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.

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Into our world of sin, broken hearts, physical ailments, and psychological suffering, our Lord of grace descended.
The more we demand from Christ, the more of Himself He gives to us. When we demand a glass of grace, He gives us an ocean of Gospel.
Jesus promises to work for you, forgiving your sins, but He also promises to work through you, forming you into a witness to the world.
The original sin of Genesis 3 was not gutter-style-sin, but glory-style-sin. It was more of an upward grasp than a downward fall. - Nathan Hoff
There’s a delicious freedom to wrongdoing. It taps a primal desire within us for rebellion. We feel liberated, unshackled by demands to be this way, do this, avoid that. We become masters of our own destiny.
What the law is powerless to do, Jesus accomplishes for us. Jesus delivers what the law demands.
Ash Wednesday confronts us with our true nature, our mortality, and marks us with the only escape from it: the cross of Christ.
Sometimes we have to strain hard to hear words deeper than our hearts. Words not from inside, but outside. Words from God, not our own self-spun narratives.
But this is not a story of Jesus being taken many places. This is a story of Jesus remaining in one place and deepening in His love of the Spirit and the Father.
The Seed of the woman is he who will crush the head of the evil one and restore man to a right and proper relationship with God.
Though not without his faults, Anselm of Canterbury is unquestionably one of the great theologians of the last millennium.