Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 5025 There is a single verse in Genesis that contains one of the most remarkable statements in all of Scripture about what human beings are. “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 05031 When the Bible speaks of the human spirit, it is pointing to something distinct from the soul, though the two are closely related. The spirit is the God-ward dimension of who we are – the aspect of our humanity that stands most directly in relation to God and most directly under the influence…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 06075 “Total depravity” is a term that has generated enormous confusion, largely because the word “total” sounds as if it means human beings are incapable of any good at all. The biblical truth the phrase is trying to express is both more precise and more important than that caricature suggests – and it is…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 05008 The doctrine of total depravity is one of the most misunderstood in the whole of Christian theology. The popular caricature holds that it means every unregenerate person is maximally wicked, incapable of any moral perception, and entirely indifferent to everything spiritual. Scripture does not teach that. What it teaches is more precise and…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 7006 Few passages in Scripture have caused more anxiety among believers than Jesus’ solemn warning about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. People have come to me over the years, sometimes in tears, convinced they have committed this sin and are beyond hope. Before we even begin to unpack what this sin actually is, let…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4099 Acts 19:1-7 is one of those passages that regularly surfaces in discussions about the Holy Spirit, and it is often read through the lens of Pentecostal or charismatic theology as evidence that a believer can be genuinely saved yet still lack the Spirit. The question is worth pressing carefully: when Paul encountered these…
Reading Time: 8 minutesQuestion 4105 When Philip the evangelist preached Christ in Samaria, the response was extraordinary. People believed, were baptised, and the city was filled with great joy (Acts 8:8). Yet something unusual happened — or rather, something unusual did not happen. The Holy Spirit had not yet fallen on any of them (Acts 8:16). They had…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 4059 Is the Holy Spirit actually God — or is He something less? A divine power, perhaps, or a spiritual force that emanates from God without being God Himself? The question is not merely academic. If the Holy Spirit is not fully divine, then the New Testament’s account of His work collapses, and our…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 4060 Few distinctions in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit carry more practical consequence than the one between His baptism and His filling. Confuse the two, and you end up either striving for an experience you already possess, or resting in a position without pursuing the power that flows from it. Scripture draws the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 4061 Of all the biblical arguments marshalled in support of cessationism — the view that certain spiritual gifts have ceased with the apostolic age — the most frequently cited is 1 Corinthians 13:10: “when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.” The cessationist reading identifies “the perfect” as the completed New Testament canon….