This post is the third in a series designed to help you to get to know and love some of the important words used in the Bible. Today we’ll learn the basic meaning of the word ‘justification’.
Category Archives: Assurance
Engraved on God’s hands
Up front
The Lord asks his people in Isaiah 49:15, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?” How would we, his people today, answer that question, I wonder? (more…)
The double cure
Thought, Sola Panel
Grimmo’s post on changes to the words of Wesley’s famous hymn put me in mind of another equally significant change to an equally famous hymn.
In the first verse of ‘Rock of Ages’, we are used to singing:
Be of sin the double cure: cleanse me from its guilt and power.
But this is not what Augustus Toplady wrote.
Reading the Bible with your ears open
Life
You read what you hear. Even with the Bible. You read what you hear.
Let me explain. Study leave got me to England in 10 inches of snow. Beautiful. Because it closed the airports, it almost got me to France. How would I have explained that to the college board? Then driving around a country other than mine just confused me; so many signs supposedly telling me what to do, but I didn’t have the right framework to assimilate them so that they could actually make sense.
Pre-dawn-destination
Life
I woke up a bit earlier than usual the other day. Why? I don’t know. But sitting there at the kitchen bench was Isabella, my 8-year-old daughter. Despite the darkness, the fatigue and the time (5:30 a.m.), we had the most wonderful conversation. (more…)
Dread, joy and Morning Prayer
Up front, Sola Panel
Standing on the 5th tee at St Michael’s in Sydney’s East, the golfer experiences a mixture of nervousness and dread. Here (with some translational notes for non-golfers) is what it’s like. (more…)
Safe in the shadow of the Lord #2: The very practical doctrine of assurance
Safe in the shadow of the Lord #1: Can Christians fall away?
The New Perspective in action
Thought
All Christian teaching has implications for Christian living. Likewise all doctrine works itself out, one way or another, into a pattern of Christian practice. Having examined the ‘New Perspective’ on justification in the two previous Briefings (#228, #229),1 in this article, we want to explore the ‘cash value’ of the ‘New Perspective’ on justification—that is, its impact on Christian experience and ministry. Once again, we will focus our attention on the teaching of Tom Wright— partly because of the significance of the challenge he poses and partly because he (more than others) has taken the time to articulate what he sees as the practical outworkings of the ‘New Perspective’ on justification.
Assurance raises an eyebrow
Interchange
Freedom, certainty and assurance
It happened one Thursday morning. It would have to be a Thursday morning when I was supposed to be leading a Bible Study at 11am. It was now 10.45. Two men, both with leather brief cases strode purposefully towards my door. (more…)