Abstract In Christian theology, the concept of holiness is foundational, reflecting the nature of God and serving as a standard for Christian ethics. Traditionally, many theologians have understood holiness in terms of separateness, emphasizing...
This week, people around the world celebrated Mardi Gras. Mardis Gras, which is French for “Fat Tuesday” has its roots in Roman Catholicism (and other Christian traditions). Fat Tuesday is the Tuesday just before Ash Wednesday, which marks the...
Sanctification is a hard thing. It’s an intimidating thing. The word itself essentially means “the process of becoming holy”. One of the issues with this definition, however, is the lack of clarity that many have regarding the...
It seems that the concept of covenant goes overlook in mainstream Christianity. This is problematic. When we overlook the concept of covenant in our thinking about salvation and our faith, our theology can go awry (and become quite unbiblical). It...
It’s risky business to talk about the cross in ways that mainstream protestant-evangelicals aren’t used to. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I do this quite often. There are several dimensions of the cross and salvation (soteriology and...
Not long ago I wrote a post about how holiness doctrine is much more about what He is able to accomplish than what we are able to accomplish. I wrote that in Jesus’ command (and we find the command elsewhere in scripture as well) to “be...
Be Holy As Your Father in Heaven is Holy (1 Peter 1:15) This is a tough command! Some even argue that the command to be holy as God is holy is unachievable. At the same time, I don’t think that Jesus would command his followers to something that...
One of my favorite My Utmost entries is from Dec 2, so I had to share it today: It is a snare to imagine that God wants to make us perfect specimens of what He can do; God’s purpose is to make us one with Himself. The emphasis of holiness movements...
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believers, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. —Romans 1:16, emphasis added. Often times we overlook the fact that 99% of Jesus’ recorded words in the...
For far too long now Christians have told the story of Jesus as if it hooked up not with the story of Israel, but simply with the story of human sin as in Genesis 3, skipping over the story of Israel altogether. —N.T. Wright The concept of covenant...