God is an Author. This world is his story. We are his characters.

I first heard of the analogy sitting in a college philosophy class, and I’ve used it ever since. I find it personally fruitful and pastorally helpful in addressing everything from God’s sovereignty and human freedom to the two wills of God to the problem of evil. It’s what you might call a potent metaphor.

And a biblically faithful one. God speaks the world into existence (Genesis 1). He upholds it by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). All the days ordained for us were written in a book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16).

The Causer of All Things

A couple of years ago one of my colleagues at Bethlehem College a…

Continue Reading →

It doesn't get above freezing, it's dark by 5PM, and snow is everywhere. Hello, Winter in Upper Midwest America. You are cold and long.

But however cold and long, the best way to bear Winter is to shovel up every bit of metaphor possible. God does give us four seasons for a reason. And life is not always Spring.

In the flavor of Christian Hedonism, and aware of what seasons are for, John Newton penned the hymn, "None upon Earth I Desire Beside Thee."

Newton gets it. May we get it, too.

None upon Earth I Desire Beside Thee

How tedious and tasteless the hours,
When Jesus no longer I see!
Sweet prospects, sweet birds, and sweet flow’rs,
Have lost all their sweetness to me.
The mid-summer s…

Continue Reading →

The question is always the same. Where was God?

After the initial shock and horror subsides, after the news crews go home, we’re always left with the same question: So where was he?

Did he know ahead of time what was going to happen one week ago today? Was he aware of the shooter’s plans? Does he have foreknowledge, foresight, the ability to peer into what for us is the unknown future? Christians who take their Scriptures seriously can’t help but say yes. God knows the end from the beginning. Indeed, he declares the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:9–10), and this exhaustive foreknowledge is one of the distinguishing marks of his deity.

Was he able to prevent it? Was his arm too short…

Continue Reading →

A Christmas Reprise, A Christmas Prequel

This imaginative story, including character names, was written as a sort of prequel to John Piper’s moving story, The Innkeeper.

---

The first Christmas night was a holy night. But it was not a silent night. All was not calm. After walking a hundred miles, Joseph arrived in an overcrowded Bethlehem, with a wife in advanced labor. And “there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7).

***

“We are completely full. We can’t take another person.”

“Please, my wife is about to give birth! We’ll take anything with a little privacy.”

Compassion and exasperation mixed in the fatigued innkeeper’s eyes. His tired hand rubbed over his head. “Look, I wo…

Continue Reading →

We dare you to find a better, and shorter, summary for the doctrine of the incarnation than John 1:14: “The Word became flesh.”

We grabbed Don Carson while he was in the Twin Cities earlier this month and asked him about this important doctrine at the very heart of Christmas. At the first Advent, the eternal Son of God took to himself full humanity. Without ceasing to be God, he became man. He is one uniquely spectacular person with two full and complete natures, perfectly and personally calibrated for us and for our salvation.

As always, Theology Refresh aims to sharpen pastors and other Christian leaders on important doctrines in hopes of making our theology be what must to be healthy …

Continue Reading →

"Jesus was not on a power trip when he came into the world," John Piper reminds us. "His aim was to die for his bride."

Expounding Ephesians 5:25, Piper shows that if men are to be leaders like Jesus, we will sacrifice, too.

This is excerpt is from the most recent sermon, "God Created Man Male and Female: What Does It Mean to Be Complementarian?"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer awoke December 25, 1943 on a hard wooden bed. It was the first of two Christmases he would spend sequestered in a Nazi prison.

This first Christmas would be celebrated in a lonely prison cell in a place called Tegel. He had been there for nine months, and he would be there for nine more until he was transferred to his final home, a Nazi concentration camp.

Bonhoeffer had hoped to be released for the holiday, but that was contingent on his personal lawyer who proved unreliable. His hope of spending Christmas with his family quickly evaporated into the cold silence, and his only connection with his parents would come through letters.

Inside Tegel

In the Tegel priso…

Continue Reading →

We sat down to record one more Behind the Blog before we split for Christmas. In this episode we talk about a web pioneer named Moe, and about how Puritan John Flavel's horseback encounter with the Lord can help us benefit from our daily commutes in the car. We also talk about some of my picks for the top books of 2012. And I'm certain listeners will be encouraged to hear that David and I persuaded someone to take up and read The Hobbit.

You can now subscribe to the podcast in iTunes here. Or listen to the episode through this link:

Behind the Blog: Flavelicious

---

Links mentioned in this podcast:

• A Web Pioneer's Wild Dream
  
• Biographical sketches of Tope Koleoso, Jason Meyer, and Mack …

Continue Reading →

Several years ago, I was asked in an online Q&A, “What should a wife’s submission to her husband look like if he’s an abuser?”

One of the criticisms of my answer has been that I did not mention the recourse that a wife has to law enforcement for protection. So let me clarify with seven biblical observations.

1. Every Christian is called to submit to various authorities and to each other: children to parents (Ephesians 6:1), citizens to government (Romans 13:1), wives to husbands (Ephesians 5:22), employees to employers (2 Thessalonians 3:10), church members to elders (Hebrews 13:17), all Christians to each other (Ephesians 5:21), all believers to Christ (Luke 6:46).

This puts the …

Continue Reading →

Your heart matters. It really, really matters.

The heart, after all, is the "noble faculty of the soul," as John Flavel explains in his 1668 publication now titled, Keeping the Heart. Most generally, the heart refers to the inner man, and most importantly, a person's everlasting state depends upon its condition.

Writing in a style more practical than sliced bread, Flavel exhorts Christians to give their hearts upmost attention. Be diligent in heart-work, he says, which eventually translates into two things: 1) preserve the soul from sin; and 2) maintain sweet communion with God (18). Said another way, repent and believe; or mortify and vivify; or put off and put on. This work is "one great…

Continue Reading →