Let Us Defend the Name from Slander and Insult

Everything bad they [the ungodly] can seize hold of in our life is twisted maliciously against Christ and His teaching.  The result is that by our fault God’s sacred name is exposed to insult.  The more closely we see ourselves being watched by our enemies, the more intent we should be to avoid their slanders, so that their [...]

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Three Words That Describe Our Duties as Christians

The Apostle Paul summed up our three-directional duties of the Christian life in three words: self-controlled, upright, and godly.  The context of his moral description of God’s saving grace, however, is a whole series of moral exhortations from Titus 2:1-3:2.  – Bridges, Jerry; The Disciplined of Grace:God’s Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of [...]

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Importance of the Fruit of the Spirit in the Life of a Christian

The Christian life, however, should also be directed toward the positive expressions of Christian character, what Paul called the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22.  In fact, all of Paul’s ethical teaching is characterized by this twofold approach of putting off the old self and putting on the new self (Ephesians 4:22-24). – Bridges, [...]

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It Was the Very Essence of Paul’s Christian Life

In the same way, believers are united to Christ in such a way that, in the words of the Apostle Peter, we “participate in the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4).  That is, just as the branches share in the live of the vine, so we share in the very life of Christ Himself.  That is [...]

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We Must Rid Ourselves of Such Thinking

Yet, in our everyday relationship with God, most of us are no different in our thinking than the unbelievers who think they will go to Heaven because they’ve been good enough.  To live by grace, we must rid ourselves of such thinking. – Bridges, Jerry; The Disciplined of Grace:God’s Role and Our Role in the [...]

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We May Also Be Prone to Self-Satisfaction

The other attitude is one of varying degrees of self-satisfaction with one’s Christian life.  We can drift into this attitude because we are convinced we believe the right doctrines, we read the right Christian books, we practice the right disciplines of a committed Christian life, or we are actively involved in some aspect of Christian [...]

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One of the Attitudes Christians are Prone to Have

Christians tend toward one of two opposite attitudes.  The first is a relentless sense of guilt due to unmet expectations in living the Christian life.  People characterized by this mode of thinking frequently dwell on their besetting sins or on their failure to witness to their neighbors or to live up to numerous other challenges [...]

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We Need to Hear This Everyday

We need to continue to hear the gospel every day of our Christian lives.  Only a continuous reminder of the gospel of God’s grace through Christ will keep us from falling into good-day/bad-day thinking, wherein we think our daily relationship with God is based on how good we have been. – Bridges, Jerry; The Disciplined of [...]

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Like Peter, Our Life Looks Like a Roller Coaster

Like Peter, our Christian life is a roller coaster of faithfulness and unfaithfulness.  Since we always drift back to self-confident triumphalsim (remember Peter’s protest, “I will never deny you!” just before he did), we need to hear God’s verdict on our righteousness through the law and his assurance of pardon in the gospel.  Jesus’ example [...]

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This is Not the Way We Should Respond to the News

We are assimilating the disrupting and disorienting news from heaven to the banality of our own immediate felt needs, which interpret God as a personal shopper for the props of our life movie; happiness as entertainment; salvation as therapeutic; and mission as pragmatic success measure solely in terms of numbers. – Horton, Michael; Christless Christianity: [...]

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