything less than a call to absolute, unqualified allegience would have been a massive disservice […]
Can You Love Yourself Too Much?
The answer is no. Absolutely not. The issue is not how much you love yourself. The issue is how much you love yourself in comparison to God. Jonathan Edwards discusses this in great detail in his excellent work Charity and Its Fruits. He writes: I do not suppose it can be said of any, that their love of their […]
3 Characteristics of Gospel-Driven Christians
From my book, What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done: Known by their love, and also sound in theology. Both/and, not either/or. Engaged in their communities and workplaces and working for the good of others, not retreating to the hills to grow wheat until Jesus comes. Not afraid of culture, but not […]
What is the Gospel?
On Easter, it is always good to refresh our understanding of the gospel so we can avoid the trap of being pulled away by additions to it that undermine our relationship with God. Here’s how I summarize it in a call-out box in What’s Best Next, in a chapter where I talk about the relationship between the […]
The Final Days of Jesus
In these final days before Easter, it would be a great idea to pick up my friend Justin Taylor’s excellent new book The Final Days of Jesus (co-authored with NT scholar Andreas Kostenberger). His book goes through the last week of Jesus’ life, culminating in the crucifixion and then the resurrection. We often think we “know […]
Interview with Justin Taylor on The Final Days of Jesus
I recently had the chance to interview Justin Taylor on his excellent new book The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived, which he co-authored with New Testament scholar Andreas Kostenberger. The book is fantastic and makes the events of Jesus’ final week real in a new way. […]
The Chief Cause of the Wealth of Nations is Not Material at All, but Knowledge and Skill
Very, very well said by economist Michael Novak, quoted in Compassion International’s short booklet Poverty: Economists affirm that the chief cause of the wealth of nations is not material at all, but knowledge, skill, know-how — in short, those acts and habits of discovery, invention, organization, and forethought that economists now describe as “human capital,” which […]