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Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 0032 I understand exactly why theology feels dry to so many Christians, because I have felt it myself and I have watched it in others for years. The word “theology” conjures up dusty books, abstract debates and lectures that seem to have nothing to do with the ache of an ordinary Tuesday. People associate…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 0031 Sound doctrine works in the soul rather like a spiritual immune system works in the body, and once you see the picture you cannot unsee it. Your body is surrounded every day by bacteria and viruses that could destroy it, and the only reason you are not constantly ill is that an unseen…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 0030 The difference between academic theology and practical doctrine is one of those distinctions that sounds dry until you realise how much harm comes from getting it wrong. I have met believers who treat theology as a cold intellectual hobby, and others who are suspicious of any teaching that asks them to think hard….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 0029. Sooner or later every believer who takes both truth and relationships seriously has to ask whether a disagreement is worth breaking fellowship over. You find yourself genuinely at odds with another Christian over a matter of belief or practice. The difference feels significant. But is it significant enough to part ways? This is…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 0028. Knowing which doctrines to divide over is one of the most important and most difficult judgements a believer ever has to make. Get it wrong in one direction and you will fracture fellowship over matters that should never have separated you. Get it wrong in the other and you will keep company with…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 0027. Few questions expose the fault lines in the modern church as quickly as whether unity can exist without doctrinal agreement. On one side stand those who say doctrine divides while love unites, so we should keep doctrine to a minimum for the sake of getting along. On the other stand those who treat…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 0025. Acts gives us a photograph of the very first Christian community in Jerusalem, taken just after the Day of Pentecost, and the early church devoted itself first of all to the apostles’ teaching. Three thousand people had been baptised in a single day. A small band of disciples had become a movement overnight….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 0024. The noble Bereans have become a byword in Christian circles for careful discernment, and rightly so. Whenever someone urges us to check a teaching against the Bible rather than swallowing it whole, the noble Bereans get a mention. But it is worth asking what they actually did, and why Luke thought it worth…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 23. Why did Paul always start his letters with doctrine before application rather than practical instruction? Once you notice this pattern of doctrine before application, you cannot unsee it, and it will change the way you read the whole New Testament. Paul does not begin his letters with a list of things to do….
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 20. How is studying doctrine an act of love? Many people assume the opposite, that studying doctrine is a cold and bookish thing, the hobby of people who would rather be right than be kind. I want to overturn that assumption completely, because I am persuaded that studying doctrine is one of the most…