Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07034 Predestination is a word that makes many people uncomfortable, whether because it suggests a rigid determinism that leaves no room for human freedom, or because popular presentations of it have been unnecessarily harsh. But the discomfort is not a good reason to avoid a concept that appears repeatedly in the pages of Scripture….
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07033 Election is one of the most debated doctrines in Christian theology, and the stakes are genuinely high — because the way election is understood directly shapes how a person thinks about God’s character, human freedom, the gospel offer, and the basis of assurance. The word itself simply means choosing or selecting, and no…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08087 The idea that Jesus preached to demons during the period between His death and resurrection has a long history in Christian thought and is closely connected to the interpretation of 1 Peter 3:19. Did Jesus descend to the realm of the dead and address demonic beings, and if so, what was the purpose…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04019 Paul writes to the Corinthian church and tells them, pointedly, that he cannot address them as spiritual people but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ (1 Corinthians 3:1). The church at Corinth was genuine enough that Paul wrote to it as a church and addresses them as brothers and sisters…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04100 Salvation is the work of the triune God: the Father who planned it, the Son who accomplished it, and the Holy Spirit who applies it. The Spirit’s role in bringing everything the Father purposed and the Son secured into the actual experience of the individual is perhaps the most practically immediate dimension of…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 06031 Anger is one of the most contested emotional territories in Christian life. Some believers are taught that any expression of anger is sinful and unspiritual, a failure of self-control that a more mature person would have overcome. Others, reacting against that, treat anger as essentially neutral, requiring no particular scrutiny. Scripture does not…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 6041 Churches are generally clear about what sins are unacceptable: sexual immorality, drunkenness, theft, violence. These are named, condemned, and, when they surface, addressed. But there is another category of sin that passes almost without comment in most congregations, sins that are just as real and just as damaging but that carry no social…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 6044 Paul’s language of the “old man” and the “new man” appears at key points in his letters, and it is easy to read past it without understanding the weight of what he is actually saying. This is not motivational language about improving yourself or leaving bad habits behind. It is a description of…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08084 The Bible presents Satan as genuinely active in relation to human sin: not a mere symbol of moral evil but a personal, intelligent adversary with specific strategies and identifiable methods. It is equally clear that his activity never removes human responsibility. Both halves of that picture are essential, and collapsing either one distorts…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60008 In a marketplace of competing worldviews and religions, what sets Christianity apart? Is it simply one option among many, differing from others only in cultural expressions and historical accidents? Or is there something fundamentally distinctive about the Christian faith? As we shall see, Christianity is unique in ways that no other religion can…