To be double-minded is to break the first great command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37–38). The double-minded aren’t fully committed to God; they don’t truly love him with their whole selves.We strive for perfection in our spiritual disciplines. Doesn’t Jesus himself say, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48)? The book of James appears to support this line of thinking when it states that an individual must pray “in faith, with no doubting,” because a “double-minded man” is “unstable in all his ways” (James 1:6–8).
Portions of James’s letter are difficult to understand, and what he says about prayer appears unattainable. Do any of us truly possess perfect faith when we pray? James states that if we have doubts in our prayer life, we shouldn’t expect to “receive anything from the Lord” (v. 7).
To answer this pressing question requires us to identify the double-minded person. Once we understand who James has in view, then we can better understand what James says about prayer.
Who Are the Double-Minded?
James is the only New Testament writer to use the terminology “double-minded” (dipsychos), and he doesn’t come right out and define the term. So we must determine what it means from the context of James and by comparing his language to similar writings of his era.
It could be that the double-minded are immature believers—a view that would fit with James’s emphasis on the need to press on to maturity in our faith (1:4; 3:2). If so, the double-minded are those not yet mature in their faith. This is possible.
A better option is to understand the double-minded as hypocrites who outwardly behave as Christians but inwardly live as unbelievers. The double-minded in James are analogous to the “double-hearted” in the Psalms, who are the enemies of God’s people (see Ps. 12:2). In Psalm 119:113, the psalmist declares his love for God’s law in contrast to the “double-minded” person. Though James’s word for “double-minded” isn’t specifically used in the Psalms, the concept does seem to be there to describe those not truly committed to the Lord.
Another similar concept is “double-tongued,” an idea found in noncanonical Jewish literature (Sirach 5:9) and in the New Testament (1 Tim. 3:8). The double-tongued are fundamentally divided in the ways they use their tongues (see James 3:9).
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The power[14] comes from the gospel message itself, not any manmade formulations. Hence Paul’s consistent emphasis on the content of his message: “We preach Christ” (1 Cor. 1:23). “Him we proclaim” (Col. 1:28). “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5). “To me . . . this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8).[15] The savior is Christ, not eloquence.

Moses said to the Lord, ‘Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent…I am slow of speech and of tongue.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Who has made man’s mouth? … Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak…’ (Ex. 4:10-12, cf. Jer. 1:6-9)
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
(1 Cor. 1:17; cf. 2 Cor. 10:10).
Moses, the greatest prophet in the Old Testament, and Paul, the greatest apostle in the New Testament, were unparalleled spokesmen of God. Both of them had something to say about eloquence. Moses, at the beginning of his calling, saw his lack of an eloquent tongue as a hindrance for God’s commission to him.[1] Paul throughout his ministry saw a form of human eloquence (“cleverness in speaking”[2]) as a hinderance to the power of his message.[3] However, both men exhibited an exceptional from of eloquence in their preaching, teaching and writing ministries. Moses is “the first preacher whose ministry is described for us”[4] in the Scripture. At the last part of his ministry life, the Scripture records for us three of his unequalled sermons filled with exposition, exhortation and application (Deut. 1:5ff; 5:1-21; 29).[5] Throughout the second half of the book of Acts, we meet with Paul the effective preacher (Acts 13:16-47; 17:22-31; 20:18-35; 22:1-12; 24:10-21; 26:1-29). In addition, one cannot mention Paul’s comments on eloquence without thinking of the description of his co-laborer Apollos who is described as “an eloquent man (λόγιος) competent in the Scriptures” (Acts 18:24). Yet, as Herman Bavinck wisely affirms, the prophets and the apostles read nothing of the works of rhetoric (i.e., Cicero or Quintilian) yet they were eloquent. However, their eloquence was “not by their own practice, but by divine gift… not by human calling, but by the power of divine right. Eloquence for them was not design but nature, a gift rather than art.”[6]
How then can we understand Paul’s comment that he desired “to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power”? How are we to make from the Scripture’s favorable description of Apollos as “an eloquent man”? How can rhetoric or eloquence[7] play the role of servant not master in preaching? Is eloquence only a gift, or is it an art as well? How can the preacher’s eloquence go hand in hand with a genuine dependence on the Spirit? This series of articles attempt to discuss these questions and present some practical ways eloquence can be used in the service of the Gospel’s preaching.
Man Speaks because God Speaks
“In the beginning was the Word…” (Jh. 1.1)
          Before diving into the topic of eloquence it is suitable to first consider the truth that it presupposes: the ability of humans to speak. It is part of being created in the image of God that humans are able to communicate with language (Gen. 1:26-27). God created the world by his Word. Speech is one of the first actions attributed to God in Scripture (1:1-3). The first activity attributed to created man is also the powerful speech by which he named the animals (2:20). Animals cannot speak and cannot name themselves. “Language is the Rubicon between the animal and the human.”[8] However, naming the animals was just the beginning of man’s experience of how powerfully his speech as image bearer can reflect God. When Eve was created, Adam celebrated her as God’s gift by exceptionally eloquent poetry (2:23). In the fall, Adam’s God honoring eloquence was degraded (3:10-13). Yet, it is God’s desire that all who are redeemed in Christ, the logos, reflect a redeemed speech (Col. 4:6; 3:16; Eccl. 10:12). If this is the case for all God’s redeemed, how much more would it be for the tongues of the men that God will graciously grant the honor of being his spokesmen, the preachers?[9]
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Our worship should correspond to the God we are worshipping.
The right manner of worshipping God is so as our worship carries the stamp of His image on it, such that it is like a mirror in which we may behold God’s nature and properties.
What He Himself is, that is what He wants to be acknowledged to be, and I think it would really be true worship if it had engraved on it the name of the true and living God, and if it proclaimed of itself: God is, and He is a rewarder of them that seek Him diligently.
Most part of our service speaks of an unknown God. Its inscription is, “To the unknown God.” There is so little reverence, or love, or fear, or knowledge in it, that it’s as if we did not worship the true God at all, but an idol. I fear that our worship is sometimes such that no one could conclude from it that it had any relation to the true God!
But this is true worship, when it renders back to God His own image and name. In water from a pure and clean fountain, you may see your reflection distinctly, but a troubled or muddy water, he cannot see himself. So, pure worship is worship which receives and reflects the pure image of God, but impure and unclean worship cannot receive it and retain it.
Christians, please consider this, for the Father seeks a certain kind of worshipper —and why? Because in them He finds Himself (so to speak) — His own image and superscription is on them, His mercy is engraved on their faith and confidence, His majesty and power are stamped on their humility and reverence, His goodness is to be read on the soul’s rejoicing, His greatness and justice in the soul’s trembling.
O, how little true worship there is, even among them whom the Father has sought out to make true worshippers! We stay at the first principles of religion, and do not go on to build on the foundation. Sometimes our worship has a stamp of God’s holiness and justice, in the fear and terror of such a majesty which makes us tremble before Him — but where is the stamp of His mercy and grace which should be written in our faith and rejoicing? Tremble and fear indeed, yet rejoice with trembling, because there is mercy with Him. Sometimes there is rejoicing and quietness in the soul, but it quickly degenerates into carnal confidence, and makes the soul turn grace into wantonness, and think of itself above what is right, because it is not counterpoised with the sense of His holiness and justice.
O, to have these jointly written on the heart in worship — fear, and reverence, and confidence, and humility, and faith! That is a rare thing. It is a divine composition and temper of spirit that makes a divine soul. For the most part, our worship reflects nothing of God, neither His power, nor His mercy and grace, nor His holiness and justice, nor His majesty and glory. A complacent, faint, formal way, void of reverence, of humility, of fervency, and of faith!
I beseech you, let us consider, as before the Lord, how much effort and time we lose, and how we please no one but ourselves, and profit no one at all! Stir up yourselves as in His sight! For it is the fixed and constant meditation of God and His glorious properties that will beget the resemblance there should be between our worship, and the God whom we worship, and imprint His image on it. Then it would please Him, and profit you, and edify others.
Our worship should be spiritual.
Our worship must have the stamp of God’s spiritual nature, and be conformed to it in some measure, else it cannot please him.

By default, we tend to see the world around us as unfathered. We live our waking days in the dreamland of God’s absence. And that’s hard on us, isn’t it? It’s hard to live with a lie. It’s hard to walk through life as if God hasn’t fathered-forth the beauty around us—because he has. I talk about the great lie from the serpent in a book that encourages us to embrace the truth of God’s presence. 

One of my favorite poems (from one of my favorite poets) is “Pied Beauty” by Gerald Manley Hopkins.
Glory be to God for dappled things –For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:Praise him.
Look at that last line: “He fathers-forth . . .” It’s a beautiful expression. The skies, the brinded cows, the moles and trout, the finches, and fallowed fields—all of these things are “fathered-forth.”

God’s holiness is always wrapped up in his fatherly care—a mysterious love that goes before us and beyond us.

This brings a whole new perspective to that initial sentence from the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name” (Matt. 6:9). Why hallowed? Because his fatherly hand touches everything. Because he fathers-forth the entire universe without being seen. Because his wildly creative and loving care is imprinted on mussel shells and magpie nests. God’s holiness is always wrapped up in his fatherly care—a mysterious love that goes before us and beyond us.
A Fathered Place
Recently, the same wording came up in a passage I read from Tim Chester (Enjoying God). “We live in a fathered world,” he wrote.
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God offered His Son Christ as a sacrifice for His people. There is a real heaven and there is a real hell. We don’t believe in Christ only because we’re scared of hell, but rather because He saved us from it, from our sin and from wrath. Therefore, what do we do? Respond to Him in love and affection, saying, “Thank you, my Savior, Lord, and Master. You gave me Your life and I give you mine.”

As human beings, we’re really good at creating narratives that excuse us from doctrines or beliefs that make us uncomfortable. Hell definitely makes people uncomfortable. The idea that we would be eternally separated from God and receive active judgment in a place of burning and gnashing of teeth makes people want to run from that truth. But we can’t run from this truth because the Bible teaches about hell. No matter what somebody tells you or what ideas they come up with, you cannot remove the doctrine of hell from a biblical Christian worldview.
Let’s look at Revelation and then work our way backward. One of the first passages that comes to mind is toward the end of the book. Revelation 20:14-15 says, “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” Another passage that comes to mind in the gospel of Mark. In Mark 9:43, Jesus says, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire.”
Hell is real and it’s a final and eternal judgment.
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We interpret and apply Scripture based on the words of the text as well as on the inescapable principles and necessary applications of the text. This is one of the most important hermeneutical principles for Christian life and doctrine, and it is precisely how we see Jesus Christ and the biblical authors approaching Scripture. 

One of the most important yet often most neglected fields of study in the church is hermeneutics, or the study of the interpretation of literary texts. As Christians, we are focused especially on the proper interpretation of sacred Scripture, for the lack of a sound, consistently applied hermeneutic results in poor interpretations and applications of Scripture. Many people in the church today base their hermeneutics on their feelings or impressions. As an example of this, small-group Bible studies often ask, “What does this verse mean to you?” rather than the more appropriate question, “What does the author of this verse mean?”
Hermeneutics must be based on established principles, not pragmatics or emotions. To that end, the pastors who drafted the Westminster Standards provided the church with the most concise and helpful summary of Scripture and its interpretation ever formulated. Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith is perhaps the most important.
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They are sneaky, sensual, self-centered, and self-willed. While any true teacher might lapse into one or more of these sins periodically, the false teacher is consistently marked by these defects. His life and ministry are characterized by rejecting the authority of God’s Word, establishing himself as the authority, and promoting himself for his own wealth and gratification. Furthermore, these rebellious and selfish acts are done secretly to preserve the ruse of authenticity. 

To identify false teachers, we must understand that they come disguised as true followers of Christ. Exercising discernment, therefore, demands that we examine those who claim to speak God’s Word to distinguish who is true from who is false. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught us that one way we distinguish between true and false teachers is by looking at their fruits. What is the product of their lips, their lives, and their leadership? Good fruit indicates someone who is a genuine follower of Christ speaking His Word faithfully. Bad fruit, conversely, exposes someone as a false teacher.
One person present when Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount was the Apostle Peter, and he also gave instructions to help us identify deceivers in the church. Peter knew that his time remaining on this earth was short, so he felt a significant urgency in writing this letter, with the ultimate goal of preserving his readers’ faith in the truth of the gospel (2 Peter 1:12-15). However, merely giving a positive exposition of the truth was insufficient for the task. If his readers were to remain faithful to the truth as it is in Jesus, they also would need to be armed with the ability to identify and avoid false teachers who would seek to distort, pervert, and corrupt that truth. Peter, therefore, spent most of chapter two in his letter exposing the characteristics of false teachers. While we cannot cover everything Peter wrote in this chapter, let’s consider four of these destructive traits.
First, false teachers are sneaky. 2 Peter 2:1 tells us that false teachers introduce destructive heresies secretly. Like Jesus warned the disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, Peter urges his readers to realize that false teachers are deceptive by nature. They do not advertise their false teaching, and most of the time they do not place it front and center. False teachers will look for vulnerable members of the church who might be open to false teaching, and they begin to sow the seeds of their false doctrine with them first. They try to keep what they are doing under the shadow of secrecy so as not to be discovered until they have formed their own following. Another tactic they use to hide their destructive heresies is that they seek to add to the truth rather than take away from it. When Peter says that they “secretly introduce heresies,” the language used speaks of bringing something in addition to something already there. False teachers do not always speak against what is accepted as Christian doctrine, but they sometimes seek to add to what people in the church already believe. They introduce novelty that they claim will only enhance what a Christian practices. By seeking out the vulnerable and pretending to believe the same things the church believes but with a few innovations, false teachers craftily sneak in their destructive heresies, often undetected. Christians need to beware of those who innovate with God’s Word or who seek to isolate younger believers as unsuspecting targets.
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The reality of the magnitude of the devastation is shocking. It is utter devastation. You can see all the pictures and videos online, but it is completely different to drive through it, to live in it. Words cannot describe how bad it is. But the response of the Christian community, of the church, has been a beacon of light. A very large portion, from what I can tell, of the relief work has come from private, mostly faith-based organizations.

Paul Maurer was on the plane back from the Fourth Lausanne Congress in South Korea when he began getting texts from work and home: a category 4 hurricane named Helene was plowing across the eastern United States, heading right for his home and the college he leads in the Asheville area.
By the time Maurer landed Friday evening in Charlotte, North Carolina, Helene’s 140 mph winds and heavy rain had killed hundreds of people, destroyed towns, and caused landslides in multiple states.
At Montreat College, where Maurer is president, one of the small mountain streams that runs through campus had become a raging river.
“The lower level of our gym became part of the river,” he said. “Over five feet of water was running through the fitness center, the offices, and the classrooms.”
The students were safe in the dorms but didn’t have electricity or running water. Faculty and staff were at home, but Maurer didn’t know if they were OK and he couldn’t ask—there was no cell service.
“I grew up and lived in tornado areas, and I lived in California in earthquake areas, but I’ve never seen anything of this magnitude,” he said. “It is surreal.”
The Gospel Coalition asked Maurer if his faculty and staff made it, what he did with the hundreds of students still on campus, and how he saw God at work through it all.
Was anyone who worked at Montreat killed or injured?
As far as we know, no one died, and I’m not aware of any serious injuries. We have employees who lost their homes and all their earthly possessions. That is devastation, and that is real. But God protected our people.
I tried to drive home Friday evening but was stopped 20 miles from home by an interstate closure and state troopers who said there were no open roads into western North Carolina. I drove two hours back to Charlotte, where there were only a few hotel rooms left.
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Pastor 1 has rightly been defrocked. Even apart from the relationship, I think it’s hard to square his other behaviors with the requirements for pastors given in Scripture. We need to become far more serious than we have been about corruption, starting with the actual real enforcement of all the Pauline and Petrine demands for pastoral qualification. My point is not to minimize the evils of corruption, then, but rather to note that even if it sometimes seems as if corruption is the norm, there still remain many faithful pastors. 

I’m thinking a lot about three pastors this week.
Pastor 1 is in his early 70s and recently was removed from ministry due to a five-year long relationship with a woman in her 20s that was not sexual in nature, but was still a violation of the pastor’s wedding vows.
Prior to being defrocked he worked for a nonprofit that he ran and that paid him $150,000 annually with an additional $100,000 paid “by the organization or other related organizations,” according to tax filings while claiming he worked for them 40 hours a week. We can’t view his church’s financials, obviously, but one imagines the church paid him a wage and also expected that he worked 40 hours a week there—which raises the question of how a man in his 70s is logging 80 hour weeks.
It would also mean that the man was making, at minimum, $250,000 annually from ministry, if the $100,000 supplemental income on the tax form is from the church. Or it might also mean that he made $250,000 from the non-profit, with the church salary (and book royalties and speaking gigs) layered on top of that.
This, incidentally, is what Carl Trueman had in mind when he coined the term “big eva.” Trueman specifically had in view pastors who become internet brands, become largely divorced from the work of shepherding in local churches, and who become surrogate pastors for Christians who spend too much time online and too little in their local church. (This old piece from the Baylys, by the way, is helpful for learning a bit about how ministry finances often work in the evangelical world.)
Even before the inappropriate relationship was known, this first pastor had a reputation for being a rather expensive and “high-maintenance” speaker with “very, very unusual food requirements,” as one acquaintance of his put it on social media. He reportedly would demand to be taken to stores that sell thousand dollar pens on certain trips, and also had highly specific requirements regarding wardrobe, including what brands of suit he wears and even specific ties he would wear.
You know pastor 1’s name, which is why I’m not bothering to say it here. What’s worse, you probably know a number of other pastors that fit this profile. I certainly do. But if that’s all you know about American church life, you know something true, but you also know too little.
Pastor 2 is in his early to mid 60s. He recently decided to step down from his senior pastor role in a church of 250 after nearly 35 years in the church and around 30 years as the senior pastor, faithfully and quietly shepherding a congregation, preaching the Word, and administering the sacraments. In that time, he’s helped plant two churches and launch an RUF. Now one of the churches he helped plant is planting and there may be a further plant happening in the medium-term future.
During his career he has pastored his congregation through two building fires and a move after the first fire destroyed their building. He has dealt with many complicated shepherding cases in his own congregation and in the presbytery.
He has sent dozens of people to seminary over the years and is known and respected amongst staff at the seminary where he graduated and where he has sent many people as students.
He has also been instrumental in helping the presbytery become a far healthier place. He has sought to create an atmosphere of care and trust amongst the presbytery’s teaching elders and has been remarkably successful in that, insuring that the men called to ministry there all recognize one another as brothers, are all praying for each other, and trust the basic virtue, theological soundness, and good will of their fellow pastors. That sounds like it should be the norm, but in too many places it isn’t.
He has done all of this without any notable scandal in his household and while faithfully caring for his family.
He’s stepping down so that he’s able to care better for his in-laws and mother, all of whom are in their 80s or 90s and in poor health. But he’s still staying active in ministry, just in a less senior role.
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The issue arose because Greg Johnson, the Presbyterian pastor of Memorial Presbyterian in St. Louis who says he is homosexual but celibate, left the Presbyterian Church in America in 2022. Now his church wants to join the EPC. “That has stirred up all kinds of controversy because we’ve got some in the EPC that appear to be very open to bringing him into the EPC, and we’ve got other groups that are absolutely opposed to him coming into the EPC.”

A storm is brewing in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) and a “meaningful group of churches” are considering other options, according to Pastor Nate Atwood, the pastor of St. Giles Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, N.C.
Atwood has been involved in the EPC since 1988 and held several leadership roles, including serving as moderator of the General Assembly. He says there is a “crisis of confidence in the current stated clerk, moderator, and leadership team” after an overture concerning same-sex-attracted pastors never made it to the floor of the General Assembly this summer.
Now an issue involving a Pittsburgh church—Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church—is raising more questions about whether the denomination is going to follow its original vision. Beverly Heights is trying to leave the EPC following the stated process, but has clashed repeatedly with the Presbytery, culminating in a civil suit.
According to Atwood, the original vision of the EPC when it was founded in 1981 was to be a Biblical, evangelical, constitutional, and Reformed denomination.
Recent events have raised questions about several of those commitments, Atwood explained, including whether denominational leaders will follow processes outlined in the EPC Book of Order.
An overture presented unanimously by the New River Presbytery—composed of 39 churches—proposed an amendment to the denomination’s Book of Government. “Men and women who identify as homosexual, even those who identify as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy in that self-identification, are disqualified from holding office in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.”
The issue arose because Greg Johnson, the Presbyterian pastor of Memorial Presbyterian in St. Louis who says he is homosexual but celibate, left the Presbyterian Church in America in 2022.
Now his church wants to join the EPC. “That has stirred up all kinds of controversy because we’ve got some in the EPC that appear to be very open to bringing him into the EPC, and we’ve got other groups that are absolutely opposed to him coming into the EPC,” Donald Fortson, professor of church history and pastoral theology emeritus at Reformed Theological Seminary and long-time EPC member, told Christianity Today.
Normally, when an overture is presented, it goes to the permanent judicial commission (PJC) for examination to ensure it is clear and fits with the church’s constitution and its confession (the Westminster Confession of Faith.) If there is an issue with the overture, the PJC explains the issue and goes back to the presenters with a suggested cure, Atwood said.
In this instance, by a vote of 5 to 4, the PJC claimed the overture was not valid and offered no explanation or cure. Atwood called their action “high-handed and imperious” and a “catastrophic failure of their constitutional duties.”
Instead, the New River leaders, realizing their overture would not be allowed on the floor of the General Assembly for discussion and a vote, agreed to a two-year study of the issue.
Meanwhile, attention toward Beverly Heights’ departure crisis is growing. Observers, like Atwood, are wondering if the presbytery leadership will use strong arm tactics or will follow the proper constitutional protections afforded to churches in the EPC.
According to Beverly Heights Pastor Dr. Nate Devlin, the church that has been part of the EPC since 2007 began the separation process from the denomination in October 2023. An open letter explains the church’s view of events since the separation process began.
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