Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07017 Regeneration is the miracle at the heart of conversion. It is what makes the entire Christian life possible. Without it, there is no genuine faith, no real repentance, no lasting change, and no spiritual perception of God. It is the point at which God acts to bring spiritually dead people to spiritual life,…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07029 Redemption is one of the richest words in the New Testament’s vocabulary of salvation. It draws on the world of the marketplace and the world of slavery to describe what God has done for those who trust in Christ, and it carries the weight of a completed transaction that cannot be reversed. To…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07014 Justification is the word the New Testament uses to describe what happens legally and relationally when a sinner is accepted before God. It is not the whole of salvation, but it is its judicial heart. Getting a clear understanding of it matters enormously, because what you believe about justification determines what you believe…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07027 Salvation is described in the New Testament through a range of images, each of which captures a different dimension of what God has done for those who trust in Christ. Justification addresses legal standing. Redemption addresses bondage and purchase. Reconciliation addresses a broken relationship. Adoption addresses identity and belonging. It answers a question…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07028 Before anyone can be reconciled, there must have been a separation. The New Testament does not soften what that separation looks like: human beings, by nature and by choice, are at enmity with God. Not merely distant from Him, not simply ignorant of Him, but opposed to Him. Reconciliation is the doctrine that…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07025 This question sits at the very heart of the Protestant Reformation, and it is not merely a historical or academic debate. How a person answers it shapes how they understand the gospel, how they relate to God, and what they think Christian discipleship actually involves. The apparent tension in the New Testament between…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07026 Imputation is a theological term that may sound abstract but describes one of the most personally significant realities in the whole of Scripture. It answers the question of how a guilty person can stand before a holy God without condemnation, and it does so by pointing to a transaction that took place at…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07023 Baptism is a significant and serious act of Christian obedience. It is also one of the most debated subjects in Christian theology, with genuine disagreement not just about its mode but about what it actually does. The question of whether baptism is necessary for salvation goes to the heart of the gospel itself:…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07024 The phrase “sinner’s prayer” is familiar in evangelical Christianity and has been used in countless evangelistic contexts, from crusades to personal conversations. The term itself does not appear in Scripture, and there is no prescribed formula anywhere in the New Testament that functions as a verbal key to salvation. Understanding what the sinner’s…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion Q07090 Every pastor encounters this pastoral challenge eventually: someone who has walked to the front of a church, raised a hand, prayed a sinner’s prayer, or signed a decision card on multiple occasions, yet whose life shows no discernible evidence that anything real happened. The temptation is to call them forward again, to repeat…