Psalm 119:124 – Grace
When is providing rules a gracious gift?
Psalm 119:101 – Evil Paths
I have kept my feet away from every evil pathso that I might keep your word. Too often we think of keeping from doing things that are wrong as a point-by-point effort. Make a list of things we shouldn’t do, and avoid those things. This can be a dangerous trap if undertaken independently of other…
Psalm 119:64
God’s grace precedes His laws, illustrating that divine love and covenant obligations are gifts. True holiness comes from God’s actions, not self-sufficiency.
The Importance of Teaching Sanctification
Teachers and pastors frequently avoid talking about sanctification. Some of the reasons include: A Detour on Christian Perfection When I first joined a United Methodist congregation, I had the idea that Methodists would know a great deal about John Wesley. One Sunday night I discovered how wrong I was. I had been invited to teach…
Link: On the Participles of Hebrews 6:4-6
Via Dave Black, I found this post, which outlines the participles of this passage well. I have expressed my view on this passage previously, and it takes the participles into account and aligns with one of the positions suggested.
Grace and the Book of Hebrews
In my experience, Hebrews has provided a wealth of texts for sermons that call for works and human effort. Pride of place, perhaps, should be held by the Wesleyan doctrine of Christian perfection, for which one of the central texts is Hebrews 6:1. No matter how many times Wesley affirmed Christian perfection as a gift…
Atonement | Christianity | Imparted Righteousness | Imputed Righteousness | Justification | Sanctification | Soteriology
A Question of Ecumenism, Theology, or Exegesis
Over the last few days Adrian Warnock has been posting excerpts from John Piper’s new book on justification, The Future of Justification. His latest seems to represent an escalation, with its title John Piper: Is N. T. Wright Preaching Another Gospel?. Adrian has maintained throughout that Piper is being gracious to Wright and is accurately…
Quotes on Imputed Righteousness
The translator’s difficulty with this passage arises from the lack of a single English verb to express both “do right” and “be right with God”; of a noun that means both “righteousness” and “acceptance with God as righteous”; and of an adjective to describe the man who is both “righteous” and “accepted as righteous,” or…