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What is Luther?
When Martin Luther discovered that some had begun calling the first Protestants “Lutherans,” he strongly objected. It is funny to think that some 500 years later, many are still known by his name: ... -
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Far too many people, especially within evangelicalism, think that the individual is all that matters, and that the corporate dimension is a distraction or diversion. Of course Christianity is deeply p... -
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J.C. Ryle on True Christianity
True Christianity is a fight. . . .There is a vast quantity of religion current in the world which is not true, genuine Christianity. It passes muster; it satisfies sleepy consciences; but it is not g... -
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Would Christianity Make My Life Smaller?
When I was considering the possibility of embracing Christian faith as a young college student, what I feared most was that it would make my life smaller rather than larger—less love, less joy, less c... -
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A true Christian is both a beggar and an heir. -
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One of the gravest dangers to the Christian faith
One of the gravest dangers to the Christian faith is its wholesale appropriation of the larger culture. When this happens, the citizens of those places cannot recognize the difference between their cu... -
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The Christian’s life in all its aspects—intellectual and ethical, devotional and relational, upsurging in worship and outgoing in witness—is supernatural; only the Spirit can initiate and sustain it. -
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Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none that is less than this. -
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The Christian Self-Actualization Plan
In her excellent book on following Jesus in the suburbs, Ashley Hales describes one of the ways in which our discipleship has been influenced by modern secular trends such as the desire for self-actua... -
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In the Christian subculture, there is an unspoken standard, a notorious goal to “win the contest.” It’s there, the contest. We don’t say it out loud, because it sounds ludicrous spoken into the open a... -
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The Unique Quality of Christians
In an early Christian document known as the Epistle to Diognetus (c. A.D. 120-200), the author wrote a response to some propaganda circulating in the Roman Empire. People had spread false rumors about... -
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When we don’t meet Christ in Scripture and are not regularly being discipled by or discipling others, it is impossible to discern what being a Christian means or to cultivate a relationship with God. ... -
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Defining the Gospel
I’ve been reading Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What . Miller took this point to an even further extreme. In his book, he tells a story about one occasion when he was speaking to a class at... -
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“Christians:” Worshiping God in Equality
Christ followers were first called Christians at Antioch—about fifteen years after the birth of the church at Pentecost. There must have been something remarkable about this particular group of believ... -
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The Christian religion begins in a New Birth in the power of the Spirit. It is developed under His guidance, and sustained by His presence; but ignoring the Spirit, it becomes a matter of education an... -
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Christians Ought to be Different
If a CEO or an accountant is caught in an adulterous affair, it is not likely to make the news at all. But when a pastor is caught in an affair or embezzling money, it is a big deal. Which leads us to... -
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Getting to the Image
Think of an ancient icon of Christ. Imagine that a thousand-year-old Christ Pantocrator painted on a wooden panel is discovered in some forgotten monastery. The image of Christ is there, but it’s cove... -
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Christian Geese
The Danish philosopher and contrarian Soren Kierkegaard once compared Christians of his time to a flock of geese in a barnyard. Every week, they listened to an eloquent speaker who recounted the stori... -
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The A to Z of the Christian Life
The gospel is therefore not just the ABCs of the Christian life, but the A to Z of the Christian life. Our problems arise largely because we don’t continually return to the gospel to work it in and li... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Matthew 14:13-21
Context The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew occurs within a section where questions of Jesus’ identity are heightened. Two incorrect answers of who Jesus truly is are given in 13:55 (“isn’t this the... -
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Our Faith
Our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and “trying to carry it out. The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself.... -
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The Christian's new life is a life of love, forgiveness, and kindness, modeled after the example of Christ. -
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Sometimes Easy, Sometimes Hard
You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, “Take up your Cross”—in other words, it is like going to be beaten ... -
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Grace and Self-Reliance
We might not say we believe a Jesus-plus-our-efforts idea of the gospel, but when we place our performances on the pedestal of personal progress, we’re not relying on the grace of God. We’re worshipin... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide James 2:1-17
A Highly Practical Text Often we come to scripture passages that require a bit of interpretive twists and turns to find ways of connecting the text to our modern-day lives in the 21st century. But oc... -
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Christianity has suffered more casualties from faux faith than from honest doubt. -
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When the Minister is the Skeptic
I grew up as a Christmas and Easter Methodist. Our family called ourselves Christians, but it was not an important part of our lives. I found church boring. When I turned eighteen, something happened ... -
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The Religion Shop Has Been Closed
[For Christians] the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiast... -
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Union with Christ is the starting-point for everything else to be thought and said concerning what makes the Christian a Christian. -
liturgy
Leader: Arise! Shine! Christ’s Church
Leader: Arise! Shine! Christ’s Church has assembled. People: We are one body, with Christ as our head. Leader: What kind of body is this? People: The Body of Christ, brought together not by huma...
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