The Aquila Report

Do you Know the Cross of Christ?

What God did on Calvary was far more than all that the brilliant achievements of mere man could ever accomplish. The transference of guilt from the souls of an innumerable company to the God-man required not only vast mercy, but also unimaginable divine energy. It required that same omnipotent love and might that made a cosmos by a divine word.

Jesus Christ’s crucifixion displays, more than any other event in history, the extraordinary character of the one true and living God, our Creator and our Sustainer, in whom we live and move and have our being, the Judge of the whole earth. The very essence of the Christian faith is found in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 
However, many in the professing church and in its pulpits are baffled by the cross. When they consider that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was nailed to a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem about two thousand years ago, they regard this event with sheer sentimentalism. After decades of attending church, teaching Sunday School, and living exemplary moral lives, they are still ignorant about the very heart of Scripture’s claims concerning the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
How different is that grievous reality from the magnificent conviction of the first disciples of Jesus Christ, those witnesses of His life, crucifixion, and resurrection. The apostles not only documented Jesus’s life, miracles, and appearances, but also His humiliation and death. They did not shrink from thoroughly and accurately documenting the Last Supper, the garden of Gethsemane, and the arrest, trials, whipping, crucifixion, and burial, of the Lord Jesus.
Nevertheless, these were not sentimental or discouraged disciples. They were dynamic men filled with a divine energy. “The people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits” (Dan. 11:32). It is the message of the cross that creates this strength of character and life. That message bifurcates the response of all who hear it: it is either total folly, like belief in the Loch Ness Monster, or it is the most relevant and life-transforming reality possible for men and women living on this planet. The apostle Paul stated that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).
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Rumblings of Revival among Gen Z?

The old way of thinking about apologetics or seeker ministries was to avoid the hot topics. But Vance can testify that young people aren’t put off by these conversations. On the contrary, they lean into them because they’re hot. The cultural craziness of the moment is an opening.

I love Tim Keller’s definition of revival: “The intensification of the ordinary operation of the work of the Holy Spirit, occurring mainly through the ordinary ‘instituted means of grace’—preaching, pastoring, worship, prayer.” It’s broad enough to not overly specify the forms a revival might take while narrow enough to give you a sense of God at work, helping you identify the signs of revival when you see them.
Today, I wonder if we’re seeing the beginning of a revival among Gen Z, particularly those in college. As I survey the landscape, I see signs of hope and renewal that strike me as unexpected and remarkable.
Generational Awakening?
Late last year, Kyle Richter and Patrick Miller reported on the renewed interest and enthusiasm of the college students in their area and pointed to similar outbreaks of spiritual fire elsewhere. They believe this generation may be primed for spiritual renewal.
Gen Z is spiritually starved. The disorienting circumstances of the last three years—a global pandemic, countless mass shootings, the woke wars, a contested election, rapid inflation, and widespread abuse scandals—created a famine of identity, purpose, and belonging. Gen Z is hungry for the very things the empty, desiccated temples of secularism, consumerism, and global digital media cannot provide, but which Jesus can.
As I meet with pastors and church leaders or visit churches and universities, I see signs of this spiritual hunger. The Asbury Awakening in 2023 was a big news story—an ordinary chapel turning into an ongoing service of praise and worship, confession of sin, and celebration of salvation, which garnered attention from all over the country and sparked similar stirrings of spiritual intensity in other colleges and universities.
I pondered the question Asbury presses upon us, and I noted Asbury Theological Seminary president Timothy Tennent’s wise hesitation to call the awakening a “revival.” “Only if we see lasting transformation,” he wrote, “which shakes the comfortable foundations of the church and truly brings us all to a new and deeper place can we look back, in hindsight and say ‘yes, this has been a revival.’”
In the last two months, I’ve spoken at two churches associated with The Salt Company—City Church in Tallahassee, Florida, and Cornerstone Church in Ames, Iowa. Both churches are teeming with students—passionate, spiritually hungry, mission-minded. “On fire for Jesus,” as we used to say. Cornerstone Church has experienced tragedy in recent years. In 2022, two young women were shot and killed before the start of a Thursday night service. The church has come through a season of grief, but God has been at work in it all, bringing about evangelistic fruitfulness.
Signs of God at Work
During my visit to Cornerstone, I asked pastor Mark Vance, who’s in contact with a wide range of leaders in churches and ministries across the country, what he’s seeing. What are the signs that God is up to something?
1. Conviction of Sin
Vance notes intensified conviction of sin among believers. Repentance is normal. Consistent. There’s deep remorse and a heartfelt desire to turn from sin.
Some of the repentance stories are remarkable, including a girl who was living with a boyfriend and came under conviction during a message on holiness—and decided to move out that very night. The church scrambled to facilitate lodging for her so she could follow Jesus in this area. Vance can recount many stories. Conviction of sin, assurance of salvation—these are the signs that sleep-walking Christians are waking up.
2. Heightened Desire for Spiritual Disciplines
Another rumbling of revival among young people is the yearning for spiritual discipline, for an encounter with God through ordinary means, such as deeper study of God’s Word, and a yearning to pray well and often.
Old traditions are back. Fasting during Lent. Rituals deeply rooted in church history. Kneeling prayer. Prayer at fixed hours of the day.
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The Order of Salvation: Adoption

Adoption is an accomplishment of redemption. It is not an accomplishment of creation. The very act of adoption assumes we were previously in a state of alienation. Being born did not somehow put us in better standing with God. The scripture says: “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5); and, “we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3).

Justification is not the gospel in its entirety. It was not enough for God to only justify us in Christ. He has also insisted on adopting us in Christ: “In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ,…” (Eph. 1:5). The final purpose of divine election has always been relational not merely judicial.
Think of it this way. In justification God comes to us as Judge. He removes our criminal status before Him by declaring us not guilty in Christ. But in adoption God comes to us not as Judge but as Father.
What then is adoption? “Adoption is an act of the free grace of God, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children, have his name put upon them, the Spirit of his Son given to them, are under his fatherly care and dispensations, admitted to all the liberties and privileges of the sons of God, made heirs of all the promises, and fellow-heirs with Christ in glory.” (Q. 74, Westminster Larger Catechism)
If justification is the act of God’s free grace which removes our condemnation, then adoption is the act of God’s free grace which removes our alienation.
In justification we receive the donation of righteousness. In adoption we receive the donation of family love: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1).
As David Garner wisely said, a not guilty verdict by the Almighty Judge does not make a criminal a son. But adoption does. Adoption legally puts us in the bonds of the family where God obligates himself to be our forever Father. He will pity us, protect us, provide for us, even chasten us, indulge us, and keep a glorious inheritance for us, bringing us to it without fail.
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Paul on Christian Liberty in Galatians 5:1

Jesus came to set us free, not enslave us to the law. All of the Protestant Reformers agreed upon this point and spoke of its importance. This is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. If Christian liberty is not the defining characteristic of the Christian life, then the doctrine of justification is not properly understood. 

If anything is worth defending it is Christian freedom.  In the face of the threat to such liberty posed by the Judaizers, Paul issues a stern warning to the Galatians– “for freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).  Anyone who seeks to be justified by obedience to the law of Moses, through receiving circumcision, through the keeping of Jewish dietary laws, or in observing the Jewish religious calendar, will fall from grace and come under God’s curse (Galatians 5:4).[1] 
Paul has already pointed out that those who seek to be justified on the basis of works of law (Galatians 2:16), or who place their confidence in what Paul identifies as the basic principles of the world (stoichiea) will find themselves in eternal danger.  In Galatians 5:1-12, Paul contrasts the Judaizing campaign of enslavement to the law with Christian liberty in Christ.  This is yet another important plank in his case against the Judaizers.
In the first four chapters of Galatians, Paul issues several responses to Judaizing legalism.  In chapter 5, we move into what some identify as the “practical section” of Paul’s Galatian letter, when the apostle takes up the practice of Christian liberty and exhorts the Galatians to defend it.[2]  While Paul does change focus a bit from those redemptive historical events which culminate in the death of Jesus and justification through faith, here he describes the Christian life in light of the gospel revealed to him by Jesus Christ.[3]  The apostle continues to set out sharp contrasts between opposing positions.  Readers of Galatians are now well aware that Paul is fond of antithesis (contrast) as a rhetorical critique and he uses it repeatedly. 
Following up his analogy between Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4:21-4:31, when Paul turned the Jewish understanding of redemptive history on its head, in Galatians 5:1-12, he contrasts faith and works yet again, proving that they are diametrically opposed to the other when it comes to the justification of sinners.  To seek to be justified by works of law or through observing of dietary laws, feast days, or circumcision, is to return to slavery to sin and bondage to the basic principles which characterize this present evil age.  This is a very serious misstep since Jesus Christ came for the purpose of setting us free from bondage to sin and the law.  The gravity of this misstep is identified in verse 1 of chapter 5, when Paul challenges the Galatians with the uncompromising declaration, “for freedom Christ has set us free.” 
This is where the Christian life begins for the Galatians and the readers of this epistle–with freedom from the guilt of sin and its enslaving power.  Christian freedom is a central concept in terms of our standing before God, as well as a major theme in the Galatian letter.[4]  The agitators in Antioch and Galatia deplore Paul’s stress on Christian freedom and see it as the chief sign of a low bar of entrance for Gentiles and an affront to the traditions of their fathers.
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“Society Says” Relativism

Moral reformers typically judge society from the inside. They challenge their culture’s standard of behavior and then campaign for change. If morality is defined as the present society’s standard, though, then challenging that standard would be an act of immorality by definition. Social reformers would not be moral after all, but rather moral outcasts precisely because they oppose the status quo.

To celebrate Stand to Reason’s 30th anniversary, we’re republishing classic issues of Solid Ground that represent some of the foundational ideas characterizing our work over the decades—ideas that continue to be vital to apologetics and evangelism today. 
For many in the world, the moral legitimacy of a U.S. military incursion into Iraq hinged on one issue: United Nations support. For them it was clear that, all other things being equal, armed invasion would be indefensible unless a single detail changed: U.N. approval.
At the heart of this view is the conviction that morality is a result of community consensus—in this case, the international community. There can be no “majority of one.” The guiding ethical principle is simple: Don’t buck the system. This is the same approach implicit in both “social contract” and postmodern views of ethics.
Many of us have seen this moral calculus before—on TV.
Star Trek Morality
“Trekkers” will recall the Prime Directive of the Federation prohibiting the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek from interfering with alien civilizations. Moral standards are set internally, by one’s culture. What’s right for one society isn’t necessarily right for another. Since morality is relative—all competing values are equally legitimate—the crew of the Enterprise was forbidden to intrude.
On this view, morality is determined by the group. Generally, the relevant group is the larger cultural unit: the tribe, the linguistic community, the nation-state. In some cases, the ruling social unit can be expanded to a consortium of cultures, like the United Nations, but the basic principle is still the same: The majority rules.
Morality as Social Contract
Classical thinkers saw the apparently innate tendency of all human beings to think and act according to moral categories (what Francis Schaeffer called “moral motions”) as evidence for God.
Others disagreed. To them, morality represented nothing more than a social contract. As 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously put it, life in an unregulated state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In order to avoid such a fate, humans consent to live by a set of rules called morality.
This “Star Trek morality,” otherwise known as conventionalism, teaches that each society survives because of consensual moral arrangements each individual is obliged to honor. Morality is relative to culture, determined by popular consensus, expressed through laws and customs. Each person (or each country in the case of an international “community” like the U.N.) fulfills his end of the contract by keeping the code of the group.
No Immoral “Aliens”
Star Trek morality has serious problems in any of its applications. First of all, since each society is “alien” to another, no society could be judged immoral by another’s standards, no matter how bizarre or morally repugnant they may seem.
The torture of prisoners by military regimes, the injustice of totalitarian governments, and the apartheid of racist administrations would all be outside the reach of moral assessment on this view. One might counter that these policies, in many cases, are not the will of the people, but only of those in power. This rebuttal, though, fails twice.
First, why should one accept that the population at large is the relevant “society” determining morality instead of those who have the power to rule? If one has an obligation to obey society, then which society does one obey? This ambiguity is a weakness of conventionalism.
Culture is complex, with many overlapping internal “societies” making claims on us. Behavior acceptable at the gym in the morning is considered gauche at a dinner party later that evening. The moral convictions of one’s religious community may be at odds with the demands of his business community. Which group is primary? Culture is not homogeneous, making it impossible for it to define a common standard of behavior.
Second, the rejoinder also misses the point. Maybe such injustices don’t always represent the will of the people, but what if they did? The kangaroo courts of the French Revolution had popular support. So did the Third Reich, to a great degree. Do we grant French anarchists and German Nazis moral justification on this basis?
Nazis at Nuremburg
Indeed, the Nazis essentially used the Star Trek defense at Nuremberg. Advancing a notion called legal positivism, the German leadership claimed that the International Military Tribunal had no moral legitimacy to preside over the trials.
In The Law above the Law, John Warwick Montgomery describes their argument:
The most telling defense offered by the accused was that they had simply followed orders or made decisions within the framework of their own legal system, in complete consistency with it, and that they therefore could not rightly be condemned because they deviated from the alien value system of their conquerors. [Emphasis added.][1]
The Tribunal didn’t accept this justification. In the words of Robert H. Jackson, chief counsel for the United States at the trials, the issue was not one of power—the victor judging the vanquished—but one of higher moral law. “[The Tribunal] rises above the provincial and transient,” he said, “and seeks guidance not only from International Law but also from the basic principles of jurisprudence which are assumptions of civilization….”[2]
The first serious problem with the social contract view is that it violates our deepest moral intuitions, the foundational “assumptions of civilization.” Some things seem wrong regardless of what “society” says, including plundering innocent Jews, pressing them into forced labor, and exterminating them. If the Star Trek view is sound, then governmentally sponsored genocide can only be silently observed. If there is no law above society, then society cannot be judged.
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The Lord’s Lessons in Our Failures

I’m captivated by this moment on the Sea of Galilee in John 21. Whether intentional or not, I love the image of Peter diving into the water. He’s still audacious, but he’s not grandiose. He does not attempt to run across the water or make a leap of faith or stand proudly at the bow. He knows he is a mere swimmer. He dives into the water with the unrestrained joy of a child. He just wants to be with Jesus. The cross means participation in future glory, for sure, but too often we gloss over the gritty reality of whips and nails. 

Luke tells a story in the fifth chapter of his Gospel. Jesus was in Galilee teaching, the crowds pressing in to the point of overwhelming him. Peter (then called Simon) had been fishing all night and was nearby washing his nets. His boat sat empty on the shoreline, and Jesus asked if he’d take him out a little way on the water so his voice would carry as he taught. Simon did as he was told. When Jesus was done teaching, he told him to go out further and cast his nets. Peter was tired. He’d fished all night and had just cleaned his nets; he’d have to repeat the whole exercise and as an experienced fisherman, he knew that the effort was pointless. Fishing had been fruitless the night before; it was the wrong time of day to be casting nets anyway. But he did as he was told and cast the nets again. The nets almost tore with the weight of the fish, and his partners had to come to help them bring in the catch. 
Three years later John saw the mysterious figure on the shoreline and the overflowing nets after a hapless night. He turned to Peter and said, “It’s the Lord” (v. 7). 
Peter dove right into the water and swam to shore. 
* * *
I’ll admit that this may well be overreading the text, but I can’t help but obsess with one detail in this account: Peter leaping into the water. 
Maybe it’s a superfluous detail, maybe it shows Peter’s impulsiveness once again. But when I read it, I can’t help but think of yet a third moment between Jesus and Peter on the Sea of Galilee—one recounted in Matthew 14. 
Jesus had performed the miracle of feeding the five thousand but had done so with grief in his heart. He’d just gotten word that his cousin, John the Baptist, had been beheaded. As Jesus dismissed the crowds, he sent the disciples ahead of him across the sea while he retreated into the mountains to pray. Late in the evening he watched their boat on the water, moving slowly because the waves and winds were against them. Jesus set out after them, walking across the waves. 
The disciples were terrified when he came into view, certain that he was a ghost. Jesus calmed them down, assuring them it was him. Peter said, “If it’s really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water” (v. 28). 
“Come,” Jesus said. 
Moments later, Peter stepped out of the boat, took a few steps, and then, seeing the waves and wind, grew afraid and began to sink. Jesus grabbed him by the hand. “You of little faith,” he said. “Why did you doubt?” (v. 31). They walked to the boat and continued the journey across the Sea of Galilee. 
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The Struggle for Soul in Christian Higher Education: Burtchaell Was Right, and I Was Wrong, Part I

After some positive comments about the St. Olaf of the 90s, he mysteriously pronounced that: “Other indicia suggest the Midwest college is entering a divestiture of its Lutheran identity that, though much longer in coming, could be swifter in its eventual accomplishment.” Other schools—Azuza Pacific and Calvin—were assessed quite positively, but Burtchaell had little confidence in their futures as Christian schools.

During my sabbatical year of 1985–86 at St. Edmunds College of Cambridge University, I had the good fortune of having many conversations about Christian higher education with James Burtchaell, who also had a year-long sabbatical there. He had recently moved from the provost’s office of Notre Dame to its theology department.
I had moved in 1982 from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago to Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, recruited by President Norman Fintel in order to build a strong religion department and to help strengthen the connection of the college to its Lutheran heritage, including the founding and shaping of a Center for Religion and Society.
Burtchaell was fearful that Notre Dame was loosening its connection with the Catholic tradition, as so many other Catholic schools had done. He was very interested in criticizing and preventing such a move.
I was still in mild shock about the Roanoke College that I found when I arrived there in 1982. Half the department chairs were hostile to the college’s connection with any sort of religious tradition. The other half were apathetic about that connection, not seeing any relevant connection between the college’s Lutheran heritage and liberal arts education. Only two of us department chairs thought it important to hire Lutheran Christians if the college was to have any continuing relation to its original founding. The Dean and the President both farmed out the hiring of new faculty to the departments.
The shock came from the contrast to what  I experienced when attending a Lutheran college in the Midwest in the late 50s that was unabashedly Lutheran in its identity and mission. Though I had lectured at many Lutheran colleges while I was a seminary professor for nearly twenty years, I had not looked closely at their overall religious substance. After my jolt in arriving at Roanoke, I now had to take a closer look. What had happened in those twenty years?
A great aid in taking that closer look came from my friend Burtchaell, who had followed up his interest in the secularization of Christian schools. In the April and May 1991 issues of First Things Burtchaell wrote two connected articles entitled “The Decline and Fall of a Christian College.” The articles presented a very long and highly erudite historical account of how Vanderbilt moved from being what Methodists hoped would be their flagship Christian university to a thoroughly secular institution in which Christianity offered no public relevance. In the articles he points to nine fateful moves that were crucial in that secularization.
Though there were some earlier studies of secularization in higher education, this one was a game-changer because of its clarity and passion. In hopes of understanding the process of secularization, I had already organized a faculty/administration discussion group on the subject of Christian higher education. When Burtchaell’s articles came out, we were given tools to understand what had happened. We could almost put our college’s name in every reference to Vanderbilt that Burtchaell made. His work was enormously helpful to understand what had happened and gave us clues about how we might take measures to mitigate the secularization process and perhaps rebuild a viable Christian college.
However, those articles were but a foreshadowing of what was to come in his The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from their Christian Churches, a tome of 868 pages, published by Eerdmans in 1998.1
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Triage in the Trenches: When Do Second-Tier Issues Divide?

Many paedobaptists and credobaptists frequently find themselves in near total agreement on the substance of the fundamental doctrines of the faith. Thus, it is no surprise that, armed with such substantial agreement, such paedobaptists and credobaptists have found themselves “together for the gospel.” Differences over manhood and womanhood, however, are a different matter. Such differences are directly related to the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of man, and the doctrine of sin. Thus, errors on this doctrine have a greater seriousness. 

As Christians face the fragmenting of some churches, denominations, and movements, many have turned to the concept of “theological triage” to help navigate the turbulent waters of doctrinal disagreement.
In a recent article, Scott Hubbard ably distills theological triage, drawing the basic category from Al Mohler and then using Gavin Ortlund’s book to distinguish four ranks or tiers of doctrinal difference:

First-rank doctrines are essential to the gospel itself.
Second-rank doctrines are urgent for the health and practice of the church such that they frequently cause Christians to separate at the level of local church, denomination, and/or ministry.
Third-rank doctrines are important to Christian theology but not enough to justify separation or division among Christians.
Fourth-rank doctrines are unimportant to our gospel witness and ministry collaboration. (Finding the Right Hills to Die On, 19)

Finally, Hubbard draws on Rhyne Putnam for three tests to aid in our discernment process:

The hermeneutical test: the clearer the Bible teaches a doctrine, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.
The gospel test: the more central a doctrine is to the gospel, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.
The praxis test: the more a doctrine affects the practice of a church, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.

This basic framework is helpful. Still, it frequently leaves us with a puzzle concerning the second-tier issues. In most contemporary uses of theological triage, differences over baptism and differences over manhood and womanhood are both regarded as second-tier issues. In actual practice, however, there seems to be a substantive difference between these two issues. Organizations and conferences like The Gospel Coalition and Together For the Gospel treat these two issues differently. In both cases, baptismal differences are not regarded as barriers to participation, whereas differences over manhood and womanhood are. What might account for this difference (and others like it)?
Theoretical Triage: Thinking About the Body
I believe that further refinement of theological triage can clarify why we would treat certain second-tier disagreements differently than others. (Note: this refinement focuses on the theoretical side of triage. In application to any particular situation, there will be critical concrete and practical considerations in play as well.)
The language of triage is drawn from the field of emergency medicine. In keeping with this imagery, we can consider how we assess the life, health, and practice of the physical body as an analogy for assessing the life, health, and practice of the body of Christ. (In principle, this same analogy could be used to assess the doctrinal health of an individual as well; for simplicity’s sake, we’ll focus on the church as a body.)
In doctrinal terms, certain doctrines (first tier) are essential for the life of the church. If you deny such a doctrine, you lack life; you’re outside the Christian faith. Other doctrines (second tier) are essential for the health of the church. If you deny such a doctrine, it doesn’t mean you’re spiritually dead, but instead that you’re spiritually sick. Finally, some doctrines (third tier) are essential for the practice of the church. These are matters which don’t directly bear on life or health but do relate closely to how we order and structure our churches, and thus there is need for significant alignment on these matters among members of a given church. 
First Tier: Are You Alive?
Thinking in terms of bodily life, health, and practice enables us to identify why certain doctrines are “of first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3). Paul uses that phrase to refer to the gospel by which we are being saved, if we hold fast to it. He refers specifically to Christ’s death for sin, as well as the historicity of his burial, resurrection, and subsequent appearances. To falter on such gospel truths is to “believe in vain.”
Thus, first-tier issues are matters of gospel significance. Manifest errors on or denials of such fundamental doctrines places one outside the Christian faith. We often summarize the basic gospel in terms of either God-Sin-Christ-Faith or Creation-Fall-Redemption-New Creation. Both of these reveal the foundational doctrines to be embraced and confessed in order to be Christian. The doctrine of the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, his work on the cross and in the resurrection, and salvation by grace through faith are generally regarded as first-tier issues. To deny such doctrines is to fall short of the Christian faith completely. 
However, often overlooked in our discussions of gospel issues are fundamental errors on the nature of creation, humanity, and sin. Such issues of anthropology (what C.S. Lewis referred to as the Tao, or the moral order of the universe recognized by all people) could also fall into the first-tier category. Paul explicitly says this when he mentions that “Christ died for our sins” as a matter of first importance. Similarly, the Bible points in this direction whenever it makes clear and manifest violations of the moral law grounds for excommunication from the church and exclusion from the kingdom (1 Corinthians 5–6; Gal. 5:22–23). These moral issues are not merely a matter of special revelation, but are universally known and binding through general revelation in creation and conscience. 
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Perfected Love

John goes so far as to say that if we love one another God abides in us. Love is a telltale sign that our faith is functioning according to new life in Christ. By it we gain assurance of our salvation. More than that, John tells us that His love has been perfected in us. John does not say “being perfected,” but “stands perfected.” In other words, the love of God bound up in Christ has found its mark. 

His love has been perfected in us. (1 John 4:12, NKJV)
Love cannot be reclusive. It cannot stay indoors, barricaded in our hearts. It cannot remain a hermit isolated and insulated from the humanity around us or even simply in cloistered communion with God.
John particularly stresses that we are to love one another. He reasons this way: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). Love is other-oriented and outward-facing.
God is the model for our love. How did God love us? By sending His Son to live and die for us. The eternal Son of God veiled His divine glory in true and full humanity so that He might identify with us, stand in our place as a substitute, and give His life in ransom for us. The love God describes for us and desires of us cannot work remotely. It must be exercised on-site, not only in word but in deed, not in mere sentiment but in sacrifice. There is a cost to love.
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Encouragement for Those Who Aren’t Resting on the Sabbath

The Sabbath is an opportunity for us to be a blessing to others—to be in fellowship with the people of God, to encourage them, and to serve them. It’s a day of service—gathered in worship and then outside worship in fellowship with God’s people. 

The Blessings of Sabbath
If I were in a position to speak to someone who is not observing the Sabbath, I think there might be three things that I’d want to share.
The first is that the Sabbath isn’t a tradition just observed in the church; it’s something that God has given us in his word. I would want to make that case so that they wouldn’t take it on my word, but they would take it from God’s word. I want them to follow what the word of God says.

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