Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07077 The role of confession in salvation is a question that touches on both the nature of saving faith and the relationship between inward reality and outward declaration. Some traditions have treated verbal confession as a necessary and distinct condition for salvation, placing considerable weight on Romans 10:9-10. Others have treated it as effectively…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07078 When the Philippian gaoler, shaken by an earthquake that had opened every prison door, asked Paul and Silas “What must I do to be saved?”, the answer he received was this: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:30-31). It is one of the most concise summaries of…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09014 Baptismal regeneration is the teaching that the act of water baptism itself conveys saving grace and is necessary for the forgiveness of sins and the new birth. It is held in various forms by the Roman Catholic Church, some Lutheran traditions, the Churches of Christ, and significant strands of Anglican theology. It touches…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04094 Gideon’s fleece has become a popular shorthand in contemporary Christianity for a particular approach to guidance: placing a condition before God and taking the outcome as a sign of His will. “I’ll put out a fleece” has entered the vocabulary of Christian decision-making as if it described an approved biblical method. Whether the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 7069 The question of salvation divided Western Christianity in the sixteenth century and has not been formally resolved since. The Protestant Reformation turned fundamentally on the question of how a person is justified before God, and the Council of Trent, convened by Rome between 1545 and 1563, responded by issuing specific condemnations of the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 13013 The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century was not a theological invention but a recovery. When Luther posted his theses and Calvin worked through Geneva, what drove them was the conviction that Scripture’s teaching on salvation had been buried under layers of tradition, sacramentalism, and institutional authority. The Five Solas that emerged from…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 2074 The question sounds simple but carries significant pastoral weight. Someone outside of faith is in crisis, or in genuine searching, or simply curious whether God pays any attention to those who don’t yet belong to him. The answer shapes both how we think about evangelism and how we understand the nature of prayer…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 2078 The account of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 is one of the earliest and most studied passages in Scripture, and yet the reason God accepted one offering and rejected the other remains genuinely puzzling to many readers. The text seems, on the surface, to offer very little explanation, which has led to…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 03079 The account of Jesus walking on the water tends to provoke one of two responses: either straightforward acceptance as a miraculous act by the Son of God, or a search for a naturalistic explanation that preserves the story whilst removing its supernatural content. What the text actually says, and what it means theologically,…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1091 The language of “claiming” Bible verses in prayer is common in many Christian circles. We hear phrases like “I’m claiming Jeremiah 29:11 over my situation” or “Claim the promise and it will be yours.” But is this biblical? Does God want us to grab hold of verses and declare them over our circumstances?…