What is Grace?

“The very center and core of the whole Bible is the doctrine of the grace of God.” –
J. Gresham Machen

“Grace” is the most important concept in the Bible, Christianity, and the world. It is most clearly expressed in the promises of God revealed in Scripture and embodied in Jesus Christ.

Grace is the love of God shown to the unlovely, the peace of God given to the restless, the unmerited favor of God.

What are some ways people have defined grace?

• B.B. Warfield: “Grace is free sovereign favor to the ill-deserving.”
• John Stott: “Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.”
• Jerry Bridges: “[Grace] is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against him.”
• Paul Zahl: “Grace is unconditional love toward a person who does not deserve it.”    Continue at Justin Holcomb

Rid of My Disgrace

I wish this book had not been written, or more properly, I wish there was no need for this book to be written. I wish there was no such monstrosity in the world as sexual assault. Yet the ugly truth is that sexual assault not only exists, but is all too common. The statistics are shocking, alarming. And therefore, because sexual assault exists and because of its prevalence, I am grateful that Justin and Lindsey Holcomb wrote Rid of My Disgrace. He is a pastor at Mars Hill Church and adjunct professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary while she is a deacon who counsels victims of sexual assault; together they are compassionate and theologically-sound, able to provide hope and healing for those who have been victimized.

I do not understand the consequences of sexual assault upon its victims. There were times as a child I came perilously close to being victimized—that school janitor, that older boy. But each time someone or something intervened. I am grateful for my ignorance here. I do not understand how and why this kind of assault impacts its victims at such a deep level and how those consequences can extend through an entire lifetime. But I want to understand as much as I am able. I know so many people who have fallen prey to predators, so many who bear the marks on their bodies and souls. And I want to be able to love them well, to walk with them through their healing. And this is why I read Rid of My Disgrace. This is a book meant to equip all Christians, those who have been hurt and those who know people who have been hurt.   Continue at Tim Challies

Jesus' Church Is Here to Stay

The famously influential Nicene Creed contains a line that modern Christians sometimes misunderstand:  "I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church." The word "catholic" can be a source of confusion for those who think it is referring to the Roman Catholic Church, but the word simply means "universal." This leads us, then, to consider the important theological concept of the "universal church."

The term commonly used for the church in the New Testament is the Greek word ekklesia. Jesus is the first to use the word ekklesia in the New Testament (Matt. 16:18), but it is used in various ways with various meanings. As theologian Louis Berkhof explains, ekklesia can have the following meanings:

• A specific local group of Christians or a local church (Acts 11:26; 1 Cor. 11:18; Gal. 1:2).
• A house church (Rom. 16:23; 1 Cor. 16:19; Col 4:15).
• A group of churches in a region (Acts 9:31).
• All those throughout the world who profess to be Christians and organize for worship (1 Cor. 10:32; 11:22; 12:28).
• All those throughout history who have been or will be united to Christ as their savior (Eph. 1:22; 3:10, 21; 5:23-25, 27, 32; Col. 1:18, 24).

The last two definitions are explained by John Calvin in his treatment of the visible and invisible church. The "visible church" describes Christianity that can be measured and counted externally:

The whole body . . . scattered throughout the world, who profess to worship one God and Christ, who by baptism are initiated into the faith; by partaking of the Lord's Supper profess unity in true doctrine and charity, agree in holding the word of the Lord, and observe the ministry which Christ has appointed for the preaching of it.   Continue at Justin Holcomb

Grace All the Way

There is a damaging idea floating around that says, "God saved you, now what are you going to do for him?" This is a recipe for failure. If you come to the Christian life believing you can do anything for God in your own strength or repay him on any level, you fall back to the self-dependent spiritual death from which Jesus saved you.

Ephesians 2 frees us from this lie by showing that the Christian life is completely fueled by God's grace. The chapter is filled with the high-octane gospel of grace for both our justification and also our sanctification. It begins with how believers were dead in their sins, then moves to how God loved us and rescued us from this death by his grace, bringing salvation to all in Christ, uniting Jews and Gentiles as one people in whom the Spirit of God dwells. The first half of the chapter focuses on God's rescue operation, which delivered us from our sin and God's wrath, and ends with the verse 10, which centers on how God's deliverance means we are created anew for lives of righteousness. As Peter O'Brien notes, Paul has already described salvation as "a resurrection from the dead, a liberation from slavery, and a rescue from condemnation"; he moves now to the idea of a new creation.

Ephesians 2:4-5 proclaims Gods grace clearly: "God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ---by grace have you been saved." Regeneration takes place when the spiritual dead come alive in Christ. Dead people do not cooperate with grace. Without regeneration, there is no possibility of faith. Paul got this from Jesus, who told Nicodemus: "Unless a man is born again first, he cannot possibly see or enter the kingdom of God" (John 3:3).

The theme of Ephesians 2:8-9 is clear: grace. This theme was already mentioned in Ephesians 2:5, but as Tet-Lim Yee points out, what was then more of an "undercurrent" now becomes the main point. We are saved by grace, not anything we have done. The passage has often been used to support the idea that justification before God is by grace alone, and not anything we do. And for good reason: the verses strike with great emphasis the note of salvation as a complete "gift of God." We have done nothing to bring it about that could lead us to boast. And yet it is nearly impossible not to boast in the radical love of God when we grasp this reality.  Continue at Justin Holcomb

Who Is John Bunyan?

The most popular novel in the history of the world was written in prison by a man whose humble beginnings and arduous life reflect the One he lived for—Jesus Christ (The Portable Bunyan). John Bunyan, who never received more than a second grade education, impacted Christian thinking and English literature so profoundly that he was able to transcend the cultural and religious framework from which he wrote and influence a universal audience (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners).

The Drunken Tinsmith

John Bunyan was born in England in 1628, entering into the broader historical context with “the final phases of the Reformation movement still fresh in the minds of the people” and the Puritan pilgrimage to America dawning in the near future. John’s father was a tinker (a tin smith), providing a meager life for his family and training his son to follow in his footsteps. At the age of sixteen Bunyan lost his mother and two sisters, after which his father married for the third time.  Keep Reading >>>

Myths and Facts About Sexual Assault

Myth: Men assault impulsively and out of biological need.

Fact: Sexual Assault is a criminal act of violence, using sex as a weapon.  Men assault to express hostility and to dominate.  Men assault because it allows them to express anger and to feel powerful by controlling another person.  Studies show that 50% of sexual assaults are premeditated and well-planned, not impulsive, spontaneous, uncontrollable sexual acts.

Myth: Sexual Assaults are usually reported.

Fact: Sexual Assault is probably one of the most underreported crimes; researchers estimate that between 50 to 90% of sexual assault cases go unreported.

Myth: Husbands cannot sexually assault their wives.

Fact: Sexual Assault occurs whenever sexual contact is not mutual/consensual, when choice is taken away. Researchers estimate that sexual assault occurs in 10-14% of all marriages.

Myth: Most sexual assaults occur in dark alleys or to hitchhikers.

Fact: Most sexual assaults (60%) occur in a private home and the largest percentage of these assaults (38%) occurs in the victim’s home. The idea that most sexual assaults fit the “stranger-in-a-dark-alley” stereotype can lead to a false sense of security. Keep Reading...

The Athanasian Creed

The origin of the Athanasian Creed is unknown. As the name suggests, the Creed was originally ascribed to Athanasius—the great “father of Nicene orthodoxy”—as early as the ninth century. However, since the seventeenth century, the document has been regarded as conclusively non- Athanasian for several reasons:

1. Athanasius never mentioned the Creed anywhere in his writings.
2. The councils of Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451) do not refer to the document. 
3. Athanasius died in 373, so it is very likely that it would have been written before then.

Because it was original attributed to Athanasius, the Athanasian Creed had considerable influence. The Creed was used by the Lutheran Churches and and many of the Reformed Churches, and was mentioned in the Augsburg Confession, the Formula of Concord, the Thirty- nine Articles, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Belgic Confession, and the Bohemian Confession (Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom). Keep Reading...

Are You Prepared to Minister to Victims of Sexual Assault?

There is an epidemic of sexual assault and the statistics are jarring. One in four women and one in six men are or will be victims of sexual assault in their lifetime. As sobering as the statistics are, they don’t begin to speak to the darkness and grief experienced by these victims. Because sexual assault causes physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual pain, victims need the kind of hope and help that only the gospel of Jesus Christ can provide.

Do you know how to help?

Tragically, many churches and Christians are woefully unprepared to help those who have been assaulted. Worse still, many Christian leaders (including parents) are ignorant of this epidemic because ashamed victims are reticent to simply declare what has been done to them, and untrained leaders do not recognize the signs of sexual assault or know how to inquire lovingly of victims. Keep Reading...

11 Ways to Protect Your Daughter From Barbie

American pop-culture has a rich diversity of icons, such as Apple’s Apple, Disney’s Mouse, McDonald’s Arches, Nike’s Swoosh, and Barbie, “the icon, the image, the ideal.”

"Girl Power"

Barbie’s maker and marketer, Mattel, bills the doll as a symbol of  “girl power” showing that Barbie can go to college, explore the universe as an astronaut, enjoy the thrill of motherhood, and run the country as President.  But, there are some deeper consequences with Barbie.

"Barbie is small and so petite. Her clothes and figure look so neat…. Some day I'm going to be exactly like you. Until then I know just what I'll do. I'll make believe I'm you." Shockingly, these words belong to the first Barbie jingle when she made her debut on March 9, 1959. Keep Reading...

What You Do In Your Hotel Room Gives Witness: A Warning for Conference-Goers

Jason Helopoulos offers a wise warning for those attending the upcoming Gospel Coalition Conference, and for attendees of any conference really, and you should read it. I'd like to renew a different sort of caution of my own from the lead-up to last year's T4G:

A word of warning for the thousands entering Chicago next month for The Gospel Coalition Conference: what you do in the privacy of your hotel room can be a witness against the gospel. Think this is unwarranted?

From Steve Farrar's Finishing Strong:

A number of years ago a national conference for church youth directors was held at a major hotel in a city in the mid-west. Youth pastors by the hundreds flooded into that hotel and took nearly every room. At the conclusion of the conference, the hotel manager told the conference administrator that the number of guests who tuned into the adult movie channel broke the previous record, far and away outdoing any other convention in the history of the hotel.

My friend Justin Holcomb helped me in looking into this phenomenon, recalling from his own research in an email to me: Read it HERE

Nestorius: Know Your Heretics

The early church taught that Jesus Christ was one person with two natures: a divine nature and a human nature.

Nestorius (c. 381-451) was a monk from Antioch before he became the bishop of Constantinople in 428. He so emphasized the two natures that Nestorius basically turned Jesus Christ into two persons. Wanting to avoid any “mixing” of the divine and human natures of Christ (as Eutyches did), Nestorius over-emphasized their distinctness.

He argued that there are places in the Gospels where the human nature of Jesus is being described, and others where his divine nature is the subject. In doing this, it seems as if Nestorius has made two persons exist in Christ—two acting subjects, two “he’s". Read all about it HERE

Gnostics: Know Your Heretics

Gnosticism is not a specific heretical movement in church history, but rather a broad umbrella term categorizing a loose collection of false beliefs.

Questions concerning the origins of Gnosticism are still unsolved. Some think Gnosticism originated as a heresy that diverted from orthodox Christian teaching, while others see the movement as an independent, non-Christian movement stemming from paganism.

What does it mean? 

Everett Ferguson breaks down the diverse teachings of Gnosticism into eight categories:

• A preoccupation with the problem of evil
• A sense of alienation from the world
• A desire for special and intimate knowledge of the secrets of the universe
• A psychological (body and soul) and ethical (good and evil) dualism
• A cosmology wherein all beings are derivative from the first, originating principle
• A hierarchical anthropology of different classes of human beings with fixed destinies
• A radically realized eschatology that denied the resurrection of the dead
• A variety of ethical implications ranging from libertinism and asceticism - Continue Reading>>>

Photinus: Know Your Heretics

Questioning the Trinity

After the Council of Nicaea in 325, the orthodox understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity as three persons sharing one divine essence was not universally agreed upon. One theologian who disagreed was Photinus, the Bishop of Sirmium and the disciple of Marcellus. Read it all HERE

Eutyches: Know Your Heretics

The early church taught that Jesus Christ was one person with two natures—a divine nature and a human nature.
Eutyches was guilty of over-emphasizing the fact that Jesus Christ was one person and blurred the distinction between his divine and human natures. This was opposite of Nestorius’ heresy.
About Eutyches, church historian Stephen Nichols writes: “To him Christ was a third thing (the Latin expression is tertium quid)….One new and different person fashioned out of two natures is how he liked to put it. That is a theological way of saying yellow and blue makes green.”
When asked by Florentius if he believed there were two natures in Christ, Eutyches argued that there was only one nature in Christ after the incarnation:

Florentius: “Do you or do you not admit that our Lord who is of the Virgin is consubstantial [with us] and of two natures after the incarnation?”

Eutyches: “I admit that our Lord was of two natures before the union, but after the union one nature.” Click on post title to read the rest. 

Know Your Heretics: Marcion

The Most Formidable of Heretics

Marcion is one of the most significant heretics in Christian history. His teachings captivated many for centuries after him. Henry Chadwick called Marcion "the most radical and to the church the most formidable of heretics."

Marcion's Two Gods and Gutted Bible

Marcion taught that there were two Gods: Yahweh, the cruel God of the Old Testament, and Abba, the kind father of the New Testament. Because of this belief, he eliminated the Old Testament as Scriptures and kept only 10 letters of Paul and two-thirds of Luke's gospel for his version of the New Testament. He also deleted all references to Jesus' Jewishness. Marcion's "New Testament"—the first to be compiled—forced the church to decide on a core of what was considered Scripture: the four Gospels and the letters of Paul. Continue reading>>>

Monothelitism: Know Your Heretics

Did Jesus Have a Human Will?

After the Nicene (325) and Chalcedonian (451) declarations of classical, orthodox, dual-nature Christology, a stream of thought known as Monophysitism (the belief that there is only one nature in Christ) still existed, based on the ideas of Apollinarius. In the seventh century, there was a misguided attempt to reconcile the Monophysites with orthodox thought. This view proposed that "while Christ had two natures, he had only a single 'activity'…or, better, only a single, divine will" (Henry Chadwick, The Early Church).
This belief, known as Monothelitism, was proposed by Vigilius and unfortunately accepted by Honorius I (the Pope from 625-638). It was not until the Lateran Council in Rome in 649 and then later at the sixth ecumenical council at Constantinople in 680-681 that Monothelitism was condemned as heretical. Read the rest HERE

The Judaizers: Know Your Heretics

The Judaizers were teaching that God still required everyone to observe certain rituals and statutes in order to be accepted by him as Father.
Paul, in recounting his confrontation of Peter before the Judaizers, gives us an insight into the teaching of this group (). Apparently, the Judaizers were attempting to force Gentile Christians to live under the regulations of the Mosaic Law.
They are also called the "circumcision party" (), because one of the specific elements of the Law that the Judaizers were forcing the Gentile Christians to live by was the practice of circumcision.
Peter had withdrawn himself from eating with Gentile Christians, fearing the opposition that would come from the Judaizers. Eating with Gentiles would have rendered Peter ceremonially unclean under the Old Covenant, by breaking an important element of the Mosaic Law. However, Paul said Peter's conduct was "not in step with the truth of the gospel" (). Read it all HERE

Sabellius: Know Your Heretics

Sabellius, a third-century theologian and priest, was a proponent of modalism. Modalism is a non-Trinitarian heresy claiming that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are simply different modes of God and not distinct persons within the Godhead. Little is known about Sabellius, who was excommunicated in 220 AD, but the teaching attached to his name became infamous and is still with us today.
Sabellius’ View of God

The modalists were rightly concerned with maintaining the oneness of God as well as the full deity of Christ. However, this led them to the error of seeing any suggestion that the Son was a distinct person from the Father as creating a duality within the Godhead.

Early historian Hippolytus summarized the modalist position as one in which the names “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” did not stand for real distinctions in the Godhead, but rather mere names that described the actions of the one God at different times in history. In other words, “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit” are merely adjectives describing how the one divine Being acts and is perceived. Read the rest HERE

Apollinarius: Know Your Heretics

Historical Background

In the years following the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., the church was wrestling with many questions about the person and work of Christ. At Nicaea, the deity of Christ was established as orthodox Christian teaching, but many questions concerning the person of Christ remained.

Apollinarius, named the Bishop of Laodicea in 362 A.D., is responsible for Apollinarianism. This view compromises the full humanity of Jesus by suggesting that the eternal logos (Word) replaced the human soul of Jesus and served as the life-giving principle in the body of Christ. Read the rest HERE

Arius: Know Your Heretics

Arius (256-336 A.D.) is the most famous heretic of Christian theology. He was born in Libya and died in Constantinople. Arius held a prominent position as a priest in the Church of Alexandria when he started a theological controversy in 318. Arius denied the eternal deity of Christ and his equality with the Father. He argued that Christ was created by the Father.

Since the age of the Apostles, Jesus had always been considered divine by his followers, but his precise relation to the Godhead had not yet been defined. Thanks to Arius, the Trinitarian controversy regarding the status of Jesus Christ erupted. Read the rest HERE