isaiah on Justification by Faith

My faith life, like that of every one else, fluctuates. There are ups and downs and hot spots and cold spots and boredom and ennui and all the rest can be there. And so I’m not asked on a Sunday morni...

Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God l...

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...

Preaching Commentary Straight Talk from Jesus Jesus Christ did not mince words.  He seems to have always spoken the unvarnished truth, but, I think, with a smile on his face and compassion in his a...

Preaching Commentary Peter's and Isaiah's Confessions Jesus calling the disciples from their fishing appears in Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20, and Luke 5:1-11. Yet only Luke makes the beaut...

But hope is hard to come by. I should know. I remember the time when I was once busy dying. It wasn’t long after I had broken my neck in a diving accident that I spent one particularly hopeless week i...

At the core of every project of self-salvation is the staunch unwillingness to believe that God’s love and forgiveness can be unmerited. Those who would try and save themselves prefer work to rest, ef...

Preaching Commentary The Touch of Jesus The highlighted texts from Matthew 9 include Jesus’ call of Matthew, the tax collector, as well as two accounts of healings (the woman with the discharge of ...

Editors Note: This is perhaps less a review as a jumping off part to articulate some thoughts I developed while reading The Minority Experience. For a full review of the title, a cursory google search...

Pastor: O Lord, in these Lenten days set our minds on Your things rather than the things of man, that we may listen for Your call and walk in Your ways. Lord, in Your mercy, People: hear o...

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

Sometimes people are careless and speak disparagingly of all human righteousness, as if there were no such thing that pleased God. They often cite Isaiah 64:6 which says our righteousness is as filthy...

Faith is a voluntary anticipation.

As for Christians, well, we really have just one thing going for us. We have publicly declared… that we are desperately in need of Another to give us his righteousness, to complete us, to live in us. ...

We confess, “I believe in God.” That confession is not an expression of a creative imagination or an instance of projection, but a response to the One who manifests himself in creation, in history, in...

The 19th and 20th century Canadian-American pastor Harry Ironside once told a story of a new Christian who gave his testimony during a church service. Beaming with joy, the man spoke of how God had re...

The Scriptures find the justice of God a virtue to be extolled, not a blemish to be concealed.

The man of pseudo faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get into a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself...

When the Reformers broke with Rome and claimed the view that the Bible was to be the supreme authority of the church (sola Scriptura), they were very careful to define basic principles of interpretati...

What are you doing right now that requires faith?

The foundation of faith is a firm conviction regarding three things about God—his perfect love, wisdom and power. Like a three-legged stool, no combination of two will do. There must be all three for ...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Relevant Background 1. The Purpose of Paul’s Letter   1 Corinthians is written to a local church with the purpose of reproof and cor...

Pastor: Lord of all, the demands of Your righteousness are too hard for us to fulfill alone, People: so we use this excuse to ignore Your law. Pastor: You forgive our iniquity and remember our sin...

Faith is a redirecting of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.

Apologetics (from apologia in Greek) is a “word back,” a reasoned defense mounted on behalf of the one we love who is innocent but has been falsely and unfairly accused. Faith desires to let God be Go...

God saves by persuasion, not compulsion, for compulsion is no attribute of God.

Faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, unknown, untested goodness of God.

What we need to realize, however, is that there is no such thing as autonomous or “self-grounding” knowledge. All systems of interpretation and all claims to true knowledge are ultimately grounded out...

Hear the good news of the boundless riches of Christ: our God has pity on the weak and delivers the needy when they call. In Christ Jesus our Lord we have access to God in boldness and confidence thro...

The prophet Isaiah describes God as a purveyor of righteousness and justice continually, and speaks to God’s expectation that his children will bring about righteousness and justice as well. Justice i...