Picture the scene: George Whitefield has just been preaching. Everywhere, eyes are shining and people are talking of the wonderful grace of Christ. Thousands of hearts have been overthrown and melted; lives have been remade.

Now, if the church gives up believing in a historical Adam, we will never see such scenes again.

Too far?

A bit strong?

Not at all. For it is not just that the biblical genealogies depict Adam as a historical figure, not just that Paul can build core arguments on his belief that Adam was as real a man as Christ (Romans 5; 1 Corinthians 15). Adam has a significance in the Bible that far outstrips the simple number of mentions he gets. In fact, he has a significanc…

Continue Reading →

The Father is the lover, the Son is the beloved.

The Bible is awash with talk of the Father’s love for the Son, but while the Son clearly does love the Father, hardly anything is said about it. The Father’s love is primary. The Father is the loving head. That then means that in his love he will send and direct the Son, whereas the Son never sends or directs the Father.

That turns out to be hugely significant, as the apostle Paul observes in 1 Corinthians 11:3: “Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” In other words, the shape of the Father-Son relationship (the headship) begins a gracious cascade, l…

Continue Reading →

God’s holiness.

“Oh dear!” you might sigh — and I’d understand, for without the Trinity, holiness does have the smell of mothballs about it, the look of a Victorian matron administering castor oil. And much of what purports to be holiness has just that aura about it: all prickliness and prudery. People even say things like, “Yes, God is loving, but he is also holy” — as if holiness is an unloving thing, the cold side of God that stops God from being too loving.

Balderdash! Poppycock! Or at least, it is if you are talking about the holiness of the Father, Son and Spirit. No, said Jonathan Edwards:

Holiness is a most beautiful, lovely thing. Men are apt to drink in strange notions of …

Continue Reading →