Jared Wilson offers the following as characteristic of genuine repentance:-
1. We name our sin as sin and do not spin it or excuse it, and further, we demonstrate “godly sorrow,” which is to say, a grief chiefly about the sin itself, not just a grief about being caught or having to deal with the consequences of sin.
2. We actually confessed before we were caught or the circumstantial consequences of our sin caught up with us.…
Bart Ehrman is one of those scholars who impresses with his extensive knowledge (to say nothing of his personal charm and communication ability), but who makes glaring errors of judgement on too regular a basis. Perhaps it is his own loss of Christian faith that makes him so certain that he has no axe to grind that he cannot see the axes lying all around him – some on have already been ground, others are waiting to be ground, still others are in the process of being ground. …
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A book by Philip Pullman : ‘The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ’. This reflects the popular distinction between ‘the Jesus of history’ and ‘the Christ of faith’; the simple Galilean teacher, as depicted in the Gospels, and the exalted object of the church’s worship, as found in the Epistles.
How is Jesus actually presented in this, the earliest and shortest of the Gospels; the one that most emphasises his humanness? Let’s call four witnesses.…
I wonder how far back you can trace your family tree? Not many of us can rival the claim of Canadian furniture-maker Michael Ibsen, who is the nearest known relative of Richard III, who died at the battle of Bosworth in 1483.
But did you know that, in fact, each of us is a member of one or other of two very ancient families? These families are discussed by Paul in Romans 5.
At the head of each of these two families stands a representative. …
I wanted to check a few details about Philip Pullman’s book, ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’. In that book, Pullman imagines ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’ were brothers: ‘Jesus’ was godly and moral, but ‘Christ’ was something of a Judas-character, whose physical likeness to ‘Jesus’ led, after the death of his brother, to a belief in the resurrection and the founding of the Christian Church.
I was intrigued to read this transcript of a sermon by the Reverend Robert Reiss, who at the time was Canon in Residence at Westminster Abbey. …
[Asked to preach twice on the same day from James 4:4-17, I developed two sermons, the first focussing on what this passage teaches about pride in relation to talking (verses 11-12), and the second on pride in relation to planning (verses 13-17).]
Overall theme of this section: arrogance.
Specific danger areas: talking (v11-12), planning (vv13-17), spending (5:1-6).
Let’s focus on the first of these. James has yet more to say about the tongue, and so must we.…
We ensure that our cars, our central heating boilers, and our teeth are in a healthy condition.
But what about your faith? Is your faith in good working order?
What do we mean by ‘faith’?
Text: Romans 4
There is much concern about ‘radical’ religion these days. But what does radical Christianity look like?
Previously (3:21-31): humanity’s perilous plight – ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’, v23; God’s drastic solution, v24f – ‘God presented Christ Jesus as sacrifice of atonement’; and the means by which we experience this: v28 – ’a person is justified by faith apart from observing the law.’
Justification by faith is
Last night, the BBC screened its 90-minute drama ‘The Ark’.
It was a re-telling, by Tony Jordan, of the celebrated biblical story of Noah (variations of which circulated in other ancient cultures).
Those who confuse the ‘traditional’ children’s version of this story with the biblical version complain that we don’t get to see the animals go into the ark. I was surprised to see Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali being (mis?)quoted as seemingly objecting to the animals being ‘banned’ from the ark in this film.…
