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…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 19. Why are so many Christians still spiritual infants after years of faith? It troubles me, and I suspect it troubles you, that so many believers remain spiritual infants long after they should have grown up. They have been in church for a decade or more, they love the Lord in their way, and…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 17. Why does right belief lead to right behaviour? I am convinced that right belief is the hidden engine behind a holy life, and that most of our failures in conduct trace back, sooner or later, to a failure in what we actually believe about God. That sounds like a bold claim, so let…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 16. To detect false teaching is a skill every believer needs, and not only the pastors and scholars among us. Jesus warned that false prophets would come in sheep’s clothing, and the apostles return to the theme again and again, which tells me this is ordinary equipment for ordinary Christians, not a speciality for…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 15. Progressive Christianity is a movement many believers have heard named but few could define clearly, and that vagueness is part of what makes it so difficult to respond to. It presents itself as a kinder, more thoughtful, more inclusive version of the faith, a Christianity finally grown up and freed from embarrassing old…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 13. Itching ears is one of Paul’s most quietly devastating phrases, and it describes a danger that is more alive today than ever. Writing his final letter to Timothy, he warns that ‘the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12. False doctrine spreads like gangrene. That is not my phrase but Paul’s, and it is one of the most arresting medical images in all his letters. Writing to Timothy about a pair of false teachers, he warns that ‘their talk will spread like gangrene’ (2 Timothy 2:17). It is a deliberately ugly comparison,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10. Early church catechisms are something many evangelicals have either never heard of or quietly suspect of being a Roman Catholic invention, and both reactions miss a rich and useful history. Long before the Reformation produced its famous catechisms, the believers of the first few centuries were carefully instructing new converts in the faith…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4005. Giving glory to the Spirit is something many believers feel oddly uncertain about, and the question deserves a straight answer. We sing freely to the Father and to the Son, yet when it comes to the third Person of the Trinity a strange shyness sets in, as though praising Him might somehow be…