Luke 15 is the classic NT chapter on repentance. Here, if anywhere, we should meet the fundamental teaching on NT repentance. As we saw in our study of Luke 15:1-10 (last issue), the first two parables of the chapter—The Lost Sheep and The Lost Coin—very clearly refer to the repentance of a born-again person who

By Charlie Bing When President Clinton admitted immorality in the White House, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention and a seminary president called for Clinton’s home church in Arkansas to exercise “biblical church discipline.” The Associated Press article that reported this added, “The practice is seldom used in the modern church.”1 That is unfortunate

In the first article of this series, we maintained that the silence of John in his Gospel on the subject of repentance is a powerful argument that he did not regard repentance as necessary for eternal life. In the second article, we showed that John’s frequent reference to repentance in the book of Revelation reveals

Many people today believe in what I call agnostic assurance. According to this understanding, no one can know for sure that he or she is saved prior to death. They believe this because they think that election is a secret activity by God that is unknown by man prior to death. Some pastors and theologians

Introduction In the last issue of Grace in Focus (May/June 98), we considered the fact that John is silent, in his Gospel, on the subject of repentance. In view of the purpose of the Gospel of John to bring people to eternal life (John 20:30-31), we were constrained to conclude that John did not regard

I recently received an e-mail from a reader with a question about this verse: “Most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death.” The reader had seen a short internet article on this verse which concluded: Why does Christ say “he who keeps My word” and not “he

This article, which has been slightly edited and revised, was published originally under the title “Contextual Fallacies: Matthew 7:16,” in the Quarterly Journal of the Irenaeus Foundation Vol. 2, Issue 4 (Fall 1997): 18-20. By D. Scott Henderson “A text out of context is a pretext.” Most of us have heard this maxim. Yet how