Jesus Christ

“I believe…in Jesus Christ, his [God’s] only Son, our Lord” So every believer confesses and so it is found in the Apostles’ Creed. Let’s unpack four things that we find in this phrase of the Creed: (1) Jesus; (2) Jesus Christ ; (3) God’s only Son; (4) our Lord. First, the believer is making a...

Within Reformed theology there is an emphasis on the “already, but not yet” aspect of the Christian faith and life. It’s an emphasis, though, that is not merely within Reformed theology but more importantly Scripture. Our Triune Lord has already accomplished all his promises (Gen. 17:5; Ex. 2:23-25...

That holiness of life which the Christian has from God and before God and for God is not sourced nor drawn from even the best doctrinal formulations – as essential as they are to our faith. Nor is holiness of life sourced or drawn from moral transformation – as essential as it is to living out our...

Today, Dr. Michael Allen is with us! He’s the professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. And he’s the author of Sanctification, part of the New Studies in Dogmatics series from Zondervan. His visit gives us the perfect sounding board to ask “Can our...

Have you ever wanted a fresh start? Perhaps you fumbled in some area – a marriage, a parent-child relationship, a job – and you longed to reset. Or something happened to you that made you wish for a complete change of identity. The witness protection program no longer sounded inconvenient, but full...

The Old and New Testament (Covenant) Scriptures command their reader to treat them as two distinct wholes inseparably and organically united. Yes, what is truly in the OT, yet somewhat concealed, is more fully revealed in the NT. Yes, the NT interprets the OT. But in affirming these truths we have...

Tempers ran high at the Synod of Dordt. By January 1619, Francis Gomarus, Reformed minister and veteran professor at the University of Leiden, had come to take some Remostrants’ opinions on the extent of Christ’s atoning sacrifice as a personal offense. “ Ego hanc rem in me recipio ” (“I take this...

Most of the time when we think of the earthly life of Jesus, we think of how he demonstrated his power and manifest that he was the Son of God. On occasion, we think about how he demonstrated his humility in the weakness of his incarnation particularly at Gethsemane and Golgotha. One area we often...

It is one of those ‘stop-you-in-your-tracks’ type statements that crops up in the Bible from time to time. ‘Who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God’ (He 12.2). It is, of course, speaking of Christ and his sufferings...

Dropping into church on Good Friday you’d think we were celebrating the death of God. Of course, God cannot die. Of course God cannot die, but there is a sense in which you’d be on to something. Why is a cross central to Christianity? Why was it constantly on the mind of the Lord Jesus Himself...