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We Were Always Saved by Faith
Because of Paul’s excellent teaching on “salvation by faith,” Christians often view this doctrine as a uniquely New Testament movement. “In the Old Testament people were saved by obedience to the law, but in the New Testament we are saved by faith,” we often say. But if you pay close attention, you’ll see that this…
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Does God Really Harden Hearts Toward Him?
Paul has a rather unpopular teaching in Romans that people prefer to skip over or explain away and it goes like this: “God shows mercy and compassion on whoever he wants and hardens whoever he wants.” Paul links this teaching back to the story of Pharaoh who seemed caught up in a bit of a…
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The Lord’s Breakfast
Why do we make a big deal about eating together when we gather on Sundays? Why do we incorporate communion into it? Is it just to be cool or is there a Biblical precedent to it? In Sunday’s message, I explain how eating together connects to Jesus’ ministry and the gatherings of the early church,…
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Oh How He Loves
The first time I heard the song How He Loves at a college chapel, I was both mesmerized and skeptical. I was drawn in by the very first words and surprised that a worship song could be so poetic. Sure, like most people I was startled by the phrase, “heaven meets earth like a sloppy…
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Creation is Groaning
In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Pilgrim’s Regress, the allegorical God character is called, “the Landlord.” This is a pretty clever title as it encompasses quite a bit of theology from the book of Genesis. Having created the earth and all that it is in it, God then raised up human beings and gave them the…
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Christians in Identity Crisis
The New Testament has a lot to say about our identity as Christians, including the fact that we have been adopted into the royal heavenly family as children of God. Our relationship with God is so intimate that we refer to him as Father. Stop and reflect on that: we are “children of God.” That’s…
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New Flesh Theology
By and large, I find that most Christians find Paul’s “new flesh” theology to be more of a metaphor and not really all that applicable to real life. Sure, our old flesh of Adam and Eve is dead and we’re remade new in the new resurrection flesh of Jesus, but few seem to think or…
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The Great Commission of Nintendo
The Great Commission was a popular passage many commit to memory, though now 51% of church-goers don’t know this term. But those who do know it, know well that Christians are to go out into the world and lead people to salvation and baptize them. Throughout the last century we have done plenty of that,…
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Resurrection Warping
We don’t catch a lot of glimpses of the resurrected body in the Bible, but when we do, it tends to operate in very strange ways. For instance, once Jesus’ body was put in the tomb, a bunch of soldiers were appointed to guard it to ensure that nobody stole his body. Since Jesus had…
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The Rich Man’s Grave
In poorer communities, burial arrangements are sometimes just as last minute as the funeral. When someone passes away, the person may not have any arrangements made at all—no money for a casket, no plot of land to be buried in, and no life insurance to put things into place. They have to scramble for money…
