One of the gifts of the Old Testament is how faithful Israel was in recording their unfaithfulness. Israel could've erased all their sins, but they recorded their idolatry, oppression of others, and when they put words in God's mouth. Erasing a nation's sins isn't...
A genuine experience of the Lord is based on Scripture, not our feelings, but that does not mean that our feelings are unaffected. We are so afraid of feeling these days that it has become almost the unpardonable sin to say 'Amen' [in church]. We are not saved because...
If we Christians don’t acknowledge our damaged reputation in our culture, we won’t be able to lament the brokenness it has caused. If we Christians don’t lament the brokenness it has caused, we won’t be able to confess the sins that led to such brokenness. If we...
If America’s original sin is slavery, the original sin of the church is anti-Judaism and antisemitism. Before the New Testament was fully written. we see evidence of it... If you look at the passion accounts in the four Gospels in chronological order, you see Rome...
God has more love than any person can sin against.
When the Bible describes the word of God as "sharper than a two-edged sword," perhaps we should envision this probing and incisive word of truth more as a surgical scalpel or a gamma knife capable of going after our deepest sin, rather than using the Bible as a dagger...
I would rather live on the verge of falling and let my security be in the all-sufficiency of the grace of God than to live in some kind of pietistic illusion of moral excellence. My faith isn't in the idea that I'm more moral than anybody else. My faith is in the idea...
For a good confession three things are necessary: an examination of conscience, sorrow, and a determination to avoid sin.
The spirituality of wonder knows the world is charged with grace, that while sin and war, disease and death are terribly real, God’s loving presence and power in our midst are even more real.
The longer you gaze, the more you will see your own complicity in and profitability from the sin of others, even if it is the satisfaction of feeling you are on higher moral ground. Forgiveness is probably the only human action that demands three new "seeings" at the...