Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10001. Dispensational theology is one of the most misrepresented frameworks in the modern church, dismissed by critics who have rarely read its careful exponents and caricatured as a novelty invented in the nineteenth century. So let me tell you plainly what it actually is. Dispensational theology is, at heart, a commitment to reading the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6013. A besetting sin is the sin that knows your address: the particular temptation that returns again and again long after other struggles have faded, the one you have confessed more times than you can count. The phrase itself comes from the Authorised Version of a single verse in Hebrews, and understanding what the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6012. The seven deadly sins are among the most famous religious ideas in the world: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. They appear in Dante, in medieval art, in films and quiz shows, and most people assume the list must be somewhere in the Bible. It is not. So where did the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6011. Does God cause suffering, or does He only allow it? I have stood at enough hospital beds and gravesides to know this is never an academic question. How you answer it shapes whether you can trust God on the worst day of your life. If He directly causes every agony, He begins to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6010. Presumptuous sins are singled out in one of David’s best-known prayers, and the singling out is deliberate: “Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me!” (Psalm 19:13). David has just prayed about hidden faults, the sins he cannot even see in himself. Then he turns to…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 6009. Overcoming sin is the daily concern of every genuine believer, and the honest ones will tell you how the usual methods have gone: willpower failed, resolutions broke, promises to God lasted a fortnight. If that is your testimony too, take heart; the New Testament describes a different strategy altogether, and it begins in…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6008. Confession of sin is one of those practices every Christian knows they should maintain and many quietly find confusing. What exactly are we doing when we confess? Is it grovelling? A ritual formula? Informing God of things He somehow missed? And if the cross has already dealt with my sin, why confess at…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 6007. Sinless perfection has been promised by more than one movement in church history: the claim that a Christian can reach a point in this life where sinning stops altogether. Others swing to the opposite corner and treat ongoing sin so casually that holiness hardly seems worth pursuing. Can Christians live without sinning or…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6006. The sin nature is the Bible’s explanation for a fact every honest person has noticed: we do not become sinners by sinning; we sin because something in us leans that way from the start. Why does no parent need to teach a toddler selfishness? Why do my best resolutions bend towards self so…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6005. Are all sins equal in God’s eyes? You have probably heard it claimed; it usually surfaces when someone wants to stop a comparison in its tracks, and it sounds humble. But is it true? Does Scripture really teach that a white lie weighs the same as murder, or a flash of envy the…