Jesus is coming back — not to whisk us away to some cloudy realm, but to bring heaven to earth, and to make the reign and rule of God permanent on this planet.

There is a popular image of heaven as a place of celestial bliss — with clouds, angels, harps and chubby babies. But that’s not how the Bible depicts heaven at all. In Scripture, heaven is actually described as a new earth. Revelation in particular paints a picture of heaven that includes a city, a river, trees, feasting, fellowship and joy. It all sounds very earthy.
The disciples seem to have had the same kind of picture. In particular, they expected the Messiah to be a political ruler; a king who reigns in the physical land of Israel. In fact, one of the reasons many Jews of the time rejected Jesus is because He just didn’t fit that description.
It is of course true that Jesus declared, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). As His ministry continued, it became increasingly clear that Jesus had not come with the intention of setting up a political dominion in this outpost of the Roman Empire. This serves as a reminder to us today that while political engagement is important for the Christian, it is not the means by which God will usher in His kingdom — not in the present age, at least.
Nevertheless, the disciples and other first-century Jews were not altogether wrong in expecting a political ruler. Israel’s prophets had long promised that God would raise up a redeemer from the line of David who would bring physical deliverance from their Gentile enemies, restore the Jewish temple, and reestablish the kingdom rule of David. If you doubt this, take a look at Isaiah 9:6-7; Isaiah 11:1-2, and Jeremiah 23:5.
First-century Jews had not misinterpreted these Scriptures — but they had missed other ones. Their eyes were shut to the fact that the Messiah would first come as a suffering servant.
Read More

Hard conversations are not easy and certainly take thoughtful consideration to be meaningful and effective. Understanding the art and science of having hard conversations begins with the conviction and motivation to have it in the first place.

One of the most common crossroads I encounter when counseling those dealing with anticipating a hard conversation is helping them “want to want” to have the conversation. Of course, I empathize—you would have to be spiritually masochistic to enjoy the possibility of an uncomfortable conversation. Hard conversations range the spectrum from awkward moments to unwelcomed confrontations. However, there is a crossroad of conviction that we must navigate to compel ourselves to pursue something unlovely with genuine love.[1] Let’s consider a few of the compelling reasons and practical considerations for having the hard conversation.
1. We Have a Responsibility to One Another (1 Cor. 12:16; Heb. 3:12-14)
A foundational motivation towards having a hard conversation is a sincere concern about the wellbeing of our brothers and sisters in Christ. The belonging we share in Christ compels our love to move towards those in need of insight or care. These moments are not always welcomed or easy. The difference between immaturity and immorality can be difficult to discern in understanding people and their problems. The motivation to move toward one another is a familial-based motivation moving beyond friendship and collegial niceties. Belonging that is mutually dependent and interrelated is the blessing of the redeemed household of God.
2. We Have the Ability to Live in the Truth (Col. 3:1-4, 16-17; Rom. 12:1-3)
The defining characteristic of the transformational work of the gospel is our ability to live in the truth. Our hearts are prone to deception because of our sin, but the renewing of our minds, according to the Word and the Spirt, brings the capacity to both understand and live in the truth. The recognition of reality is a sobering task, but the gospel reframes and always gives pathways with eternal hope. Living in the truth of the gospel (as applied to the realities of the human experience) does not remove the harsh realities of life. Still, it does categorically and practically give perspective and pathways to living rightly with confidence and hope. Having a hard conversation is not simply addressing hardships but pursuing hope and help to live rightly in the truth.
3. We Have a Calling of Gospel Witness (1 John 4:11-12; John 13:35)
How we live matters. The truth of Scripture is visible not only in the pages of God’s Word but in the actions of our lives. Pursuing one another through the challenges of hard conversations to live rightly before God and others is counter-cultural. When the church displays unity within an immense diversity of cultures, personalities, and life experiences, it proclaims the transforming work of our reconciliation with God and one another. Moving towards one another through hard conversations is motivated not primarily by interpersonal health but the testimony of the gospel.
Read More

Written by R.C. Sproul |
Friday, August 27, 2021
Creedal statements are an attempt to show a coherent and unified understanding of the whole scope of Scripture. In that sense, they are brief statements of what we historically have called “systematic theology.” The idea of systematic theology assumes that everything that God says is coherent and not contradictory. 

The Latin word credo means simply “I believe.” It represents the first word of the Apostles’ Creed. Throughout church history it has been necessary for the church to adopt and embrace creedal statements to clarify the Christian faith and to distinguish true content from error and false representations of the faith. Such creeds are distinguished from Scripture in that Scripture is norma normans (“the rule that rules”), while the creeds are norma normata (“a rule that is ruled”).
Historically, Christian creeds have included everything from brief affirmations to comprehensive statements. The earliest Christian creed is found in the New Testament, which declares, “Jesus is Lord.” The New Testament makes a somewhat cryptic statement about this affirmation, namely, that no one can make the statement except by the Holy Spirit. What are we to understand by this? On the one hand, the New Testament tells us that people can honor God with their lips while their hearts are far from Him. That is to say, people can recite creeds and make definitive affirmations of faith without truly believing those affirmations. So, then, why would the New Testament say that no one can make this confession save by the Holy Spirit? Perhaps it was because of the cost associated with making that creedal statement in the context of ancient Rome.
The loyalty oath required by Roman citizens to demonstrate their allegiance to the empire in general and to the emperor in particular was to say publicly, “Kaisar Kurios,” that is, “Caesar is lord.” In the first-century church, Christians bent over backward to be obedient to civil magistrates, including the oppressive measures of Caesar, and yet, when it came to making the public affirmation that Caesar is lord, Christians could not do so in good conscience. As a substitute for the phrase, “Caesar is lord,” the early Christians made their affirmation by saying, “Jesus is Lord.” To do that was to provoke the wrath of the Roman government, and in many cases, it cost the Christian his life.
Read More

A compassionate approach to trauma requires that individuals ought to be able to access therapy, in order to explore the relationship of these adverse experiences to their sexuality.

Currently a bill to ban “conversion therapy” is being considered in the Canadian Senate (Bill C-8), as well as in multiple states in the US. Unfortunately, in most cases there is tremendous ambiguity about which practices and services are being prohibited, which obfuscates a multitude of problems: the endangerment of previously established legal rights for individuals to choose health treatments, the removal of the professional autonomy of doctors in providing treatment according to their expertise, the question of whether “sexual orientation” includes pedophilia, and the controversy surrounding medical transition for gender identity.
This last concern relates to the irony that helping children become comfortable with their natal sex would be banned in favor of experimental drug treatments and surgeries that lead to sterilization and have not been shown to alleviate psychological distress long-term. More ironic yet, and tragically so, is the fact that the studies indicate that, for the majority of children for whom their gender dysphoria remits, roughly half are same-sex-attracted. This fact leads to the stunning conclusion that a ban on conversion therapy for transgender youth assures the worst kind of conversion therapy for same-sex-attracted youth—a kind of gay eugenics. Sadly, few politicians have read the primary research, and the prevailing narrative in the mass media is that it is social “justice” to ban conversion therapy.
Although it is the disastrous consequences of a conversion therapy ban for gender identity that have generated the most concern, there is also an important argument to be made against bans from the standpoint of compassionate counseling for those who have faced childhood trauma. Research over the last decade has solidified the finding that sexual minorities are far more likely to have faced adverse experiences during childhood. This is not a completely new finding, as researchers have known for some time that gay men, in particular, are far more likely than heterosexual men to have been sexually assaulted as children or adolescents. Two theories have been put forward to explain this finding. It has been suggested, firstly, that proto-homosexual children may be particularly vulnerable to predators because of their gender non-conformity. This non-conformity may mark children as outsiders among their peers or family members, and may be noticed by abusers who would take advantage of it. The second theory, one that is held by a minority of therapists and researchers, is that sexual abuse may at times be a confusing or causal mechanism in same-sex attraction, behavior, or identity. Richard Gartner writes that an abused boy,
may fear that he somehow invited the abuse and therefore is “really” interested in men. Or he may wonder why he was chosen by a man as a sexual target, and whether having been chosen means he is “truly homosexual.” Whether he is aroused or not during the abuse, he may fearfully assume he is “really” gay.
As the literature has expanded past the particular category of childhood sexual abuse, however, it has become a well-replicated finding that almost all categories of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are elevated for sexual minorities, and in particular for those who identify as bisexual. For instance, in one of the largest studies to date, the researchers found that a wide range of ACEs, from parental divorce to physical abuse, were elevated for both bisexuals and homosexuals when compared to heterosexuals.
What is particularly relevant for considering bans on treatments of sexual minorities, however, is that some of these adverse childhood experiences cannot be associated with the prevailing minority-stress theory. The minority-stress theory posits that sexual minorities face both overt victimization as well as more subtle structural stigma in society, and that these experiences are responsible for the elevated rates of mental disorder, substance abuse, and physical illness found in this population.
Read More

In the Beginning was a delight to read – personally it brought me back to many of the OT lectures I enjoyed from Dr. Van Dam in my seminary years.  While I found it enjoyable, there may be others who will find it tough-going at times.  It’s not highly technical, but in places Van Dam does go academic. 

Dr. C. Van Dam begins his latest book by explicitly laying out his presuppositions.  He’s upfront about his non-negotiable assumptions and biases.  As I review his book, it’s appropriate that I share mine too.  I share his presuppositions about Scripture as the trustworthy Word of God, but I also bring a personal bias to the table.  Back in the day, Van Dam was my Old Testament professor at the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary.  I had an affectionate nickname for him in view of his ability to put the smack-down on unbelieving or shoddy scholarship:  “Wham-Bam-Van-Dam.”  This was always said with the greatest admiration for Dr. Van Dam.  As a seminary professor he was nothing if not thorough and careful.
This new book exhibits that same kind of comprehensive and precise approach to the two opening chapters of Scripture.  Van Dam leaves no stone unturned.  In the Beginning is an exhaustive treatment not only of the meaning of these two chapters, but also the various challenges that have been raised in Old Testament scholarship regarding them.  What you’re looking at here is not just a commentary on Genesis 1-2, but far more.
Over the last decade or so John Walton has become well-known for his views on the early chapters of Genesis.  Walton argues that we often misunderstand Genesis 1-2 because we don’t take into account the ancient Near Eastern context of these chapters.  Once we do that, says Walton, then we can see that Genesis 1-2 was never meant to be taken literally as history.  The history can then be filled in with what science teaches us, including what science says about human origins.  In chapter 2 of In the Beginning, Van Dam discusses Walton’s views at length and explains how and where they fail to do justice to the character of Scripture as the Word of God.  In my view this is the most important chapter of the book.
To whet your appetite further, let me share a selection of questions that Dr. Van Dam answers elsewhere in the book:

Can new scientific data be regarded as general revelation given by God?
What is the relationship of Scripture to science?  Is Scripture a scientific textbook?

Read More

A bulk of the book is dedicated to “performing” theological triage—particularly in the chapters dedicated to second-and-third-rank issues. Drawing on his journey through various theological positions, Ortlund models what it means to define the faith from a posture of humility.

Gavin Ortlund wants to make you a better boxer—or at least help you pick better fights.
He opens his book with an observation about fighting: “It is easy to lose your balance when you’re standing on one foot. The strongest posture is one of balance between both feet: one of poise. That’s why boxers put so much care into their footwork.”[1]
Perhaps no other phrase embodies the task of Ortlund’s Finding the Right Hills to Die On than that of “theological poise,” and because of this, I think this little book needs to be bumped up to the top of your reading list. If it hasn’t come for your church yet, it’s likely on the way: doctrinal division lurks around the corner, and you’d be well-served to equip yourself with theological poise. Ortlund helps us do so.
A Tale of Two Impulses: Sectarianism and Minimalism
Finding the Right Hills to Die On begins with a section discussing the dangers of what Ortlund calls “sectarianism” and “minimalism.” Don’t get caught up in the vocabulary. What is suggested here is simple: doctrine is something we should divide over when appropriate; however, the church’s foundational call is to unity and peace with one another, secured by the blood of Christ. We should avoid both unnecessary division and unnecessary indifference.
Though a wide survey of healthy churches may find strong disagreements, “our love of theology should never exceed our love of real people, and therefore we must learn to love people amid our theological disagreements.”[2] Even in instances where healthy disagreement occurs, we must remember that our primary interlocutors are not flesh and blood but the cosmic powers over this present darkness, as Paul writes in Ephesians 6.
Again, it’s about poise. Avoiding sectarianism and minimalism is not about avoiding disagreements altogether—it’s about understanding when and how we ought to disagree.
But if only some hills are worth dying on, how can we know we’ve chosen the right ones?
Read More

That narrative still has some unfolding to do, but in the meantime we can prepare ourselves for its eventualities, first by deeply understanding the claims it is making, second by living blameless lives among our colleagues and friends, and third, by constantly showcasing Jesus as the one who did no harm to anyone.  And fourthly, and perhaps most confronting, by wearing the scorn and shame in the way he did, even though he did no harm. 

So you finally convince your work colleague Ethan to come to an apologetics talk on Friday night. You’ve been friends for a while, and you’ve had the chance to chat about spiritual matters. He’s at a bit of a loose end, having been through a relationship break-up. Following a coffee after work one evening, you strike up the courage to ask him along. People are often open after difficult times, right? Besides you’d love for Ethan to hear about how Christianity is still plausible in this modern age. After all, he’s familiar with the visiting speaker, who is a well-known apologist, because you’ve shared some Youtube clips with him that were great conversation starters across the cubicle.
So on the night you introduce Ethan to some friends, grab a quick bite beforehand with them all (they clicked well with Ethan, from what you could see), then you head to the talk.
The lecture title is “Can you be happy without God?” It’s sharp, punchy, funny and emotionally on the money. You glance sideways from time to time and Ethan seems to be laughing at all the right spots.
The QandA after is a bit more intense and at one stage the speaker is quizzed about homosexuality, with a questioner pushing hard on why God is even bothered about who we sleep with. The speaker handles it well, giving a big picture answer, using Romans 1 as a launch pad. He gets a round of applause from some in the crowd, which seems a little strange, and one brave, lonesome cat-call. The moment passes, and afterwards you try to pick how Ethan might have felt about the talk, but he says he isn’t up for going out for coffee with the group, and heads home early. Oh well, you can speak on Monday at work.
On Monday at work, however, things seem strained. More than strained. Ethan brushes off your approaches to talk about the event. In fact he seems distracted and somewhat distant. It’s only on Tuesday that things heat up. Turns out he’s asked to shift desks, to the other side of the office. He avoids eye contact, and is too busy to hang out at lunch. You notice the HR representative chatting with him later that afternoon. You go home wondering what has happened.
It’s only on Wednesday, when you are called into the HR department, and your supervisor is sitting there that it clicks. After exchanging pleasantries the supervisor starts the real conversation:
“We just wanted to have a chat with you, to get your side of what might have happened.”
 “Happened? About what?”
 “Just some concerns we have about how you and Ethan might be able to continue working on the same project as we move forward.”
“Why wouldn’t we?  Is there something wrong with our work? Has Ethan got a problem with the way I work?”
 “Well not exactly about the way you work. He’s come to us requesting he move teams. He’s a bit upset about that Christian meeting you took him along to on Friday night. I know it’s in your own time, but we’re committed to making the work space a safe place for everyone, whatever their views and opinions. We want to discuss with you whether it was appropriate to ask a work colleague to an event like that.”
 “Really. Ethan hasn’t said to me. Besides that’s not a work issue, it was a private event.”
 “Well it’s become a work issue now, and we have to resolve it for the sake of good relationships in the office. Perhaps it would be helpful if you began by explaining why you invited Ethan to something that he found a little bit triggering.”
 You can see where this conversation is going. And if you think that could never happen, then you’re actually behind the eight ball already. Companies and civil service departments across the Western world are already taking measures to ensure that work colleagues cannot put other work colleagues in so called “harm’s way” when it comes to non-working hours functions. And in our current climate harm includes any event or public that could appear coercive around matters of sexuality, or that speaks of sexual diversity as something less than positive.
Read More

The Christian family, Christian church, and Christian school must not assume that the next generations will accept the conclusions that seem so obvious to older generations. We must talk about the things our kids are already talking about among themselves. We must disciple. We must be countercultural. We must prepare them to love and teach them what biblical love really means. We must pass on the right beliefs and the right reasons for those beliefs.

I love the Olympics. I got up early and stayed up late to watch whatever I could in real time. As a family, we figured out the various NBC platforms and turned on something from the Olympics almost all the time for two weeks. I’d put our knowledge of Olympic swimming and (especially) track and field up against almost anyone. I’m a big fan of the Olympics.
But something was different this time around. And judging from conversations with many others, I’m not the only one who noticed.
You couldn’t watch two weeks of the Olympics—or at times, even two minutes—without being catechized in the inviolable truths of the sexual revolution. Earlier in the summer, I watched parts of the Euro, and you would have thought the whole event was a commercial for rainbow flags. And yet, the packaging of the Olympics was even more deliberate. Every day we were taught to celebrate men weightlifting as women or to smile as a male diver talked about his husband. Every commercial break was sure to feature a same-sex couple, a man putting on makeup, or a generic ode to expressive individualism. And of course, Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird were nearly ubiquitous. If America used to be about motherhood and apple pie, it’s now about birthing persons and lesbian soccer stars hawking Subway sandwiches.
Some will object at this point that the last paragraph is filled with a toxic mix of homophobia, heteronormativity, cisgender privilege and a host of other terms that were virtually unknown until five minutes ago. But those labels are not arguments against biblical sexual morality so much as they represent powerful assumptions that no decent person could possibly believe that homosexuality is sinful behavior, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that switching genders is a sign of confusion more than courage. What NBC presented as heroic and wonderful was considered wrong and troublesome by almost everyone in the Christian West for 2,000 years.
Read More

The fact that this church exists at all is proof that God chooses foolish things over wise things, so that nobody might boast before him. You are not wise, righteous, holy and redeemed because of your backgrounds, Paul points out to them, but because you are “in Christ Jesus”. You were foolish people who heard a foolish message preached in a foolish way—and God has demonstrated his wisdom in you so powerfully that the smartest people on earth are left scratching their heads and wondering how he did it. So if you’re going to boast about anything, you should boast in the Lord.

In our preaching and witnessing, our message and our very existence show we are foolish, weak and lowly. So if we are going to blow our trumpets about anything, it had better not be ourselves or any human leaders. Rather, “let the one who boasts boast in the Lord” (1:31).
Paul writes about this in his first letter to the Corinthians, skewering human pride. He does this by drawing a series of contrasts—wise/foolish, strong/weak, influential/ lowly—and showing how the gospel puts us on the “wrong” side of all of them.
Foolish method
Christian preaching is fundamentally foolish, at least in the eyes of the world. The world, in Paul’s day, had all sorts of wonderful techniques to make its messages more acceptable: wisdom, eloquence, intelligence, legal reasoning, philosophy.
Our generation has added the power of advertising, popular music, newspapers, movies, websites and television shows which push a particular vision of the true, the good or the beautiful, and by presenting it well make it seem more plausible. Meanwhile the church is stuck with a method that looked foolish in ancient Corinth and looks even more foolish now: preaching. Not with tricks or stunts. Not with high-budget special effects or virtual-reality immersive experiences. Not with wisdom or eloquence, “lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power”. Just proclaiming what God has done in Christ and trusting that God will use that message to turn people’s lives the right way up.
Hopefully this is obvious, but this is not an argument for long, dull, rambling, monotone, unimaginative sermons. I have sat through a few of those, and they have nothing to do with Paul’s point here. In this very letter, Paul proves himself a master of punchy, witty, direct, well-illustrated, concise, rhetorical, funny and incisive communication (and I spend a good deal of my time trying to communicate like that myself).
Read More

Understanding God as Beauty, the most beautiful and the One against whom we define all other beauties, allows our experiences of beauty here in this world to draw us towards him. 

When writing or speaking about beauty, one of the first major hurdles to arise is a definition. What is beauty? While most people would say that they know it when they see it, articulating exactly what it is, and what it is not, is a challenge. Philosophers, theologians, and artists have argued about beauty’s definition for millenia, and it would be arrogant to think that what I have to say will end the discussion.
Still, we need to work towards something. Many go back to Plato, and his claim that beauty is objective, and that it has to do with symmetry, order, balance, and proportion. Others, particularly in modern and postmodern Western culture, would argue that beauty is subjective—it depends on your perspective, tastes, experiences, and that there isn’t one true definition for all people and all time.
But perhaps we are asking the wrong question. What if, instead of asking, “what is beauty?” we asked, “who is beauty?”
Beauty has a Name
Augustine of Hippo, an African bishop and theologian living in the fourth century, answers this question. In one of the most famous lines in his memoir of conversion, he laments, “Belatedly I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved you.” Here, Augustine addresses God, and he does so by calling God “Beauty.”
He’s in good company: his words echo that of David and Moses. In Psalm 27, David declares that he seeks one thing: “that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple” (27:4, NIV). Later, in Psalm 29, he instructs the people to “worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness” (29:2, KJV). Moses, too, identifies God as beautiful in his benediction to Psalm 90: “let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us” (90:17, KJV).[1] David and Moses agree: the Lord is beautiful.
If the Lord is beautiful, then it follows that he is the most beautiful. As Anselm argues, “whatever good thing the supreme Nature is, it is in the highest degree. It is, therefore,…supreme Beauty…” Jonathan Edwards goes further, arguing not only that “as God is infinitely the greatest Being, so is allowed to be infinitely the most beautiful and excellent” but that because of this, “all the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation is but the reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory; God…is the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty.”
Our Beautiful God
We have identified, now, not simply an idea of beauty, but beauty itself. God, in his attributes and actions, grounds all definitions of beauty. Whether beautiful in small measure or great, something or someone may only be said to be beautiful if it is consonant in some way with who God is.
Read More