Challenging the Status Quo (Romans 16:25-27)
After the death of the apostles, grace teachings fell into disfavor. The vast majority of teachers proclaimed that eternal salvation could be lost if the believer did not do enough good works. This lasted until the Reformation. After the Reformation, many more taught the necessity of good works from another angle. They said that if […]
Justified by Works (Proverbs 20:6-12)
In Jas 2:24, James says that a man is justified by works. He is not contradicting Paul, who says that a man is justified by faith (Rom 3:28). Paul is talking about justification before God. James is talking about justification before men. According to James, others declare a person righteous when they see his righteous […]
Does God Love the Whole World?
The word world (Greek kosmos) occurs 213 times in the NT. Calvinists have difficulty with verses like John 1:29, 3:16, and I John 2:2 because such verses indicate that Christ died for the sins of the whole world and that God loves the whole world. They have a clever way of explaining why those verses […]
Eternal Rewards in the Old Testament
One of the emphases of Free Grace Theology is the doctrine of eternal rewards. While every believer will live with Christ forever, some believers will have greater honor and privilege in the kingdom, based on what they did after believing in Jesus for eternal life. Most Christians either don’t think there will be differences among […]
The Saving Message and the Flat Earth Debate: What Should Be Our Focus?
The apostle Paul said, “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (I Cor 9:22). For example, he would sometimes take measures to show the Jewish people that he was not attacking the law of Moses when preaching about Jesus Christ (Acts 16:3; 18:18; 21:20-26). We ought […]
Why Do Preachers Want to Save Your Soul?
Preachers often talk about how many souls were saved at a recent evangelistic meeting. But is that accurate? Does the Bible speak of regeneration as the saving of one’s soul? The word soul, Greek psyche, is the basis for many words in English: psychology, psychiatry, psychic, psyche out, psychosomatic, psychotherapy, psychotic, etc. Psyche occurs 105 […]
The Keys to a Righteous Reign
All of us live under some kind of government. Though many would say it’s an impossible goal, what would it take for a government to be righteous? It starts, of course, with a righteous ruler. In the OT, that was the most important requirement for the king in Israel. He was commanded to obey the […]
What Is the Word of Christ? (Colossians 3:16)
In a recent message at church, Philippe Sterling mentioned Col 3:16. It is a famous verse. I love it. What hit me as I saw it with fresh eyes is that Paul spoke of the word of Christ, not the word of God. I thought, “Does the expression occur anywhere else? I do not think […]
Can You Live Forever?
I recently saw a news segment about a tech billionaire named Bryan Johnson. He was claiming that we can live forever. I don’t know if he believes a person can literally live forever, but he certainly thinks we can greatly extend our physical lives. I guess he believes that future advancements in science will allow […]
Did You Know That Believer’s Baptism Was a Capital Crime during the Reformation?
I’ve been reading The Pilgrim Church, by E. H. Broadbent. The book discusses church history from around AD 100 to 1900. Did you know that during the Reformation, millions of people were tortured and, if they refused to recant, were put to death for their Christian beliefs and practices?i And did you know that the […]