In my previous blog (“Gift Lists”) I noted that many believe (a) spiritual gifts are only bestowed miraculously after one’s conversion to Christ and (b) the only spiritual gifts available are those found in the Bible’s “gift lists”.  All other ‘skills’ are not from the Holy Spirit and are ‘works of the flesh’.I have no opposition to the idea of divinely bestowed gifts arising suddenly and miraculo...  Read More

We believe that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to … empower the believer for …service.The Holy Spirit, THE gift given to every believer, works through each believer to serve and bless others, and the particular outworking of the Spirit through each believer we call that person’s “spiritual gift”.  Since every believer possesses the Spirit of God, every believer also has a “gift” of some sort t...  Read More

Sometimes I wish Jesus could just be here with us like He was in the first century.  But Jesus told His followers it would be better for them after He had left and had sent the Holy Spirit (John 16.7).  The Holy Spirit is working in our lives every day.  The apostles, following Jesus’ explanation, don’t say how the Spirit does His work.  They note its effects.Those times when you feel a boldness t...  Read More

As our society grows less religious and more secular, the proper understanding of religious terminology is reinterpreted, blurred, and lost.  One such group of lost and dying words are those describing holiness.Most today see religion in broad terms.  Religion is about being “good”, and “good” to us means “nice” or “socially acceptable”.  We tend to measure goodness primarily in terms of friendly ...  Read More

We have physical bodies, but God’s Spirit does not, and that makes it difficult for us to talk about His working in the world.  We don’t see Him doing His work.  We see only the effects of His working (John 3.8).God accommodates us in our physicality by describing the work of the invisible Holy Spirit in concrete physical terms.  These words are only pictures to help us understand the invisible, n...  Read More

Our church’s statement of faith says:We believe that all who believe in Jesus Christ are regenerated, indwelt, baptized, and sealed by the Holy Spirit and so are secured for the day of redemption. We believe that those so secured will persevere in the faith of Jesus Christ and produce fruit evidencing their relationship to God.One of the most common theological I’m asked is whether our church teac...  Read More

We believe that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to glorify God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ…to regenerate the believing sinner… “Only through regeneration by the Holy Spirit can salvation and spiritual life be obtained.”God saves us from Himself through the sacrifice of Christ.  But He also saves us from OURSELVES through the work of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit’s work is a lifelong pro...  Read More

When you want to talk about what evangelicals mean by “salvation” (or “being saved” or “getting saved”), you are talking about two separate but closely related things, because there are two things from which we must be saved.First, we must be saved from God (from His wrath and His righteous judgment).  Jesus did that for us by His sacrifice on the cross, satisfying God’s wrath at sin and turning i...  Read More

They say history is written by the victors.  But the Bible was written by prophets and apostles who, in their day at least, were on the losing side.Every visit to the King of Prussia Mall reminds me that all the Christian principles I try to live by mean nothing to most people.One soldier being pinned down by machine gun fire doesn’t mean his side is losing.  Things may look completely different t...  Read More

In my previous blog noted that the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ saved us from God’s wrath.  We weren’t involved in the process; God did what was necessary to assuage His wrath so He could forgive us.  Our part is to believe the message that Christ’s death is sufficient to make sinners right with God.A common mistake evangelicals make is to believe that turning away God’s wrath is the whole st...  Read More

God insists that He alone is God.  We are born insisting God is on our throne.  This is why we are “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2.3).The first thing we need to be rescued from is an angry God.Since we weren’t about to change, something had to be changed on God’s end – and God had to do it.  We couldn’t and wouldn’t.Our church’s statement of faith says “we believe that…Jesus Christ…died...  Read More

We believe that man was created in the image of God but fell into sin and is therefore lost and totally marked by corruption and evil…That’s all that our statement of faith says about ‘sin’.  I’m elaborating on it because I believe ‘sin’ – what Christianity deems the central problem in the world – has been misunderstood, and that is part of the reason that ‘salvation’ has been misunderstood.The ce...  Read More