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Resident Aliens

By Mark Johnston

Neglected Grace

‘Grace’ is one of the most treasured words in the vocabulary of Reformed Christianity. For many, the defining contours of this framework for understanding the Bible are called ‘the doctrines of grace’. But like so many Bible words, it is often both undervalued and underappreciated – not least by those who like to use it most.

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Proof of Life

The first Letter of John, filed among the ‘General Letters’ section near the end of the New Testament is an enigmatic, but hugely significant part of the Bible. At first glance its message seems very straightforward; but on closer inspection (as I discovered recently to my chagrin when I started preachng 1John) it is incredibly complex.

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The Self Defending Bible

Yesterday I was with some fellow-ministers for our monthly fraternal. Our current focus for discussion is Tim Keller’s book on preaching and we were looking at his chapter on ‘Preaching the Word’.

 

 

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Facing Up To Death

It is the unavoidable certainty in life; but also the great taboo. In the midst of life it is never far away; but many are afraid to contemplate it. Yet we find it in Scripture: a dark thread running all the way through its message.

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Back to the Future

Thursday, October 21st was apparently ‘Back to the Future’ day – the day to which the characters played by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd were propelled forward in time in Back to the Future II exactly 30 years ago.

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The Indispensible Mark of the Church

‘What are the marks of a true church?’ is a question that has quite rightly occupied the minds of theologians through the centuries, because the history of the church is littered with many bodies that have claimed to be churches, but have so drifted from their moorings in Scripture that they are no longer genuine. But what marks should we be looking for to identify a church that is both true and faithful?

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That they May be One

If we were to ask the question, ‘Which is the most significant prayer found in the Bible?’ the answer would almost certainly be, ‘the Lord’s Prayer’ and understandably so. This was the prayer Jesus taught his disciples in response to their request, ‘Lord, teach us to pray’ and it has become the prayer that has had the widest influence on the prayer life of the church both as a set prayer and a pattern for prayer. But it is worth pausing to reflect on another prayer recorded in the New Testament. One that may not be as widely appreciated, but which certainly has a depth of significance that goes much deeper than we often realise.

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When Preachers sing the Blues

There is a subterranean dimension to being a preacher that those who are not preachers often do not see and those who are often try to keep buried. It’s the fact there is a dark side to ministering God’s word and it has a profound impact on those whose calling it is to do so.

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Reformed Snobbery

According to its introductory statement, Place for Truth is a forum for reflections on theology in its entire spectrum from biblical through to its practical expressions. In light of these parameters, I did wonder whether or not this particular reflection belongs here, or perhaps somewhere else. But, on balance, I think there is a place for it on the grounds that our theology is not defined merely by what it articulates, but how it shapes us. How we wear our theology says a lot about how well we have grasped it and to what extent it has grasped us.

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When Tradition becomes an ‘ism’

Too often ‘tradition’ has become a red flag word to the ears of evangelical Protestants. Especially when it is used in relation to ‘Scripture’ in the same sentence. The reason for this, of course, is the way in which the Roman Catholic Church throughout its history has subordinated the authority of the latter to the former, thus making the Sacred Magisterium of the church the supreme rule of faith and practice for professing Christians.

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The Missing Link of Preaching

There is more to being a preacher than preachers often realise. Biblically speaking it is the primary means by which God’s truth revealed in Scripture is to be propagated, not just to the church, but also throughout the world; but for it to be effective, we need to appreciate its twofold dynamic.

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The ‘Vulgar Language’ Principle

Almost from the very first time I read the Westminster Confession of Faith I remember being struck by its choice of words to describe the character of Bible translations. It says they should be in ‘the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come’ (WCF 1.8).

 
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The Fear of the Lord

Given the frequency with which ‘the fear of the LORD’, or one of its variants, is mentioned in the Bible, it is more than a little unusual that so little seems to be said about it in the church today.

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Serve the King of Babylon and Live

Democracy is a wonderful thing; but it has a major Achilles’ Heel: the voters of which it is comprised. When the majority of the Demos wants something that is inherently wrong, nothing can stop them getting what it desires.

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Faith and New Perspective

‘New Perspective’ has become something of a red flag in many Christian circles because of its associations with the so-called ‘New Perspective on Paul’. But if we allow one dubious doctrine linked to contaminate a phrase – however bad the guilt by association may be – we end up consigning a perfectly good expression to the garbage heap for no good reason. So, as we continue our mini-study of saving faith as it is examined in Psalm 73, let me make the argument that the essence of genuine faith is the fact it gives an altogether ‘new’ perspective on everything for those who exercise it. Or, to refer to the section from the Westminster Confession’s chapter on ‘Saving Faith’ cited in my previous post, faith that is genuine always ‘gets the victory’. But how does this come out in what the psalmist says in this important psalm?

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Faith on the Edge of Reason

In its definition of ‘Saving Faith’ the Westminster Confession of Faith enters a very significant caveat that is all too often overlooked. Namely, ‘This faith is different in degrees, weak or strong; may be often and many ways assailed, and weakened, but gets the victory: growing up in many to the attainment of a full assurance, through Christ, who is both the author and finisher of our faith’. Its inclusion is important, not just as a statement of theological fact, but in terms of its pastoral relevance to many true believers whose faith is in crisis.

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The Heartbeat of Reformed Christianity

What does it mean to be ‘Reformed’? Different things for different people, to be sure! For Arminian Dispensationalists it is an anathema. For some secular observers, it is the religious equivalent of being to the right of Genghis Khan. But even for those who call themselves ‘Reformed’ there is quite a spectrum of views. From the Hasidim version of the self-styled ‘TR’ brigade at one end, through to the ‘Young Restless and Reformed’ variety at the other. As Donald MacLeod might say, ‘For a Martian, this Reformed thing may seem a tad confusing!’

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The Myth of Entitlement

We belong to a generation that is obsessed with its perceived ‘entitlements’. From human rights to civil rights, gay rights to children’s rights, the list is seemingly endless as to the permutations of personal fiefdoms people want to protect by law.

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Just as I am, without one Suit

I came across one of those stories recently that are funny, but true. It was in a church on the island of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides – probably the last place in the British Isles that still feels the lingering afterglow of a spiritual awakening that took place over half a century ago. Some who experienced what happened then are still alive and the culture on the island is still shaped to a degree by the impact it made.

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Dialogical Monologue

What makes for sermons that are well delivered and readily received? In some ways it is easier to answer that in the negative. There are may examples of Reformed and evangelical preaching that look good on paper and are beyond reproach in content, but have little or no impact on those who listen. In the words of Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson they come across as, ‘Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection, no more.’ It is not the kind of preaching that changes lives. Or, more pointedly, if they do change lives (and all preaching does that to some extent) it tends to be for the worse and not for the better.

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Diversity is not Optional

‘Diversity’ has become one of the buzzwords in evangelical Christianity in recent times. At one level, this is a good thing, but at another its trendy inclusion may come at an unwelcome price. Just as a perfectly good adjective like ‘missional’ became a cover for some less than good theology, we can only hope the word ‘diversity’ does not become an umbrella word for a sociological rather than a theological agenda.

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Satan is Alive and Well

The devil made the headlines in Britain earlier this month. On February 13th the General Synod of the Church of England genteelly voted him into retirement. In one sense it came as no surprise. The reference in its baptismal liturgy to fighting ‘manfully against the world, the flesh and the devil’ was causing increasing discomfort in Anglican circles and since July of last year it was clear it would become a matter for formal ecclesiastical debate. Even so, when the result was announced, it came as a shock, not merely to the evangelical faithful, but also to the general public.

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Graven Images and Children's Bibles

There has been a long-running debate in Christian circles generally and Reformed Christian circles in particular as to whether or not using images of Jesus in children’s Bible story books, or for illustrations in children’s talks, is a breach of the second commandment. It is a genuine debate, and, as with all debates it has two sides.

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The Day the Church Forgot

For some reason – possibly Superbowl Sunday – the past few weeks have seen a flurry of articles relating to the Sabbath being published online. As pastors across the US braced themselves for a major drop in attendance at their evening service [if they actually had one] it again raised the question of how much weight Christians attach to the Bible’s teaching about the Sabbath.

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Tempted, Tried, but Never Failing

The temptations of Christ are recorded in three out of the four Gospels, so clearly they are meant to highlight a significant component of Jesus’ mission to save. But, despite their prominence in the Gospels, they have been subjected to a range of interpretations – some of which tend towards misinterpretation.

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21st Century Challenges: Displaying Christ as the Essence of Christianity

The last of the four challenges I believe the church is facing in this century takes us to the very heart of what it means to be a Christian and what differentiates authentic Christianity from that which is mere imitation. Although the other three challenges mentioned in my previous posts may be open to debate as to whether or not they have a place in the top four, this one is not. I say that because it is the preeminent and recurring challenge the church has faced throughout its 2,000-year history and, indeed, predated it in the history of Israel as the church of God in Old Testament times.

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Inscrutable Providence

Over a year has passed since my family and I were forced to leave the US and return to Britain under rather unusual circumstances. We had moved to America in 2010 in response to a call from Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, PA for me to become its next Senior Pastor. Given that we had an adult daughter with severe learning difficulties, we had not made that move lightly, but had made extensive inquiries as to whether it would be possible for her to gain some kind of permanent resident status in the country. We were given assurances that this was the case, so we moved. As it turned out, within the first year we discovered things were not as straightforward as we had been told. And, despite the involvement of a congressman, a senator and three specialist immigration lawyers, our daughter’s application for some provision to remain in the country was denied and she was given five months to leave.

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21st Century Challenges: Not Allowing Ourselves to be Defined by Sexuality

It may seem more than a little strange to include this issue as one of the major challenges facing the church in the 21st Century, but the sad reality is that it is. The glaring evidence for this can be seen in the way the church in many parts of the world has allowed itself to be backed into a corner over this aspect of its teaching. In doing so has allowed not only its own credibility to be called into question, but that of the gospel as well.

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21st Century Challenges: Modeling What It Means to Be Human

In our first piece in this mini-series on challenges faced by the church in the 21st Century we considered the challenge of getting the gospel out to those who need to hear it. The main thrust of this is, of course, the verbal and propositional communication of God’s message of redemption through his Son. It involves the very real need for those who articulate that message having a competent grasp of the gospel themselves. Or, to use the language of Peter, always being prepared to explain the reason for the hope they have (1Pe 3.16).

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21st Century Challenges: Getting the Gospel Out

Not long ago I was asked to speak to a group of postgraduate students in Cambridge, England, on the subject of ‘Challenges facing the 21st Century Church’. Some of these men were training for the ministry, others were elders and deacons in their church, all of us wanted to get a better perspective on how the church should minister to the world of our day.

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Incarnation: Glimpsing Mystery

The season of Advent is once more upon us and the church around the world will soon be celebrating the birth of our Lord. It is a season of the year that has an interesting and uneven pedigree, not to mention a few curiosities and anomalies. Perhaps the greatest of the latter being that the focus on Bethlehem in relation to the incarnation of Christ has managed to obscure where the heart of this mystery really lies.

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This World is Not My Home

This post is the last in what the English satirist, Douglas Adams, would call ‘a trilogy in five parts’! These reflections on what it means for Christians to be ‘aliens and strangers’ on this earth were never meant to run beyond three parts, but they did and I’m not quite sure what the five-part equivalent of ‘trilogy’ is, so ‘trilogy’ will have to do!

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The Homeless Jesus

I was talking recently with a dear friend who has been going through significant housing issues with all the mental, emotional and spiritual turmoil that have come with them, when she interjected, ‘But then I realised, Jesus didn’t have a home.’ And she was absolutely right. Our Lord himself summed up his earthly experience with the words, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’ (Lk 9.58).

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From Nomads to a Nation

The Babel fiasco in Genesis, which we looked at in the previous instalment of this mini-series, is quickly followed in the timeline of salvation by the account of Abraham (Ge 12.1ff). This looks very much like a ray of light into what otherwise looks like a very dark landscape in a very dark world. Especially so because God explicitly tells him he would give his descendants the land of Canaan (Ge 12.7).

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What Makes a Good Translation?

For almost as long as I can remember as a Christian I have found myself musing on the question of what makes a good Bible translation. I grew up in a part of the world in which, for many professing Christians, this was simply a non-question There was only one ‘good’ version and it was ‘Authorised’! But I also happened to be the son of a minister who had come to the conviction that the New American Standard Bible was actually to be preferred over the KJV and that was the version he used both in private and in public.

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Aliens and Strangers

There is something deep within the human psyche that longs to be ‘home’ – to be settled in a place where we belong. Yet for many it is a frustrated longing. For some because they are, by virtue of their circumstances, dislocated from where they want to be. It may be because of schooling, or the demands of work, they are always on the move. Or it may be for more tragic reasons: they have been driven from their home and are now refugees in someone else’s homeland. For others too, even though they may be physically ‘at home’, they live with a deep restlessness of soul because the reality of home life never seems to measure up to their ideals and expectations.

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Alone, But Never Alone

Fides sola est quae justificat; fides quae justificat non est sola. Latinisms can have a wonderful way of crystallising issues in theological reflection – so with this one: ‘It is faith alone that justifies; but faith that justifies is never alone!’ This isn’t just a statement about the alone-ness of faith as the means by which we receive God’s justifying grace, but something much more far-reaching. It highlights the crucial distinction we need to grasp as we try to understand what it means to be justified. Namely, that a person who is truly justified is never merely justified!

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Effectual Calling and Trinitarian Balance

When the Banner of Truth Trust published the second volume of his Collected Writings in 1977, John Murray’s views on effectual calling sparked off animated debate in Reformed circles at that time. He challenged the formulation found in the Westminster Shorter Catechism that defines effectual calling as ‘the work of God’s Spirit’ (Q.31), preferring instead to see it as ‘the act of God the Father’ (p.166).

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A Life of Prayer

There are few places in Scripture where we are given deeper insight into the anatomy of a life of prayer than in the book of Daniel. The well-known words of the old children’s chorus, ‘Daniel was a man of prayer…’ could not be more apt! This great man who was so greatly used for such a great length of time had a great secret that lay behind his usefulness – it was his prayerfulness. From our first introduction to him as a mere teenager to our last glimpses of him – presumably as an octogenarian – it seems as though he exudes an aura of prayer.

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Where Have They Gone? Unbelievers and the Intermediate State

It’s the kind of question a child so often asks, but also the question that adults find so hard to answer; then again, it’s the question that pastors most dread facing. When someone has died and there is no indication they were ever converted, where do they go when they leave this world behind?

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Who Cares for the Carers?

They are the unsung heroes of the 21st Century – an entire army of family members, friends and neighbours who just want to help. They are the ‘Carers’. Some care for disabled children and adults, others for those whose lives have been shattered through accident, war or addiction, for those with mental illness and for ageing family members and friends as the years take their toll.

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Who is Jesus Christ?

Life and relationships have become all too superficial in our present age. It is the easiest thing in the world to say we know someone and yet really have nothing more than a nodding acquaintance. Indeed with the influence of the media - television in particular - it is possible to see some famous personality on the street and instinctively feel that we know them, even though we have never even met them.

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Jesus and Adam

There is, however, another crucial strand in this whole discussion: it is the way the New Testament handles material from the Old Testament when it comes to Adam and the role he played, not just in the history of the human race, but also in the history of redemption.

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What Man is to Believe Concerning God

Having made comment about the limits of science, it is only appropriate that we acknowledge that the Bible also has its limits. That may come as a surprise to some sensitive Christian ears, but it is actually self-evident: the Bible does not pretend to say everything that can be said about everything! Its specific focus, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism helpfully reminds us, is to tell us ‘what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man’. So there are many areas of history, geography, politics and much more besides on which it is either silent, or that it addresses from a very particular perspective.

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Must We Believe in an Historical Adam?

There is nothing new about the question of how science relates to the Bible – it is as old as the Copernican Revolution of the 16th Century and older. There is, however, real urgency to the question in our present age when science is being increasingly exalted to an almost supreme status as the arbiter of what we can know and are to believe.

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