Teaching in a theological climate is a very lonely and sometimes daunting enterprise. Even with the most absorbed and friendly class, you are all alone there in front. What you say will inevitably be passed on—sometimes garbled and distorted. When you read the exams...
Those of us who teach Bible and theology in Christian colleges and seminaries learn quickly to live with chastened hopes of making a significant impact on the church in America today. I am well aware that any influence I might ever have on believers outside my local...
There is one important distinction between the metaphor of father and that of shepherd. Children grow up and become less dependent on their earthly father, though the relationship continues. Sheep, on the other hand, are always completely dependent on their shepherd....
There are few things more disheartening as a congregant than hearing a forty minute preacher preach for fifty minutes, a thirty minute preacher preach for forty minutes, or a twenty minute preacher preach for thirty minutes. Somehow, that last ten minutes can weaken...
Ever since the Reformation put the Bible into the hands of everyman, opponents of the truth have decried the availability of the Bible to be read and understood by more than just an elite clergy. The pre-Reformation scholar William Tyndale made it his goal to...
Legalism is an ugly thing to those outside it, but often a beautiful thing to those within it. Legalism is any system whereby the merits of man contribute in any way to his standing with God. For those who have been delivered from the works-righteousness mentality,...
