Salvation

Benjamin B. Warfield wrote a little article for the Homiletic Review in 1897 titled, "The Indispensableness of Systematic Theology to the Preacher." As anything written by Warfield, it is a thoughtful and edifying piece with a clear aim. According to the Lion of Old Princeton, it is through Gospel...

Christmas is fast approaching and images of Mary are everywhere – from cards to Nativity scenes – but she is strangely absent from many, if not most Protestant pulpits. Yes, she may be accorded a passing reference in the Christmas narrative, but she can come across very much as a bit-part, or an ‘...

One of the landmark documents of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643-1653) is the Confession of Faith. This confession was created to provide a doctrinal basis for unity across the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Although in God’s inscrutable providence the confession did...

If Augustine of Hippo was with us today, he might spend his birthday as he did shortly after his conversion, when he lived in Cassiciago, 25 miles north of Milan, Italy. “After a meal light enough as not to hinder mental work,” he wrote, “I invited to the public baths all the people who lived with...

A rticle 13 of the Thirty-Nine Articles is one of the three consecutive articles that set out human works in their relation to salvation in Christ. We saw last time how Article 12 deals with the significance of good works of believing Christians in light of the gospel. Article 13 continues now in...

The gospel of Jesus Christ is astounding. To think that when we were yet sinners God sent His only begotten Son to keep the law that we were unable to keep and to bear the curse we were unwilling to bear is enough to strike us dumb! And yet, that is exactly what the sovereign Creator did. Think of...

S tephen Marshall (1594-1655) argued that infants of believers should be baptized because 1) they are within the covenant of grace and belong to the kingdom of Christ, 2) they are made partakers of the inward grace of baptism. In a previous article , I attempted to explain his second argument but...

I n the previous two articles (see 1 , 2 ), we have considered one argument for and one objection to infant baptism from the writings of Stephen Marshall (1594-1655). We are now going to turn our attention to a benefit of infant baptism. There are several avenues we could explore in this regard,...

Faithful preachers and teachers in the Church have always looked for effective ways to communicate their points. The acronym TULIP, of course, is a device meant to communicate the core of the doctrine of human salvation. Like all pedagogical devices, it is not meant to explain everything that could...