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…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9. Doctrinal disagreement is not the end of fellowship, and I want to say that clearly at the outset because so many believers fear that it is. They imagine that to stay in true fellowship everyone must think identically about everything, and so they either paper over real differences or break off from anyone…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 8. Which doctrines are essential for salvation is a question that deserves great care, because the wrong answer in either direction is dangerous. Make the list too long and you start barring from heaven people the Lord has welcomed. Make it too short and you empty the gospel of its content until almost anything…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 7. Learning to tell primary truths from secondary doctrines is one of the most useful skills a Christian can develop, and the lack of it has wrecked more friendships and split more churches than I care to count. Some believers treat every conviction they hold as a hill to die on. Others treat nothing…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6. Can I love Jesus without caring about theology is one of the most sincere questions I am asked, and I never want to crush the heart behind it. Usually the person is reacting against something cold they have seen, a Christianity that knew all the right answers and somehow loved no one. I…