Exploring the doctrine of salvation—how sinners are saved by grace through faith in Christ.
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07033. The doctrine of election is one of those subjects where people arrive with their minds already made up and their defences already raised, and I do not blame them. Few doctrines have caused more heat, more caricature and more pastoral damage when handled carelessly. Yet the word is in the Bible, it is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07032. The ordo salutis is Latin for order of salvation, and it refers to the logical sequence in which the various parts of salvation relate to one another. It is a theologian’s framework rather than a phrase you will find in Scripture, and I want to be honest about that from the outset. No…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07029. Redemption in Christ is a word borrowed from the slave market and the auction block, and I think we lose most of its force because we have never stood in either. When Paul writes about being bought with a price, his first readers did not need the metaphor explained. Many of them had…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07028. Reconciliation with God presupposes something most people would rather not admit, which is that a real estrangement exists in the first place. You cannot reconcile parties who were never at odds. So before we can say anything useful about how peace is made, we have to be honest about how the quarrel started…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07027. Adoption as sons is, to my mind, the warmest word in the whole vocabulary of salvation, and it is the one most often skated over. Justification tells me my legal position has changed. Redemption tells me my bondage has ended. Regeneration tells me my nature has been renewed. Adoption tells me something further…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07026. Imputed righteousness is the answer to a question that ought to keep every honest person awake: how can a guilty man stand in front of a holy God and not be destroyed? Imputation is the accounting word Scripture uses for what God does about that, and once you grasp it you will never…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 07025. The relationship between faith and works is where a great many Christians tie themselves in knots, and I understand why. Paul says a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law. James says faith without works is dead. Put those two sentences side by side without care and you have…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07024. The sinner’s prayer has introduced more people to the vocabulary of conversion than almost any other set of words in modern evangelicalism, and yet you will not find it anywhere in Scripture. There is no apostolic script, no prescribed formula, no moment in Acts where Peter or Paul asks a crowd to repeat…
Reading Time: 10 minutesQuestion 07023. Is water baptism necessary for salvation? My answer is no, and I hold it firmly, but I want to reach it the long way round because there are passages that appear to say otherwise and they deserve to be taken seriously rather than waved past. Anyone who tells you this question is simple…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07022. Where do those who commit suicide go? I have been asked this question across a kitchen table more often than from a pulpit, usually by someone whose face tells me the answer matters more than any other thing in the world just now. So I want to answer it plainly and gently, and…