Growing In Grace

Many of you have heard the saying, "Essentials, unity; non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." I think this is a great saying because we must recognize that there are numerous essential and non-essential doctrines in the Christian faith. But I think that this saying is even more important when we consider Jesus' prayer for His disciples in John 17:23, "...that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me." For Jesus this issue of unity among his followers was far more important than them just getting along. Notice that the unity of believers is to have evangelistic implications, Jesus prays, "...so that the world may know that You (the Father) sent Me..." I was stunned to read recently that there are currently around 38,000 'denominations' in the United States! While I realize that many denominations have come about because of the range of non-essential issues, ...

Dr Edmond Clowney was one of the great defenders of the use of biblical theology in preaching. In his book "Preaching Christ In All Of Scripture" he said, "To see the text in relation to Christ is to see it in its larger context, the context of God's purpose in revelation." Today I am advocating that we also use biblical theology in our apologetics! Biblical Theology views and studies the Bible while following the unfolding revelation of God's words and deeds through history. Clowney said about his own personal reading through the Bible, "I started in Genesis chapter 1. When I reached the book of Jonah, I came upon the verse, "Salvation is of the Lord!" I realized then that the Bible did not give a full history of Israel, but a history of God's work of saving His chosen people. It is all about what God did. He who holds the worlds in His hand came down to save us. The Bible is the story of how God came down to be born of the Virgin Mary, t...

Each and every week a Christian pastor reads his Bible and studies commentaries to prepare for his weekly sermon. During the week he will typically meet with and spend some time with other pastors and some congregants. Now as he does this week in and week out he will be reading his Bible and asking questions that he and the others that he has been spending time with this week would ask. Come Sunday morning he then preaches a message that only he and others like him care about. Whether or not the message was good or bad is not really the point, but instead lets focus on the fact that it is an 'overtly Christian' message. It is a message born out of reading the Bible while only asking questions that Christians would ask, and only answering questions that Christians care about. Now his congregation comes week in and week out and they listen diligently to each message, and they are ministered to because it answers the same questions that they are asking as Christians. They then in ...