Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 04043 Galatians 5 sets out one of the most direct contrasts in Scripture. Paul lists the works of the flesh, then the fruit of the Spirit, and the comparison reveals something fundamental about how the believer lives. These are not just two lists of behaviours. They represent two opposing sources of life and two…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10056 Hell is perhaps the most uncomfortable doctrine in Christianity, and many today prefer to ignore it or redefine it away. Yet Jesus spoke more about hell than about heaven, and the Bible is clear and consistent in its teaching. Hell is the place of eternal punishment for those who reject God. Understanding this…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09055 Church discipline is one of the most neglected functions of the modern church. Many congregations have never practised it. Many pastors have never been trained in it. And many believers would be horrified at the suggestion that a church has the right and the responsibility to confront sin in its members and, if…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 08050 Paul warns Timothy that a church leader must be “well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil” (1 Timothy 3:7). The same phrase appears in 2 Timothy 2:26, where Paul expresses hope that those who oppose the truth may “come to their…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08067 Paul’s instruction to “give no place to the devil” in Ephesians 4:27 is one of the most practically important statements about spiritual warfare in the New Testament. It is also one of the most misunderstood, frequently cited as a general warning about demonic activity while its specific context is overlooked. What Paul actually…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 08064 Every believer knows what it is to be tempted, but not every believer can distinguish where a particular temptation is coming from. Scripture identifies multiple sources of temptation, and understanding the difference between satanic temptation and the pull of our own fallen nature is not merely an academic exercise. It has direct implications…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 08083 One of the most puzzling details in the Bible’s eschatological narrative is the release of Satan after the Millennium. If he has been bound for a thousand years and the reign of Christ has been established on earth, why would God let him loose again? It seems counterintuitive, even troubling, that a period…
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 07082 If legalism is the error of adding to what God requires, antinomianism is the error of subtracting from it. The word comes from the Greek anti (against) and nomos (law): the view that Christians are so thoroughly freed from the law by grace that the moral law has no ongoing relevance or binding…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07012 Salvation is the word Scripture uses for what God has done about the human predicament. It is not a religious concept invented by the church; it is the great answer to the great problem that runs through every page of the Bible from Genesis 3 onwards. The word itself means rescue, and it…