Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.
The student of Scripture should always have a map open next to their Bible as they read. If possible, they should also travel to Israel, not to make a pilgrimage, but to see the context of the land in which these stories took place. These are not fairy tales made up about fictional fantasy lands; these are stories about real people in real places interacting with a real God.

All Articles

The following is an excerpt from “A Year of Grace Volume 2” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2019).
“I forgive you,” must be said and it must be said often in a marriage.
We love those who enable us to see our love for ourselves reflected back at us.
How do I know the expectations of every Marine even though I am not able to cite specific orders from Marine Corps handbooks? The Rifleman’s Creed tells me.
It is in the midst of a world marked by empty and deceptive hopes that have broken hearts and lives that we are sent to deliver the promise of a future that has as its last chapter the resurrection of the body to eternal life with the Lamb who was slain but is alive forevermore.
As I sat there in the dark, empty church with my hands buried in the guts of a copy machine I was powerless to fix, I couldn't help feeling sorry for myself.
We were lost. We didn’t know where we were going or which way to turn. We had been driving around in circles for hours with nothing to show for it. And now we weren’t sure how to find our way home - and losing hope by the minute.
A new life in Christ Jesus is our hope. Not only that, Jesus is our access to God.
His kingdom is not one of force and might for our exploitation and his gain, but one of his patience and long-suffering for our benefit.
When we hear freedom, we have to ask about its opposite, bondage.
We have the freedom to joyfully participate in neighborhood fun with the love of our neighbor in mind.
We would be utterly miserable if we could not find somebody less than ourselves, somebody to look down on, somebody to make us more pleased with ourselves.