Once again, this is a generalisation but any casual acquaintance with the Church’s teaching and popular ministry will readily confirm this judgment. Antinomianism means against Law. Contemporary churches shun greatly that form of Christianity that draws attention to rules, precepts and commandments. In recent years I’ve heard a local Church leader say, “Christianity is not […]
Authentic religion manifests as a comprehensive way of life. Every thought, stimulating every practical expression of life in sacrificial service of our king, must be brought into conscious subjection to Jesus Christ. Thus, Paul affirms, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our […]
Of all the errors modern evangelicals indulge this is the subtlest. Word associations often expose the contours of our thinking. For example: ‘fish’… think chips; ‘salt’… think pepper; ‘bread’… think butter, etc. For most Christians ‘Christianity’ evokes the concept of ‘Church’. I’ve noticed that conversations between newly acquainted Christians quickly focuses on their respective Churches […]
This indictment requires some careful thought. Let me explain. For about a thousand years, until the Great Schism – 1054AD, the Church was formally united notwithstanding many controversies/heresies which arose (e.g. Donatism, Pelagianism, Gnosticism, Nestorianism & Marcionism, to name but a few). Those controversies were recognised as an attack on the Church’s unity and so […]
As in water face reflects face, so a man’s heart reveals the man (Pr 27:19) At the time of writing, we have just lived through three years of global tyranny which has laid bare deep-rooted corruption in most/all branches of the ‘establishment.’ Alas, the propaganda and lies of Big Gov’t and mainstream media during the […]
By this I mean its orientation is constrained primarily by feelings rather than by obedience to God’s Word. We are, of course, constitutionally created with emotional faculties. It is right and proper that our affections are exercised devotionally. The eighteenth-century theologian of revival Jonathan Edwards composed an epic dissertation proving extensively that true religion stirs […]
This complaint is metaphysical not epistemological. Ancient Gnosticsran with at least two emphases: first, that the material aspect of creation is spiritually subordinate to the invisible, non-tangible elements; second, that secret knowledge is to be acquired in order to properly comprehend ‘spiritual matters.’ My concern here is with the former – i.e., that spiritual mastery […]
Of all these indictments, this one is the most obvious. Any familiarity with the Scriptures ought to convince a fair-minded reader that God is sovereign in His creation and will not suffer the outcome of history to be marked by defeat. The entire redemptive narrative is charged with an optimistic anticipation of Christ’s victory in […]
What makes this project a little difficult is seeing the array of indictments laid out alphabetically in front of me and, a bit like the mosquito in the nudist colony, pondering which one to address next! We might well wonder how we got to such a situation. In my own personal pilgrimage over forty years […]
This indictment manifests itself in various ways, but essentially the charge here is that contemporary Christianity refuses to grow up! It settles for a form of Christianity that is puerile and simplistic. Christian bookshops (where they still exist!) are full of shallow theology significantly adrift from the great heritage of Christian scholarship that Christ’s true […]
A new Psalter for the 21st Century. The Psalms represent the Bible's own library of songs specifically written to be sung as part of private and corporate worship. It is my sincere prayer and desire that this new collection of psalms might serve to refresh, restore, challenge, encourage and edify Christians of all lands, cultures and backgrounds.
Psalter21 by Steve Layfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.psalter21.com.
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