Theology for Everyone

Recently, a Reformed brother told me that he was nearly driven by depression to suicide due to years of wrongful, incessant attacks upon him and his wife by other family members teaming up with the government. He confessed if he was an Arminian he likely would have succumbed, but his belief in God’...

Review of Eric Metaxas: “Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World” In his biography of Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World , Eric Metaxas paints a stunningly beautiful portrait of this late-medieval monk. For those who have heard some of the...

In 1529, artist Lucas Cranach the Elder produced a panel painting that visualized the theology of his famous friend, Martin Luther. The two wings of the painting represent the path to salvation through the law and the gospel. The left panel depicts a naked man being prodded to hell by a devil and a...

Martin Luther is best remembered today as the Reformer who defended the doctrine of justification by faith alone against the constant assaults of the Roman Catholic Papacy. However, this was but one conflict that Luther was engaged in during his lifetime. Another significant conflict of Luther’s...

Think of a cup being filled to the brim—or inflating a children’s play castle or a basketball to its entire design. The thing being pervaded is what it is, but it is in the process of functioning fully and living up to its potential and peak performance until completely full. Such gets at the sense...

Irresistible grace is the fourth part of the Tulip acronym and is the one doctrine of grace that every Christian, deep down, can never deny. No Christian will balk in a Sunday morning worship service when the congregation sings Amazing Grace (written by John Newton, a Calvinist pastor of the...

A theological earthquake shook my life over twenty years ago. I can still see the classroom lit by the afternoon sun. It was mostly quiet and peaceful that day with one exception. A classmate was standing in front of me trying for all he was worth to persuade me of definite or limited atonement. If...

Let us not take away half the love of God by saying he only started to love us at our baptism or only after we came to faith. Let us not take away half the love of God by saying he only loved us in a trickling, generally vague way until we ourselves harnessed and focused his love like a laser...

Yesterday, I found myself in the enviable position of explaining the difference between reformed theology and “not” reformed theology. I was asked by my small audience for an example of the difference, and the first example that came to mind was God’s sovereignty in salvation. As I spoke about this...

Dr. Wayne Spear writes, “The collection for the relief of famine suffered in Jerusalem occupied Paul’s attention and organizing skills for several years during his third missionary journey. Since the apostle, with his great zeal for evangelism, gave his time and energy to an international and...