When I was in the Army, I thought it would be cool to get a tattoo that said, “I run with scissors!” with a skull and cross-scissors above it. I was telling my brilliant idea to my father, who told me, “Son, most people I know who are my age and have tattoos are folks that got the tattoos when they were your age and now they regret it.”
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legalism
Judge not?
Many people are quick to quote the first two words of Matthew 7:
Judge not […] (Matt 7:1a KJV)
But, did you know that in the rest of the chapter, there are three judgments that Jesus tells us to make about people? Let’s take a look at what Jesus says in the rest of the chapter and see if we can reconcile it with the entirety of Matthew 7:1.[Read More]
The only test for salvation
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Eph 2:8-9 (ESV)
The Bible clearly teaches that we are saved by grace through faith alone… but many people have twisted up this simple truth. Often, if you ask someone how he knows that he’s a Christian, his response will start with faith, but then his focus drifts to his own works. Here is an example from John Piper as he responded to the question, “How can I know I’m saved?”
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Have You Broken the 10 Commandments?
The following blog post is a verbatim transcription of a conversation between two people, whom we will call Jack and Joe in order to protect their identity, even though they and this conversation are completely fictional:
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Some thoughts on the word, “Justify”
There are some questions we can ask ourselves every time we see the word, “justify,” in the Bible. Let’s look at these questions and see how they affect our understanding of a famous passage that may seem to contradict the Gospel.
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Hocus Pocus Today
‘Tis the season for spooky Halloween movies! My favorite Halloween movie is Hocus Pocus, which features three witches from the infamous Salem Witchcraft Trials who come back to modern day Salem… ok, so maybe 1993 isn’t so modern anymore, but you get the point. The theology is terrible, but it’s a cute Disney movie about witches.
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