Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 07052 Saving faith is the hinge on which everything in the Christian life turns, and it is also the thing people most commonly misunderstand. Some treat it as a leap in the dark. Some treat it as a feeling they have to work up. Some treat it as agreeing with a list of propositions…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07050 Few things trouble a tender conscience quite like the fear of falling away. I have sat with believers who could recite the promises of God perfectly well and still could not sleep, because somewhere at the back of the mind sat a suspicion that one cold enough season, one serious enough failure, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7047. Being in Christ is Paul’s favourite way of describing a Christian, and I suspect most of us read straight past it. He uses the phrase, or one of its near relatives, more than a hundred and sixty times. He does not usually call people Christians. He calls them those who are in Christ…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7041. The perseverance of the saints, or final perseverance, is the fifth point of the Calvinist system, and it teaches that everyone God has chosen will certainly continue in faith and holiness to the end. The elect cannot fall away finally, and anyone who does fall away permanently demonstrates by that fact that their…
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: 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: 6 minutesWhat is eternal security? Can we lose our salvation? No! is the emphatic answer.
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 07019. Can you lose your salvation? I do not believe you can, and I want to give you the reasons rather than simply the conclusion, because this question deserves better than a slogan. It is asked by frightened people far more often than by curious ones, and a frightened person needs argument, not reassurance…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07014. Justification is the moment a guilty sinner is declared righteous by God, and I want to be precise about that word declared, because everything hangs on it. God does not pretend that we are better than we are, and he does not wait until we have improved enough to deserve the verdict. He…