Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07028 Before anyone can be reconciled, there must have been a separation. The New Testament does not soften what that separation looks like: human beings, by nature and by choice, are at enmity with God. Not merely distant from Him, not simply ignorant of Him, but opposed to Him. Reconciliation is the doctrine that…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07025 This question sits at the very heart of the Protestant Reformation, and it is not merely a historical or academic debate. How a person answers it shapes how they understand the gospel, how they relate to God, and what they think Christian discipleship actually involves. The apparent tension in the New Testament between…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07026 Imputation is a theological term that may sound abstract but describes one of the most personally significant realities in the whole of Scripture. It answers the question of how a guilty person can stand before a holy God without condemnation, and it does so by pointing to a transaction that took place at…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07023 Baptism is a significant and serious act of Christian obedience. It is also one of the most debated subjects in Christian theology, with genuine disagreement not just about its mode but about what it actually does. The question of whether baptism is necessary for salvation goes to the heart of the gospel itself:…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07024 The phrase “sinner’s prayer” is familiar in evangelical Christianity and has been used in countless evangelistic contexts, from crusades to personal conversations. The term itself does not appear in Scripture, and there is no prescribed formula anywhere in the New Testament that functions as a verbal key to salvation. Understanding what the sinner’s…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07020 The question of whether a believer can lose their salvation is one of the most personally significant doctrinal questions a Christian can face. It touches the very nerve of assurance, and how it is answered shapes the whole tenor of the Christian life. Is the believer’s relationship with God genuinely permanent, or is…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion Q07091 Few things matter more to a believer’s daily Christian life than the question of assurance. Whether someone can know with genuine confidence that they belong to God shapes everything: how they pray, how they face difficulty, how they relate to the prospect of death, how they live. The New Testament takes this question…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion Q07092 In evangelical circles, the doctrine of justification rightly receives enormous attention. It is the declaration by which a sinful person is pronounced righteous before God on the basis of Christ’s atoning work received through faith. But there is a danger that in rightly emphasising justification, other dimensions of what happens at salvation receive…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion Q07093 Of all the soteriological categories the New Testament uses, union with Christ may be the most comprehensive and the least understood. Justification describes the believer’s legal standing; sanctification describes their moral transformation; adoption describes their relational status. Union with Christ underlies all of these without being reducible to any one of them. Whether…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion Q07094 Few theological questions carry more pastoral weight than this one. Get it wrong in one direction and you have added a human work to the gospel, corrupting the message of grace. Get it wrong in the other direction and you have effectively disconnected baptism from any serious obligation, reducing it to a personal…