David finally found the truth that it was not his seed of kingship but the promise made to Abraham that made him holy. From that, David refused to be moved and wrote this Psalm by the necessity of the Spirit as the assurance of faith. The law never made a man holy, not even one as robust as David; yet faith did this great thing without lifting a finger.
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.

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God preaches a concrete word to us in the present tense. We hear the Good News that Jesus is God’s mercy for us.
Never has the law fallen so hard on me as in motherhood. Never before was I more aware that my best wasn’t good enough.
Each week, we will reflect on a few of the theses leading up to this year’s Here We Still Stand Conference in October. Each post will also include a new translation completed by Caleb Keith.
It’s the First Century, the early days of the of the Post-Pentecost Church. Something is in the air.
The Gospel is simple to confess. That is, we are justified by faith alone, through Christ alone, without the works of the Law.
It may seem like a strange place to begin: the end of the beginning.
You may have seen the uproar from a recent blog post suggesting that virgins who forego college, learn to cook big meals and abstain from tattoos make more desirable wives.
Our meditation listens to the King of Kings when He says; it is finished.
I have a confession: I don’t believe the Bible is true because it says it’s true.
The Law gets a bad rap. There is certainly a negative component to the Law. The work of the Law is very different than the work of the Gospel.
The reason the U.S. is blessed by God is that we are essentially a “good” nation. And this is the root of Bob’s problem (and that of all civil religion).
We should take great care in observing how the psalmist relates to God. Our eyes and hearts should be open to seeing what the psalmist appeals to and how he addresses God.