There is a faith-sustained holiness that Paul wants his converts to have on the day of Christ — the day of his return, when the dead in Christ will be raised (1 Corinthians 15:23). This holiness (which he also calls “blamelessness” and “guiltlessness” and “being above reproach” and “purity”) is certain through God’s faithfulness, contingent on persevering faith, and dependent on human agency.

Certainty

Paul is certain that God will work this persevering faith and holiness in his converts for the day of Christ. This is part of God’s faithfulness.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord …

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I want to encourage you who are younger in ministry that lean seasons will come, and by grace you can make it through.

A Billy Graham illustration and a personal one.

Sometimes It Rains

We always think of Billy Graham’s crusades as full and successful. It was not always the case. The London Evening Standard recounted “a rain-soaked service on Streatham Common where  Graham’s music director, Cliff Barrows, had to give up trying to play his trombone, and heavier members of the platform party had to move to the center as the stage sank in the mud” (Alister Chapman, Godly Ambition, 48).

If you live long enough, and serve faithfully enough, you will have rain-soaked seasons, and feel you…

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I am in the midst of revising Future Grace for a new edition this fall. For the few of you who have read the book and stumbled over some ambiguities, I hope to bring new precision and clarity.

One area for clarification is what I meant by saying “Faith is primarily future oriented” (13). I’m changing the word “primarily.” I’m going to use “profound and pervasive” and then explain. All that follows is an exerpt:

Faith has a profound and pervasive future orientation. To be sure, it can look back and believe a truth about the past (like the truth that Christ died for our sins). It can look out and trust a person (like the personal receiving of Jesus Christ). And it can look forward and be a…

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Why would God reach down his hand and drag his fierce fingers across rural America killing at least 38 people with 90 tornadoes in 12 states, and leaving some small towns with scarcely a building standing, including churches?

If God has a quarrel with America, wouldn’t Washington, D.C., or Las Vegas, or Minneapolis, or Hollywood be a more likely place to show his displeasure?

We do not ascribe such independent power to Mother Nature or to the devil. God alone has the last say in where and how the wind blows. If a tornado twists at 175 miles an hour and stays on the ground like a massive lawnmower for 50 miles, God gave the command.

• “The wind of the Lord, shall come, rising from the wi…

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While  John Knight (www.theworksofGod.com) stands on the wall and warns the world of murder by other names, let Eric Metaxas do the same with the story of Hitler’s slaughter of the weak.

“As early as 1929 [Hitler] had publicly proposed that 700,000 of the ‘weakest’ Germans be ‘removed’ per year.” It seemed ridiculously implausible — even as “after-birth abortion” (infanticide) does in America today.

But ideas have consequences. Nietzsche was the John the Baptist of this Aryan anti-Christ. And the German race were to be the Übermenschen, while the Poles, the Jews, and the disabled were the Untermenschen.

With all eyes on the Polish front the “domestic nightmare could begin; the fog of…

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Do you want to hear the voice of Jesus? So do I. The Father certainly wants us to. “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35).

To which we cry, “Yes, Lord. Yes! We want to listen to him.”

Does he speak today? He does.

Every word of the Bible is the voice of Jesus.

How do we know this? By inference. And better, by experience.

First, by Inference

We believe that “all Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). And we know that “whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise” (John 5:19). When the Father, by the Spirit (2 Peter 1:21) was guiding the writing of Scripture, the will and heart of the Son was in perfect concert.

Not only were all things made …

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Writing in 1972, J. I. Packer sheds light on the contemporary debate over how to translate the term “Son of God” in Muslim contexts. A common Muslim misconception is that Christians believe Jesus was God’s Son by procreation with Mary, so that there are at least two gods — the Son and the Father.

Motivated by a desire to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks for Muslims, some have advocated translating the Greek behind “Son of God” in a way that does not carry such biological connotations. That means avoiding such Father and Son language. But historically, the problem of ambiguity in Jesus’ Sonship has been solved by context and teaching, not translation.

What Packer contributes to the de…

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As I did last year, here's another call for your Bible app to threaten the use of every other app out there.

Olive Tree BibleReader is my default mobile Bible. I use it for devotions every day, usually from my iPad. 

The McCheyne Yearly Reading Plan has buttons after each chapter that take you directly to the next assigned chapter. The split window lets me keep a Greek and Hebrew window open as I read, and the pop-up lexicons fill in the gaps in my memory. The copy-and-paste features let me copy and paste easily to Twitter if I want to create a tweet out of something moving from my devotions. 

Periodically I will call Calvin or some other commentary up into one of those split window…

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Have you ever been paralyzed with indecision? I have. It is not a good trait of leadership.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer breathed the air of crisis most of his adult life. This would eventually make the issue of decisiveness a matter of life and death. And even before that moment it was an issue of love.

Everywhere Bonhoeffer looked in the Europe of 1934 he saw Christian indecisiveness. The “deutsche Christen,” the global ecumenical movement — everyone but Hitler. Nazism’s strangle hold on the church in Germany was almost complete, and no one seemed willing to act.

Bonhoeffer and his friends soon would. A “Confessing Church” would emerge free from the coercions of the Third Reich. A “Barmen D…

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Lent or no Lent, not doing some things you feel like doing is the daily pattern for the disciples of Jesus. Yes, daily. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

In the resurrection there will be no self-denial because none of our desires will be sinful or foolish. Till then we have sinful and foolish desires daily. Hence, “Let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.”

What Paul Says

This is so essential in Christian living that Paul made it part of his one-time sermon to Felix (“he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment,” Acts 24:25); he made it part of the fruit of the Spirit (“fait…

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