“Word and sacrament piety” is perhaps an expression with which you are unfamiliar. It is a shorthand way of saying that the way God has ordained to work in the lives of his people is through the ministry of the Word, chiefly . . . Continue reading →
Under the types and shadows of the Old Testament, before the death of Christ, circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant promise to be a God to believers and to their children. That bloody sign and seal has been replaced by a . . . Continue reading →
Our older theologians used to say that we are justified in order that we might be sanctified.1 The order in that expression was intentional. Before the Reformation many in the church had come to reverse justification and sanctification. Continue reading →
In the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer every Christian prays, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10). This is an implicit recognition that we do not presently live in heaven. Continue reading →
It is a great temptation to think that the same God who created and sustains us, who so loved us that he gave his only begotten Son for us (John 3:16), who granted to us new life and true faith, who has . . . Continue reading →