Part 1 “Yesterday I wrote about Satan’s Great Desire which is to bring about disunity in your local church, somehow convincing you that the people in your church are no longer worthy of your love. I ended by giving the encouragement that God has equipped us to build and maintain this kind of unity and that all we need to do is use the tools he has equipped us with. How has he equipped us? According to Ephesians 4, he has given each of...

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 Tim Challies, who spoke at the last Psalm 119 Conference, wrote a two part series on love and unity in the local church. Here is part one: “I have been engaged in a study of the second half of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and, not surprisingly, the themes from that letter have been resonating in my mind over the past few weeks. I have been struck by Paul’s emphasis on the importance of love and unity in the local church. On the...

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  so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. – Romans 8:4   “Look, if the preacher says God wants you to be happy, then multitudes of the people who want to be happy will flock to Jesus. “Jesus, make me happy.” If the preacher says, “If you’re sick, you’ve got a marriage problem, financial frustration,...

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from Kevin DeYoung’s “Glory of God” series: Ephesians 3:14-21 …to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus… (v. 21) As a pastor I hear the question fairly often: “Why do Christians need to go church?” Sometimes the questioner is a young child wanting to get out of his boredom on Sunday morning. Other times the questioner sincerely wonders why we must be a part of a church if we can have a relationship with God...

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[Continued from "A Theology of the Body - Part VIII"] Your Ultimate Body “Death is swallowed up in victory!” (1 Cor. 15:54) This cry of exultation will accompany the return of Jesus Christ, which will result in major changes for those who have already died and for those who are alive at his second coming. Paul describes this event and its mysterious corollaries: I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,...

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[Continued from "A Theology of the Body - Part VII"] Your Body Will Die Though the focus of my theology of human embodiment has thus far been on life in the body, one of the great inevitabilities of life is death. Ecclesiastes describes the inescapable finality of death (Eccl. 9:2-3), speaking of it in terms of an appointment that all people have (Eccl. 3:1-2). Specifically, “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes...

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[Continued from "A Theology of the Body - Part VI"] Human embodiment is a relatively short-lived existence, as the curse of death due to sin is meted out on all human beings (Rom. 5:12; 3:23). Even before this end point is reached, as the human body ages, it wears down, provoking physical suffering. Oftentimes, service for the Lord entails great physical suffering as well (2 Cor. 4:7-18). Scripture presents suffering both as necessary, because...

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In the book “Pursuit of Holiness” (which we’ve gone through in a previous men’s study), author Jerry Bridges address some of the issues that were mentioned in Pastor Jay’s previous blog about indicatives and imperatives: Evangelicals commonly think today that the gospel is only for unbelievers. Once we’re inside the kingdom’s door, we need the gospel only in order to share it with those who are still outside....

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[Continued from "A Theology of the Body - Part V"] When most Christians think of worshiping God, they imagine such activities as singing songs of praise and thanksgiving, listening to the Word of God read and preached, corporate prayer, and the like. Few would consider the role of their body in worship. Indeed, in a popular definition, worship is described as involving a person’s conscience, mind, imagination, heart, and will—with no...

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[Continued from "A Theology of the Body - Part IV"] Clothing Matters One concrete expression of dedicating one’s body for divine purposes is the clothing one wears. This seemingly mundane matter actually receives more attention in Scripture than one might expect; indeed, it is an important aspect of human embodiment. When God created Adam and Eve, they were “naked and unashamed” (Gen. 2:25). Their fall into sin, however, introduced a...

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