Reformed Confession

Nothing but the sight of death impresses on us so viscerally a sense of finality. As Christians, we are comforted by faith in the resurrection and the life to come, but death nevertheless strikes our limited and sin-affected minds with definitiveness. Do we think of our being made holy in Christ as...

Our English term conversion is not often used in our translations of the Bible. But lest we commit a word-concept fallacy, we should not conclude from this that the concept captured by our term conversion is infrequently found in Scripture. Far from it. Peter in his sermon recorded in Acts 3...

Jacques Lefèvre D’Etaples – An Early French Reformer The life of Jacques Lefèvre D’Etaples ran almost parallel to that of Martin Luther. Born around 1455 (28 years before Luther), Lefèvre died in 1536, when Luther was still teaching, preaching, and establishing churches. In 1512, when Luther...

Historic testimony to Luther is grand. Not only have many of his letters, books, tracts, and sermons survived, but so have his table talks. Table Talk is a collection of Luther’s sayings amongst his friends. Thankfully, they have been preserved for our benefit. There we see glimpses of the real...

This is the third and final installment of this series. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here . Having laid down the foundation for how allowing for images of Christ indeed strikes at the vitals of various reformed doctrines, let us consider some common objections: 1. We do not use images in...

The Dispute of Tirano and the Trial of Calvin’s Orthodoxy In the eventful sixteenth century, few people took notice of a court trial in a small town on the Italian side of the Alps. And yet, the stakes were high. It all started on May 1, 1595, when Simone Cabasso, parish priest of Tirano, preached...

Most theological and moral failures can be traced back to a wrong view of God. We charge God with being unfair only if we think he must submit to our concept of fairness. We will contentedly live one way in public and another in private only if we believe him to be local and limited like us. We can...

What exactly do the terms Reformed and Reformed theology mean? Defining them is more challenging than it sounds. But in his latest book, Reformed Theology, our very own Jonathan Master has provided an excellent resource for anyone who wants a well-rounded and concise overview of these terms. Tune...

The Sum of Saving Knowledge In 1650, a brilliant young theologian joined with a legendary pastor to write The Sum of Saving Knowledge , designed to summarize the Westminster Standards for the layperson. David Dickson and James Durham’s book was so popular that it was bound with almost every edition...

I love the writing of Iain Murray. I’ve probably recommended and given out more of his books than I do most others. And I can certainly say that I’ve benefitted from his historical insights and applications to such a degree that many of my convictions about pastoral ministry and church and...