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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Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
More certain than death or taxes and more certain than “anything else in all creation” is the fact that God loves you.
God’s creatures on four legs are some of the greatest storytellers of the Scriptures.
When joined with a good Reformation theology of vocation and the freedom of a Christian, Fujimura’s vision for culture care is something all Christians can embrace, regardless of whether they are artists in the formal sense.
It is the story of a God who is not distant, not indifferent, not doing anything in half-measures, but who is here, now.
The Lion of Judah, Christ the King, Jesus of Nazareth, will not be away from us for one night.
This is an excerpt from the Chapter 12 of Hitchhiking with the Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available!
To embrace our creatureliness is to affirm the truth that we were created to worship.
This is an excerpt from chapter 6 of Scandalous Stories by Daniel Emery Price and Erick Sorensen (1517 Publishing 2018).
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).
It is your privilege—we may even say “right”—to call upon this Father and to call him Father.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.