By Simon Jooste, pastor of RCSS Embodiment is central to salvation, so is suffering in the body. Without the incarnation, passion, and ongoing enfleshed intercession of Christ, there is no redemption. This was the heartbeat of the apostle Paul’s preaching in ancient Corinth, a city pulsing with ideas and illicitContinue Reading
What is a parable? A parable is a flexible term; it can stretch to include a variety of things. But, at its base, a parable is a metaphorical story or saying. By using a metaphor, a parable compares two things. It describes one thing by likening it to something else.Continue Reading
Daniel P. Clifford “For want of a nail, a shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, a horse was lost …” Most of us have never shoed horses, but we understand this proverb. Neglected details can turn out to be important, especially in making repairs. We protect things weContinue Reading
Like the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Romans is in three parts: guilt, grace and gratitude. We may consider Romans 1:1–17 the prologue to the epistle. The guilt section runs from 1:18–3:20. Here Paul is preaching the law in its first use: to convict the world of sin and its need for a Saviour. Failure toContinue Reading
For many evangelicals and for some ostensibly Reformed folk, it has been fashionable for the past several years to teach that we are justified now by grace alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide), on the basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed but that because salvation includes sanctification and sanctificationContinue Reading
The phrase “acid test” referred originally to the process of determining whether or not a metal is gold. It has become a metaphor for determining the quality or nature of a thing. If an interpreter of Romans does not see its threefold structure and/or does not understand Romans 2:13 toContinue Reading
We rightly think of the Protestant Reformation as the recovery of the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone. But the Reformation no less recovered the biblical doctrine of sanctification. It recognized that one may have clarity about justification only if one also has clarity about sanctification. In its confessions,Continue Reading
God’s moral law was not temporary. It reflects his character. It is was revealed in creation to Adam. It was known by the Patriarchs. It was summarised by Moses and again by our Lord himself in Matthew 22:37–40. The Apostles repeated the very same moral law as the norm ofContinue Reading
The reason there was so much opposition to Jesus’ ministry was because his gospel got to the heart of matters. He wasn’t giving a muddled dry expositions, his goal wasn’t the dissemination of information, or simply to create controversies about how to correct human behaviour. Jesus had one great goal:Continue Reading
In Reformed theology, the noun salvation is typically used in two ways. Sometimes it is used as a synonym for justification. When used this way, it does not include sanctification, since, according to the Reformed confession, justification is a declarative act of God whereby he credits (imputes) to sinners theContinue Reading