Written by A. Craig Troxel |
Thursday, May 2, 2024
To be born again means that God has given each of us a new heart. Just as every function and aspect of our old heart was perilously infected by sin, so also nothing in our new heart remains untouched by God’s grace—including our mind. God has graciously enlightened our understanding. Now we see our sin and we see its remedy in Christ so that we might call on the Lord with “a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:22). God’s grace and truth shine “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). This light does not bypass the mind. It opens the mind. 

Life is filled with choices. Some are as mundane as paper or plastic, while others are more serious, like the friend who insists, “You’re either with me or against me.” We are told that we must choose between success or happiness, hard work or a social life, science or art, being an extrovert or an introvert. It’s this or that. Some Christians would add that you must choose between your head and your heart. It reminds me of the Tin Man in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz who said to the Scarecrow, “But once I had brains, and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart.” The Tin Man apparently considered the head and the heart irreconcilable rivals. Perhaps you agree.
We moderns tend to associate the heart with feeling, not thinking. Naturally, this leads some to think that our knowledge of God and our love for God are two separate things. Or that it’s more spiritual to draw insight from inward intuition than theological reflection. Must a Christian, then, choose between a religion of the intellect and of the affections?
The Bible never asks us to choose between our heart and our thinking. It never encourages the impression that the heart’s mind is somehow less spiritual than the heart’s desires or will. The Bible holds these together, cordially. It might surprise many Christians to hear that according to Scripture, if your heart principally does one thing: it thinks. Let’s explore how Scripture regards the heart and its functions.
The Heart’s Unity and Its Complexity
The Bible uses the word heart more than any other word to describe our inner person (far more than words like soul and spirit). Summarizing the teaching of Scripture, we can say the heart governs the totality of our inner self—everything we think, desire, and choose flows from this one source. It is the fountainhead of every spiritual faculty within us—the spring of every motive, the seat of every passion, and the center of every thought. Your heart is the helm of your ship. The bearing it sets is the course your life will follow. That’s why the Bible interconnects your speech, repentance, faith, service, treasure, obedience, worship, walk, and love with “all your heart.” Put simply, the Bible speaks of your capacity to think, desire, feel, and choose as centered in your heart.
Within this central unity of the heart, however, the Bible also describes a threefold complexity of functions: the mind, the desires, and the will. To put this another way, the heart includes what we know (our intellect, knowledge, thought, intentions, ideas, meditation, memory, imagination), what we love (what we desire, want, seek, crave, yearn for, feel), and what we choose (whether we will resist or submit, whether we will say “yes” or “no”).
The biblical language of the heart, therefore, beautifully brings together this cooperative network of our intellect, affections, and will. This complex unity of the heart has been foundational to my own Reformed theological tradition in both its scholarly and popular forms. As a consistent biblical paradigm, it has also proven itself over time and has been confirmed by contemporary scholarship. Thus the word heart in Scripture is simple enough to reflect our inner unity and comprehensive enough to capture our inner threefold complexity.
The Heart’s Desires
Whether pursued righteously or sinfully, the heart desires companionship, security, encouragement, happiness, comfort, and satisfaction. The word used throughout the Bible for lust, fleshly passion, and worldly desire is the same word Jesus uses to express his desire to eat the Passover with his disciples. The term Paul uses for the desires of the flesh is the same one he uses for the desires of the Spirit (Gal. 5:16–17). Desires become sinful only when their object is out of bounds or the desire itself is out of balance. But all desires are strong cravings—hungry and thirsty spiritual appetites. We desire not simply what we like but what we love—what Christ calls our treasure (Matt. 6:21). We get emotional about our treasure. That is why Scripture associates the heart with feelings like anger, joy, envy, rage, anxiety, longing, sorrow, lovesickness, anguish, despair, and many other emotions (depending on whether our desires are satisfied, frustrated, or denied). Our hearts go out to what we love, and in this way our desires bring out what lies at the core of who we are.
The Heart’s Will
Often when the word heart appears in Scripture, its volitional function is in view: not only what we want but what we choose. The will decides whether we resist or submit to what we desire. Will my heart say yes or no? The battle for control of the heart is fought in the will. Which way the battle goes corresponds with the will’s strength or weakness, its callousness or brokenness, its being hardened by sin or made new by grace. The unbelieving heart’s sinful will is a stubborn, unyielding “heart of stone”—like Pharaoh’s hardened heart that resists God in rebellion. At the same time, this will is weak, unable to resist temptation. It is enslaved, unstable, apathetic, and afraid. The Christian’s heart made new by the Spirit, in direct contrast, enjoys a will that is both surrendered and strengthened. While always imperfect in this life, it nevertheless increasingly bows before God, grieves over sin, and serves Christ with humility. That same renewed heart has resolved to obey the Lord and is emboldened to die to sin, defy the world, and resist the devil. Your heart does not simply know or desire; it decides.
The Heart’s Mind
Finally, according to the Bible, the third function or capacity of the heart is to think. Let’s spend a little more time on this one, since we’re so used to thinking about thinking with our heads. You will not find biblical references to your head as the locale for your thinking.
Read More
Related Posts:

This, in short, is how the conveyor belt works: The school encourages the child to embrace a new gender. Teachers must affirm it and hide it from parents. Counselors must support it. Parents must go along or risk losing custody. Employers and insurers must pay for it. Doctors must perform it. All of this is imposed by law. And then we wonder why cases are skyrocketing. What can be done?  

Almost everyone agrees that rates of transgender identification are skyrocketing, especially among young girls. But nobody seems to agree on the cause.
Is it social contagion, fueled by social media and peer pressure? Is it social acceptance, as a more tolerant society finally lets transgender kids embrace their true selves? Or is it just good business, as gender clinics profit by shuffling children through an expensive series of drugs and surgeries?
Maybe the answer is all of the above—at least to some degree.
But one important contributor is often overlooked: the law. Over the last decade, a complicated network of state and federal laws has increasingly channeled children down the path of gender transition. These laws operate in a wide variety of settings—from public schools, to professional counseling, to custody disputes, to foster care, to adoption, to health insurance, to the practice of medicine itself. And in each setting, the law places a heavy thumb on the scale, pushing children and parents toward gender transition. The law operates, in effect, as a transgender conveyor belt.
Here’s how it works. But buckle up, because there are many stages in the process.
First, school districts across the country have adopted curricula that require teachers to introduce the concept of gender identity as early as pre-K. In Montgomery County, Maryland, for example, the Board of Education mandated a series of “inclusivity” books for pre-K through eighth grade that promote gender transitioning and “disrupt students’ either/or thinking” about gender. The school district refuses to notify parents when these concepts are taught and refuses to allow parents to opt kids out of the teaching. Not surprisingly, some children exposed to this teaching (and social media and peer influence) begin questioning their gender identity.
Once a child questions his or her gender identity, many public schools are legally required to affirm the child’s new gender identity with pronouns, bathrooms, and the like—and to conceal that identity from the child’s parents. California and New Jersey have even sued school districts that dared notify parents, arguing that it violates the child’s “privacy” and is “discriminatory” to inform parents that their child has a new gender.
If parents find out about their child’s new identity and seek counseling, they will discover that twenty-two states and over one hundred local governments have now adopted so-called “conversion-therapy bans.” These laws operate as a one-way ratchet on professional counselors. Michigan’s law, for example, requires counselors to provide “acceptance,” “support,” and “assistance to an individual undergoing a gender transition,” while making it illegal to talk with a child about “behavior or gender expression” that aligns with his or her biological sex. This means counseling in many states can go in only one direction: toward a gender transition.
If parents nevertheless persist in affirming a child’s God-given body, some states have begun removing children from their parents’ custody. Illinois is considering legislation that would define child abuse to include a parent’s refusal to medically transition a child. And Indiana stripped Catholic parents of custody after a report that they wouldn’t call him by a new female name and pronouns. Even though the state concluded there was no abuse or neglect, it kept him in a foster home that would affirm his preferred identity, saying he “should be in a home where she is [ac]cepted for who she is.”
Read More
Related Posts:

This ancient creed, however, shows us what the very first Christians believed about Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances. The Christian creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7 obliterates the “Jesus as legend” challenge. From the inception of the church, the earliest believers confessed Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances. There was no time for legendary development.

The Christian church is older than its New Testament books. This shouldn’t surprise us since the New Testament was written by people who were a part of the first-century church. The events recorded in the Gospels are older than the text of the Gospels. Again, nothing unusual here.
What if I told you, though, that in the New Testament there are passages that are older than the New Testament? Obviously, Old Testament passages quoted in the New Testament precede it, but that’s not what I’m referring to.
Within the New Testament books are early Christian creeds that predate the books themselves. These creeds show us what the earliest Christians believed and which doctrines existed from the inception of the church.
Let’s look at one of these creeds and see why scholars are convinced it predates the book it’s quoted in.
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. (1 Corinthians 15:3–7)
There are many reasons to believe this passage isn’t something Paul was writing for the first time to the Corinthian church.
Read More
Related Posts:

Being an “older woman” is not for the faint of heart.  The older we get the more we realize the more flawed we are and the more we need every ounce of grace that God graciously gives –which is probably why God gives this command to us at this time in our lives.  But our young women are worth the investment.  And they need us now more than ever. 

Anyone paying attention knows that there is a national assault on our girls.  The most recent example is the amending of Title IX, a law that was originally written to protect young women and recognize their differences from men.  This law has been surreptitiously double-crossed by those who suggest that men can be women and therefore men should be protected as women and at the expense of the women it was originally meant to protect.  To add insult to injury, the feminine phenom of the day, Taylor Swift, who, like the Pied Piper, has sung her way into the hearts of our girls, released a new album that openly mocks the women who hold the line for our daughters in this crazy, disordered world.
I am grateful for the cultural warriors with large audiences who expose this attack on our girls and address it at the highest levels in our country.  But many of us don’t have that kind of platform.  For most of us, our circle of influence is small as we endeavor to live quiet lives and love our families, church community and neighbors.  We think, “What can we do that really makes a difference in this twisted, disordered world?”  The answer is one that has resounded throughout the generations: “Older women…teach what is good” (Tit. 2:3).
Direction for the Disorder
Unfortunately, what we see today is a generation of younger women who are increasingly vulnerable to the disorder promoted by those that hate God.  Many girls lack the foundation of truth which prevents them from standing as “corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace” (Ps. 144:12).  Will they be able to withstand the elements that are shaking the foundations of our society?  Do they believe what the Bible says about their identity and value as women?  Do they choose God’s truth over the worldly distractions thrown at them every day? Are they taken by the influence of the “Swifties” or by the influence of godly moms, grandmas, aunts and sisters? Importantly, do they see older women standing firm and engaging them in truth and in love and kindness?
Some days it can seem like disorder is winning the day.  Of course, this generation’s disorder is not a new story, but an old one from the beginning when the Author of Lies spewed the first critical theory of history: “Did God really say?” (Gen. 3:1).  The majestic order that God created out of the disordered void was corrupted by one who had a history of hating God.  It is not a new story.  And, it was not a new story when the Apostle Paul wrote to his disciple Titus, whom he left behind on the island of Crete to bring order to the church established there.  Paul wrote his letter to instruct Titus to “put what remained into order” so that the new Christians would live lives that flowed from a “knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life” (Tit.1:2).
Paul knew that order would come not only from establishing masculine authority in the church but also partnering with older women who would teach younger women what is good and in accordance with sound doctrine.
Read More
Related Posts:

Robinson’s book, The Church of God as an Essential Element of the Gospel, 1858, has been reprinted by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2009, with an introduction by A. Craig Troxel and a twenty-five page biography by T. E. Peck. Peck was a friend of Robinson and succeeded him at Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore. Robinson also published Discourses on Redemption: As Revealed at Sundry Times and in Divers Manners, Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1866.

Is it a scowl of anger or grimace of pain that is on the face of Stuart Robinson? His appearance may very well be due to pain. When he was an infant his nurse was tossing him in the air, as adults sometimes do, and watching him giggle, as babies will do, when she accidentally missed him and he fell to the floor. One can only imagine the horror of the nurse as she saw the child she cared for screaming in pain. The injuries were fearful. His right shoulder was dislocated, his hand and thumb were seriously injured, and his head was injured such that the doctor believed, using the terminology of the day, “idiocy,” might be the result. Robinson recovered fully from his head injury but both his arm and hand were disabled for the remainder of his life such that stiffness and awkwardness could be seen in his gestures from the pulpit. Matters were made worse when he broke the same arm in an accident while riding a train from Baltimore to Kentucky. Yes, his facial appearance may very well be due to pain, but then there is the possibility of the scowl of anger, an appearance of antagonism because his character, integrity, and honor as a man and a minister were assailed and slandered such that he sued the source of the defaming words.
Stuart Robinson was of Scotch-Irish stock, born November 14, 1814, to James and Martha (Porter) Robinson in Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland. Martha was the daughter of an elder in the Irish Presbyterian Church and her grandfather had been a Presbyterian minister. Stuart’s father was a successful purveyor of linen until he lost his wealth through guaranteeing some loans that did not work out. Thus, as so many residents of Ireland were doing in the era, James took the family first briefly to New York and then on to Virginia where they settled. When Stuart was but six or seven years old his mother died. The household had no relatives in the United States, so Stuart lived with another family, the Troutmans, through an arrangement by his father.
The Troutmans raised Stuart as their own and came to realize he was highly intelligent. They made sure that he attended the best schools possible. As with several of the biographical subjects presented on Presbyterians of the Past, his intellectual gifts were evidenced by an incredible memory. The Troutmans sought the advice of their pastor, Rev. James M. Brown, regarding the best course for study for Stuart. Brown observed the thirteen year old’s abilities, took him into his home, and directed his studies until he was sent to study in an academy in Romney, Virginia, mastered by Rev. William H. Foote. At about the age of sixteen he professed faith in Christ. When it was time to enter college, Robinson joined the freshman class at Amherst in Massachusetts, graduating in 1836. For preparation for the ministry he studied one year in Union Seminary, Virginia; then he taught for two years to earn tuition for more study; and then studied two years in Princeton Seminary but did not receive a certificate of completion.
Stuart Robinson was licensed by Greenbrier Presbytery, 1841, then ordained, October 8, 1842, at Lewisburg, Virginia (currently in West Virginia) to serve the Kanawha Salines Church. He continued in the ministry serving churches in Kentucky, then Baltimore, and then moved back to Kentucky where he taught in Danville Seminary before becoming minister of Second Church, Louisville. Stuart Robinson was known for his preaching gifts, the precision of his sermons, his pointed and no holds barred writing, and a short-fused temper. His memorialist, J. N. Saunders, commented that, “his temper sometimes got the better of him; that his great will was sometimes too imperious, and that he often said things that were unnecessarily severe and wounding” (p. 34). At the time of the lawsuits that will be discussed in the following paragraphs, Robinson had been at Second Church since 1858.
The story of Dr. Robinson’s litigation begins with The Hickman Courier of Hickman, Kentucky, which reported in March 1872 that an important libel suit had been filed by Rev. Stuart Robinson against the proprietors of the Chicago Evening Post seeking damages of 100,000.00. The compensation sought was described as, likely tongue in cheek, “a moderate sum.” Robinson was responding to a thirty-one word article published that January in the Post’s “Personal and Impersonal” column.
Rev. Stuart Robinson of Louisville, who advocated from the pulpit during the war, the shipping of yellow fever infected clothing to Northern cities, narrowly escaped death from small pox last week.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by John J. DiIulio, Jr. |
Thursday, May 2, 2024
In May 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that, in 2020, only about a quarter of American Jews believed in the God described in the Bible, only a fifth deemed religion “very important” in their lives, and only an eighth attended religious services at least weekly.

In “Embrace Pluralism over Racialism,” Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam rightly observes that “we are living through a disturbing rise in anti-Semitic violence.” From the nation’s first days, he reminds us, “America has welcomed the Jewish people,” who, in turn, “have helped make America the most dynamic, productive, and creative nation in the world.”
I would go further. As Paul Johnson wrote in his History of the Jews (1988), it is to the Jews that “we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person . . . of collective conscience and so of social responsibility . . . of peace as an abstract ideal . . . and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind.”
In diagnosing the rise in anti-Semitism, Salam puts his finger on what he terms “racialism,” defined as “a new form of adversarial identity politics” that “scorns meritocratic pluralism” and has become all the rage, figuratively and literally speaking, among a demographically diverse cross-section of young adults.
As the old saying goes, an explanation is the place where the mind comes to rest. But if we dig deeper, might we find an inverse relationship between religious commitments and anti-Semitism, such that a decline in religion begets a rise in anti-Semitism?
A suggestive study released last year might lead one to consider that possibility. In “From the Death of God to the Rise of Hitler,” published in the Journal of Economic Literature, economists Sasha O. Becker and Hans-Joachim Voth subjected diverse datasets to cutting-edge statistical analyses to test whether Germans who lived in robustly Christian communities were more or less likely than otherwise comparable Germans to join the Nazi Party.
As Becker and Voth interpreted them, the results favored what they styled the “Shallow Christianity” theory: in places in which “the Christian Church only had shallow roots, the Nazis received higher electoral support and saw more party entry.” The “results,” they concluded, “suggest that Nazi support and Hitler’s startling appeal received an important boost from the spiritual ‘emptiness’ of large parts of the German population.”
Still, positing an inverse relationship between robust religious commitments, especially among Christians, on the one side, and anti-Semitism, on the other, might seem ahistorical, or even ridiculous.
Read More
Related Posts:

Take heart in your battle against the idols of this age. Your Savior has fought and won the most terrifying war against idolatrous unbelief through His perfect fearing of the Father unto death. Now, through His Spirit, you too can experience and exult in God as your eternal, all-glorious treasure, undaunted by the trivialities that seek to lure your heart away.

The Creator’s Cosmic Command

You shall have no other gods before Me. – Exodus 20:3

These solemn words from the mouth of God cut through the chaos of our idolatrous hearts. In a world overflowing with temptations to chase after false saviors, the first commandment calls us back to the fear of the Lord as our fundamental allegiance and devotion.
What is this “fear of the Lord” that the Scripture incessantly commands? It is no antiquated relic but the bedrock reality that shapes and upholds all of life. The fear of the Lord is a posture of awestruck reverence before the supreme majesty, holiness, and glory of our sovereign Creator and Judge.
As the prophet Isaiah thundered, “All the nations are as nothing before Him…To whom then will you liken God?” (Isaiah 40:17-18) The fear of the Lord recognizes our infinite worth-giver and the awesome One before whom we will give an ultimate account (Hebrews 10:31). It is a sacred dread of offending the Lord of matchless beauty and purity before whom the highest heavens are unclean.
When the fear of the Lord lies firm in our hearts, it fortifies us against the ever-encroaching idolatries that war against our souls. We hate evil and sin, which dishonors God’s holiness (Proverbs 8:13). Obedience to Him becomes our consummate joy as we live with a dread of grieving His Spirit (2 Corinthians 7:1, Acts 9:31). Our hearts swell with reverence and gladness in God alone as our all-satisfying treasure (Psalm 2:11).
Curbing Our Chronic Cravings
And yet, how easily does this precious fear erode as we casually sideline God’s glory? Our sin does not grieve us as it should before the terrifying reality of Christ’s judgment seat. We carelessly rationalize evil desires and skirt around His commandments as if He were small and His Word insignificant. A nonchalant familiarity with Infinity creeps in, forgetting the cosmic chasm between the Creator and the created.
Perhaps most perilously, we sacrifice this fear by covertly pursuing idols of the heart—making spouses, careers, comfort, and reputations into functional saviors. Our gaze drifts from beholding the awesome worth-ship of God over all things as we chase after petty and fleeting shadows.
Like the Israelites trembling before mere men at Kadesh Barnea (Numbers 14:9), we offer up our highest reverence to the paltry fears and piddling desires of this fading world.
Read More
Related Posts: