By D. L. Starkey I was brought up in the Church of Christ since I was two weeks old. I was a full-time paid preacher there for over twenty years. If you are familiar with the Church of Christ, they can be a very legalistic bunch, and I was no exception. I preached against all

I introduced the series by explaining the Bible makes it clear that every believer is a builder. Every Christian is a person in construction as well as under construction. In 2 Peter 1:3-11, Peter explains that by our dependence upon Divine heavenly resources (vv 3-4), and by our diligence in the human process (vv 5-7),

By Diane Boring I’ve been a believer for many years, and God has always been faithful to show me that His grace truly is sufficient in times of trial. When I stop and remember how He’s always come through for me in each and every trial, I am in awe of Him. But this last

Define Your Terms A friend of mine is a pastor at a large church in Southern California. He was given the task of preaching a sermon on the meaning of faith. As he was gathering his thoughts about how to approach this sermon, he called me and asked to meet to discuss his task. At

Wayne Grudem is one of the best-known Evangelical theologians writing today. His Systematic Theology has sold over 400,000 copies. It’s a model for making academic theology accessible and often the first systematic theology I consult from my library. When Grudem speaks, people listen, including me. That’s why I’m grateful he wrote a critique of Free

Ask any Biblically literate person about the expression the finger of God and he will either refer to God writing the Ten Commandments with His own finger (Exod 31:18) or to the mysterious fingers of a man’s hand that appeared out of nowhere and wrote a mystical message on the wall in Dan 5:5, 24.

The Church’s First Fight Although our Lord was more often confronted by Pharisees, the infant Church finds its first clash with the Sadducees. While Pharisees represent religious hypocrisy, the Sadducees represent religious unbelief. 4:1-2. And the Sadducees came upon them. While the Pharisees hated our Lord manifested in flesh, as a sect, the Sadducees seemed

There are some people who have the mistaken idea that people in the OT received eternal life by works. Often, this erroneous view maintains that a person in the OT had to keep the Law of Moses. Of course, nobody believes a person could have kept the Law perfectly, but if a person in the

Within Free Grace theology, there is a great emphasis on the grace of God. One of the reasons for this is such a theology rightly sees that the eternal salvation of a person rests solely upon that grace. We receive eternal life as a free gift the moment we believe in Jesus Christ for it.

I once delivered a message entitled “Shepherding the Flock in Trying Times.” I alerted Christians to the religious persecution coming to America, identifying where those attacks are coming from. My goal was to prepare believers for a time when standing for moral truth will be grounds for being ostracized or punished. When those times come,