The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.
Sinners get faith as a gift when Christ takes their captivity captive.

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While reading Matthew chapter 2 where the story of the Three Kings, Wise Men, or Magi is found, I was captivated by the part King Herod played in the story. Herod, who had befriended Mark Anthony and Octavius, had been given the rule of Palestine and was crowned King of the Jews.
Please... don’t say any variation of, “cheer up.” or “look on the bright side.” Don’t invalidate what someone is going through because you may not understand.
What every heresy does, in one way or another, is ungods God, unchristens Christ, uncrucifies the Crucified. It strikes through the good of Good News.
As I remember these stories of the other side of Christmas—where it’s not a wonderful life, where there’s no joy to the world, where silent nights are interrupted by screams and sobs and cursing and gunshots—I remember that this other side of Christmas is precisely why there is a Christmas in the first place.
The advent is an incredible time for the church. We focus in on and celebrate Christ's first coming in anticipation of His second advent: The restoration of all things.
He loved me, to be sure, but in a very nondescript, emotionally detached way, which is the way my grandfather loved him.
Although I believe my Catholic friends say more of Mary than can be biblically justified, I also believe that many of my Protestant friends say less of Mary than the Bible demands.
There has only been one baptism in the history of the world: the baptism of Jesus. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
As C. S. Lewis, in "The Magician’s Nephew", has Aslan sing the world and all its beautiful intricacies into existence, so the Lion of the tribe of Judah, our Lord Jesus, hymns the heavens and earth into being.
Is God the perfect loving father for whom we have all longed; or is he an angry, blood-thirsty deity who can only be appeased by the torture and death of his own child?
Here’s what lurks beneath this seemingly righteous behavior: they wanted to make a name for themselves, these tower-builders.
(This article first appeared in Modern Reformation and is posted here with permission.)