John Piper discusses "A Common Word Between Us and You" and the response to it from 300 Christian leaders.

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Here is the voice of my father for 4 minutes on how final salvation is contingent on perseverance, and yet eternal security and assurance are possible. It comes from an exposition of Colossians 1:21-23.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

This is from the overflow of what I have been reading and …

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The end of abortion as a business is in sight when the prolife movement is not only joined by, but led by, the African-American and Latino Christian Community. I call it the Third Wave.

The First Wave of the modern prolife movement was the Catholic Church. In the late 60’s, as abortion “rights” were argued for in New York and California, many Catholic doctors, ethicists, and laypeople understood the horrifying truth of abortion and began to organize. They opened educational offices to explain fetal life; launched political efforts to elect prolife leaders and started “emergency pregnancy services” to help women struggling with pregnancy issues. The modern prolife movement was born. It …

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Surveys and statistics are maddeningly fickle. So don’t exult too much in what follows. I only cite it in case you have been discouraged or elated by surveys saying the opposite.

It’s better just to be a good follower of Jesus and not put your finger in the wind.

In the current issue of Books and Culture Jon Shields reviews the book, Who Really Cares, by Arthur C. Brooks which argues that religious conservatives (of all religious stripes) as opposed to liberals are more generous. Here are some quotes from the review.

Drawing on some ten data sets, Brooks finds that religiosity is among the best predictors of charitable giving. Religious Americans are not only much mo…

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Monday is Martin Luther King day. I encourage all pastors and Sunday School teachers to make something of it this weekend. It may be too late to preach on racial and ethnic issues, if you have not already planned to. But it is not too late, if you read this on Saturday, to plan to simply take note of the day and speak a word of exhortation to your people concerning their hearts in matters of race and ethnicity. None of us. None of us is without need for help in the purification of our hearts in the way we feel and think about other ethnic groups. Your people need help.

The point of this weekend is not to celebrate all that MLK was. You need not belabor his sins. The point is to lift up…

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Tonight it will be 40 degrees warmer in our kitchen freezer than it is outside here in Minneapolis. The high temperature on the Lord’s day will be five below zero (Fahrenheit). We receive this from the Lord’s hand.

He sends out his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
He gives snow like wool;
he scatters hoarfrost like ashes.
He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs;
who can stand before his cold?
He sends out his word, and melts them;
he makes his wind blow and the waters flow.
(Psalm 147:15-18)

This is the kind of cold you do not play with. It kills. When I came to Minnesota from South Carolina, I dressed for it. But I did not prepare life-saving support in my car in cas…

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When to quit your good work—not just scholarly work, but any work:

As the author of the Theologia Germanica says, we may come to love knowledge—our knowing—more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar’s life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived. (C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, p. 50.)

Sometimes the best mark of holiness is not griping that sin abounds but groaning and grieving.

Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, 5 who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David invent for themselves instruments of music, 6 who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! (Amos 6:4-6)

And the LORD said to him, “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.” 5 And …

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Sometimes scholarship rivals politics for warped renderings of the opponent. Consider this from Etienne Gilson, a Roman Catholic historian of philosophy:

For the first time, with the Reformation, there appeared this conception of a grace that saved a man without changing him, of a justice that redeems corrupted nature without restoring it, of a Christ who pardons the sinner for self-inflicted wounds but does not heal them. (The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 421)

How desperately some want to believe that justification by faith is cut off from holiness and is powerless to produce love. Michael Horton counters, “In actual fact, there are no Protestant accounts of this k…

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One of my Muslim friends was offended recently. Two Jehovah’s Witnesses had visited his family a few times and had spent hours telling his family about their religious group and their views.

In return, my friend’s family offered to give the women information about Islam. The two women agreed to come back and learn more. My friend and his family put a great deal of time and effort into collecting useful information for them.

However, after some time, only one woman came back. And even though she showed up, she showed little interest in discussing Islam. Not surprisingly, my friend had zero interest in her religion either.

Granted, I wouldn’t be excited about him becoming a Jehov…

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