Growing In Grace

Many years have passed since the infamous  Screwtape Letters. After Wormwood was able to calm his uncle and avoid being devoured, he slowly advanced up the ranks. Eventually he moved into a different role where he organized mass attacks on Christianity as a whole. In his farewell memo he seeks to pass on the particulars of his most successful strike.  As I am quickly approaching retirement it is my aim to document what is perhaps the most effective campaign I was able to employ against the Enemy's book. Of course there have been many great attacks on the Enemy's book over the years. Anything we can do to weaken their perverse love for that evil text will vastly improve our efforts.  I am reminded of the many we led astray by focusing our attacks on convincing certain "scholars" to deny the reliability of the Enemy's book. We bolstered the platform of men like Bart Ehrman which enabled us to turn many away from even reading the book. Many children who grew ...

Have you ever met a Christian somewhere and began chatting with them? Did you have a feeling of joy as you realize that this is another person that has been captivated by the grace of God in Christ? They say there is a special bond between a pair of brothers or sisters, and in moments like the one I just described we get a far clearer understanding of why Christians have used brother and sister language. But have you ever been in one of these situations and then the person says something that causes you to instantly hold your breath? Maybe you even get a lump in your throat and that feeling of camaraderie is instantly gone? I ask this question because if you have been a Christian for any time at all I imagine that you have had many such instances, and some of the feelings and reactions are incredibly justified. For instance I once had a conversation where the person knew lots of biblical truth but when pressed, their understanding of Christianity was boiled down to...

I am sure that many of you will recognize the title of this post as being spoken by Cotton's Parrot in the "Pirates Of The Caribbean." Whatever your take on the movie may have been, this is a deeply theological statement and one that I want to unpack from Scripture. I believe that this is one of the most misunderstood Biblical teachings, and the implications of misunderstanding this teaching are huge for our understanding of the gospel. Ephesians 2:1a&4-6 says, "And you were dead in your sins and trespasses ... But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. The Apostle Paul spells out for us just how bad a state we were in - we were dead. To be sure this is not to say that we were "mostly dead" but completely and totally de...