1 Corinthians 1:18-25

October 1, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 13:45 in the audio file.

Or, The Perfect Offense to All Human Pretense

I don’t know anyone who dislikes pretentiousness more than my wife. Of course God dislikes it, and He can see the fullness of everyone’s heart, but Mo seems to have special (albeit not inerrant) sensors and serious unimpressed-ness when others try to act impressive. I am very grateful for this part of her.

Sinful human beings like to pretend that they are impressive. We make believe, and try to make others believe, that we are something to behold, someones to esteem. The world presents a variety of options for stroking our egos, and those in the church are not less susceptible to the marketing of these self-centered mindsets. You can be admired because of your authoritative presence, your financial power, your insightful wisdom, your winsome speech, your sharp appearance, even your ostensible righteousness. If you can’t have those qualities yourself, you can at least identify with those who are. You can be cool by association; you have the t-shirt.

Of course there are people who have genuine influence, who exercise actual discernment and can teach true truth to others. There are obedient saints, and they do tend to hang out together. But, to those with eyes to see, the ones who play at appearances are funny, foolish, and the object of God’s destruction. There is nothing that flays a faker and causes such offense to human pretense as a crucified Christ.

The church in Corinth was vulnerable to impressive appearances and under the spell of status seeking celebrities. Some of Chloe’s people reported to Paul that quarrels and divisions were happening among the believers over their favorite religious figures (1:10-17). Division is one of the reasons Paul writes this letter, and it’s one of the most inconsistent behaviors for those who believe in a crucified Christ.

In 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 Paul reminds the church about appearances, about foolishness and wisdom, about weakness and power, about destruction and salvation, about who gets the last and loudest laugh. He reminds them that the best they can get from what men have to offer could never get them to God; why do they care so much about appearances? And he reminds them that his message and ministry were centered on the word of the cross, the perfect offense to all human pretense.

The cross perfectly offends those with the pretense of high status. (verses 18-21)

There is the “wisdom of word” (σοφίᾳ λόγου, ESV: “words of eloquent wisdom”) in verse 17 and it contrasts with the word of the cross (Ὁ λόγος…ὁ τοῦ σταυροῦ). There are two ways of thinking, two paradigms that shape how men evaluate things.

The word of the cross is the “gospel” about the “cross of Christ” (verse 17), the preaching of “a crucified Christ” (verse 23). And this cross talk is folly, it’s ridiculous, and in a few verses we’ll see it is a stumbling block (verse 23). The cross is offensive to anyone and everyone in the world who thinks about it. In the Roman world the cross symbolized all that a man did not want to be. A crucified man wasn’t just a convicted criminal, he was scum to the Romans and was cursed according to the Israelites. The cross was a symbol of torture, yes, but for those who were judged and rejected. To die like this, in such a remote place like Jerusalem—in the Roman Empire equivalent to Fargo, SD, from the perspective of a New Yorker—was so obviously laughable.

And Paul agrees. The word of the cross is folly…to those who are perishing. A crucified Christ is clearly stupid to a certain kind of person who is in the process of being ruined.

Here is the antithesis. But to us who are being saved it is the power of God. We would expect the contrast to be between folly and wisdom, and it is that (see verse 24), but more. The word of the cross not only shows itself to[...]

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

September 24, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 15:15 in the audio file.

Or, Paul’s Greeting to and Gratitude for the Church in Corinth

I believe it was in John Calvin’s rough draft of the Institutes that he wrote, “The human heart is a celebrity factory.” He changed “celebrity” to “idol” in the final edition (okay, there’s not actually any evidence of this), but in some cultures the two are not that dissimilar.

The Corinthians had some identity problems, namely, they had begun to identify themselves with particular leaders and with impressive styles of communication. Paul was genuinely thankful for them, as he told them in the previous paragraph (1 Corinthians 1:4-9). He saw signs of grace among them and said that the testimony of Christ was confirmed among them. He reminded them of their identity as saints, as sons of God, as those in the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ. But they had factions—smaller divided cliques—in the fellowship.

Starting in verse 10 Paul moves from the greeting and epistolary pleasantries to the first, if not the main, problem among the believers in Corinth. They were quarreling which was causing divisions. Their squabbles showed that they did not have the understanding they thought they did. They did not understand the very center of the gospel, the cross of Christ, and how the word of the cross doesn’t belong with disunity, especially disunity based on who’s preaching or how they preach the word of the cross.

Whether or not disunity among the Christians in Corinth is the main problem, it is the first problem that Paul addresses. Paul had heard reports of side-taking and starts by addressing it straight on. Unlike so many of this other letters that begin with doctrine and hinge on a “therefore” into application, he heads directly into exhortation, and this section continues through chapter four.

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Appeal (ESV) is just not strong enough. Perhaps you’ve heard someone mention the Greek word: parakalō. Something such as “urge” (HCSB) or “exhort” (NASB) is better. As someone who knows them and will give an account for them, this is what he wants from them.

We’ll see the nature of the exhortation (verse 10), the context/need for the exhortation (verses 11-12), and the crux/nub of the exhortation (verses 13-17)

The Nature of the Exhortation (verse 10)

He addresses them with affection as his spiritual family, brothers and sisters (later he will address them as a father, 4:14-15), and he addresses them with representative authority by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has now mentioned by name for the tenth time in ten verses.

There are three goals that stand together like a three-legged stool. Paul exhorts:

that all of you agree

that there be no division among you

that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment

The first and third are positive pursuits, the middle is the negative way to put it, and all of them belong to the same responsibility.

We don’t yet know why Paul is concerned about this other than unity being a primary desire of Jesus for His people (think John 17:11, 21). To agree is to “say the same thing,” not in uniformity (which might be say the same things, as in, each and every word) but rather harmony. “They are to be like a chorus singing from the same page of music, not like a cat’s concert with each howling his or her own cacophonous tune” (Garland). They were not doing this (see verses 11-12); they all had their own jingle.

Division is the Greek word schismata from which our English word “schism” derives. If we read ahead into chapter 11 we will see there “there must needs be factions among you,” and Paul was for dividing from false teachers. So we’ll have to see what he means here.

To be united in the same mind and the same judgment is to be mended together, to share perspective and stand[...]

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

September 17, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 14:45 in the audio file.

Or, Paul’s Greeting to and Gratitude for the Church in Corinth

To read the opening of Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth for the first time without going on to read the rest of the letter, it would not be unreasonable to think that the apostle was in a cheerful mood when he began to write or that he had recently heard a report that the Corinthian Christians were really walking in a manner pleasing to the Lord. These first thoughts initially appear that positive.

To read the beginning of this letter a second time, after having finished reading the rest of the letter, it would not be difficult to argue that Paul’s positivity was inconsistent with the true state of things in Corinth, perhaps he was even in a state of delusion. Maybe worse, Paul was using a rhetorical device merely to draw them close enough for a verbal beating.

But having the gift of our own copies of this letter, as well as the gift of other letters from Paul to different churches for sake of comparison, and having opportunity to observe what he says and what he doesn’t say in light of what he’s about to say, I believe we should read these initial greetings and expressions of gratitude as pastoral and provocative. We ought also read them as a pattern for our own responses to fellow Christians, especially those who are less saintly in practice than we deem thanks-worthy.

For all of their personality-driven division (chapters 1-4), misapplied sense of purity (chapter 5, maybe chapter 7 as well), self-centered pursuit of spiritual knowledge and gifts (chapters 12-14), and their conformity to worldly, even idolatrous, values (chapter 6, 8-9), Paul sees signs of grace among them. The very existence of a church in Corinth calls for songs of loudest praise to the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is not blowing sunshine at them, he is giving thanks to God the Father and His Son in front of them.

As he greets them and gives thanks to God for them, he reminds them of what they’ve been given. These are God-givens that identify them, grace-givens that set a trajectory for the rest of the letter.

There are two main thoughts in verses 1-9: the greeting in verses 1-3 and the gratitude in verses 4-9. Once we look at those I’ll summarize a list of all the things that were given to them that identify them.

Greetings That Were God-Ordained (verses 1-3)

This letter, and the relationship between the man writing the letter and the group reading the letter, are far beyond the human horizon. The formula of “From whom, To whom, Hello,” is a standard way to start a first-century letter, but that is the only part of these first three verses that is ordinary.

The letter is from the apostle Paul. Technically, he is dictating as he makes clear in chapter 16:21. Sosthenes may be the one scratching pen on papyrus, but an amanuensis usually wasn’t considered a sender. Sosthenes may have been the “ruler of the synagogue” in Corinth from Acts 18:17. He was known by those in Corinth as our brother. But the letter is from Paul.

The letter is to the Christian church in Corinth. Corinth was a city in Greece but politically and culturally Roman. They had been a church for two to three years by the time Paul writes.

But Paul only wrote because of God. The church in Corinth existed because of God. The greeting itself is not boilerplate filler, the greeting is because of God.

Paul had been called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. Paul had other intentions on the Damascus Road, malicious to Christ and murderous to Christians (see Acts 11). God changed Paul’s direction, giving him a heart that believed and loved Christ then appointing him to service for the gospel of Christ. God ordained Paul for this responsibility.

The people he was writing to were those sanctified in Christ Jesus. The use of sanctification[...]

1 Corinthians

September 10, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 14:25 in the audio file.

Or, Paul’s Letter to a People with Problems in Corinth

I have been saying for a while that I think one of the biggest blind spots for so many Bible-toting, truth-loving, theology-lauding churches is that they don’t read much other than the New Testament epistles. And Psalms. Even then, they read thew songs like letters.

On one hand it makes sense. We are the church, the church is a New Testament organism, and all of the epistles were written to churches or to leaders of churches or to people who were members in a church. Acts is about the formation of churches, and Revelation starts with some churches, but if we want to know about what the church should believe and how the church should behave we have tailor-made theological and practical instruction in the epistles.

That said, at least in the bites of evangelical pie that I’ve tasted, it’s been too heavy on the epistle salt and too light on the psalms sugar and history flour and wisdom butter and prophetic baking soda. Salt is good, tasty even, but not all by itself.

So I’ve been working to study and mediate on and even teach outside of the epistles for almost a decade. I’ve put my fork in to an epistle here and there, but I haven’t put a big piece on my plate, our our plate, for a while.

It’s time for a slice of epistolary pie. And, as I’ll introduce this morning and we’ll see throughout our study, 1 Corinthians is a letter for such a time as this. This first—century letter from the apostle Paul to the Christians in Corinth, Greece, is full of gospel encouragement, instruction, and admonition. These believing people had a crazy amount of problems, though it’s kind of amazing grace that they didn’t have even more problems than they did. Corinth was one of the least conservative cities in the Roman Empire and all of the Christians would have been new converts and first-generation believers. Next to Rome, the existence of a church in Corinth demonstrates the transforming power of the gospel, even as Paul wrote to them about some addition breaks from the world’s mould that were necessary. Too much of the world was in the church, but by God’s grace there was a church.

This will be good for us to go through. It will be good for those younger believers among us who haven’t spent a lot of time in the letters. It will be good for all of us who live in the world while trying to not be of the world. Our culture does not have complete overlap with that in Corinth, but it is not hard to see so much modern and/or post-modern worldliness among Christians today. And it will be especially good for those of us pursuing a Kuyperian Dispensationalist way of life. Being a Kuyperian isn’t an automatic disinfectant for compromise, for impurity, for greed, for conflict, and for worldliness. Of course being a Dispensationalist has done a lot for separatism but not necessarily to make sanctified and savory salt. 1 Corinthians will help us to know what it looks like to live God-wise, world-foolish image-bearers waiting for the return of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

So let’s begin our study of this epistolary pie and keep our Kuyperian ice cream, too.

The City of Corinth

A letter is more personal than a treatise or a memo, even if it is a group letter, an open letter. Knowing a little about who wrote the letter and who received the letter can help us understand the contents of the letter.

It’s History

The city of Corinth is in Greece. It sits on the isthmus with harbors to both the east (heading toward Asia) and the west (heading toward Italy). Imagine two floating frisbees, one north and the other south, connected by a popsicle stick; Corinth was on the stick. The area known as the Peloponnese was on the bottom. A road called the diolkos built around the 6th-5th century BC ran from one coast to the other a little less than four[...]

1 John 1

September 3, 2017

Evening Service

Dave Light

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The post Walking in the Light appeared first on Trinity Evangel Church.

The post Walking in the Light appeared first on Trinity Evangel Church.

Selected Scriptures

September 3, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 15:05 in the audio file.

Or, Why a Kuyperian Dispensationalist Is Preoccupied with the Future

A popular book in Christian circles came out earlier this year titled The Benedict Option. It’s a book that observes many of our current cultural problems in the West, our moral failings and fallings as a society. We have serious issues at every level: individual, family, church, city, nation. Things are bad and seem to be getting worse as people become less connected to each other, to history, and to God.

The Benedict Option is named after St. Benedict who organized a system of rules for monks. Benedict emphasized order both for the soul and for living together in community. The author of the book urges Christians to get out of the public fight, which he says the conservatives have basically lost anyway, and focus on building our churches and schools and other institutions so that when the modern experiment against reality collapses we’ll have survived. He claims that as long as we have religious liberty we should us it to make sure that we are strong.

I’ve read or listened to a variety of responses to the Benedict Option. On one side are those who want a more prophetic, aggressive, warlike fight to take over culture; one called it the Boniface Option after St. Boniface who cut down a idol with an axe in front of a hostile crowd. On the other side are those who don’t think we have any other cultural responsibility than to evangelize. Maybe we could call this the Bunker Option. Groups such as the church, family, schools, are just platforms to speak the gospel. These groups exist, and fine, but we need not worry about building them.

Our current series, The Kuyperian Dispensationalist, is an attempt to both understand the cultural questions and to provide an answer. What are we here on earth to do? What are Christians saved for? As Premillennial Dispensationalists we not only see culture getting worse in ebbs and flows over centuries, we also see that darkness hates the light and will put up a serious fight until the end. We aren’t surprised by apostasy and idolatry, by unbelief and immorality. But what are we supposed to do? Run away and hide? Just stick it out until the rapture?

Throughout history most Dispensationalists have retreated, and we haven’t done much in our caves except complain (it’s like the Archie Bunker Option). The Benedict Option at least encourages us to build, even if it’s more of a compound tucked away from trouble. But we’ve seen that this is a failure to read the parts of the Bible where God says that His creation is good, it’s a gift, and that we’re to receive it with thanks and stewardship and industry. He made the world and all who love Him will hate the things of earth in one way so that they will be better image-bearers on earth for His glory. We believe His Word, His Son, and expect the fruit of our faith to be abundant and obvious in public view. The fruit of faith will provoke others—the Jews, especially in the end-to jealously. They will want what we have from God in Christ.

Let’s call this the Blessing Option. From our faith we worship the Lord and seek His blessing on our obedience and good works. His blessings may not always be how we would define them. Blessings include wisdom gleaned from trouble, joy in pain, as well as things such as profit and increasing influence. But others will see our God-given blessings and want in.

This will be the last message in the series for now. Lord willing we’ll start 1 Corinthians next Sunday. But my heart still burns, like the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, as it did at the beginning of the series. This Bible reading and Bible obeying project is one that connects truths, orients perspective, and motivates our work. It is an eschatology with train tracks that don’t run out.

Defining Terms

As [...]

Romans 11:11-15

August 27, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Jonathan Sarr

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The sermon starts at 16:50 in the audio file.

Or, Why You Should Live Like a Kuyperian

Download the sermon notes for “Happy Kuyperian Dispensationalism”.

The post Happy Kuyperian Dispensationalism appeared first on Trinity Evangel Church.

The post Happy Kuyperian Dispensationalism appeared first on Trinity Evangel Church.

Selected Scriptures

August 20, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 13:45 in the audio file.

Or, What is a Kuyperian Dispensationalist?

Why do we do what we do? This is a question for individuals and for groups, for me and for us. Every person does what he most wants to do, whether or not he thinks in those terms or is conscious of his intentions. We all have wants, we all have reasons, we all make choices how we will spend our resources (time, money, skills, interests, etc.). And what we believe about God’s plan for the future will shape what we believe about God’s will for today.

In history, most Dispensationalists have considered their lives, and the world, to be in a sort of throw-away category. We say catechesis matters, our lives not so much. Our lives are a vapor, as James wrote, but Dispensationalists tend to apply that to the worth of one’s life rather than the duration of it. Compared to eternity our lives on earth don’t last very long. That doesn’t make our lives here less valuable. It’s actually the opposite.

A Dispensationalist sings about how this world is not his home, he’s just a passing through, and he sings how the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of Christ’s glory and grace. A Dispensationalist runs everything through the comparative grid rather than the integrated grid (categories Joe Rigney described in his book, The Things of Earth). Compared to Jesus everything else is worthless, “there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25), but we have trouble comprehending that Jesus gave worth to what He made for us. We tend to be best at building Dispensational Bible colleges as well as walls between Denominations. We are good at seeing and criticizing and condemning sin in the culture. We major on strident apologetics and urgent evangelism and rapture fiction. We believe that Israel is still significant in God’s plans and promises, and we expect that God will work all that out on the other side of the globe. We’ll wait here, at home, in our prayer closets, and Jesus will be back to make things right at any moment.

The part about Israel is good (the rest not so much). There are great promises of God to His elect people in the Old Testament. He made great and unbreakable covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We looked specifically at the New Covenant promises to “the household of Israel,” promises to give them a new heart and the indwelling Spirit, as well as to return them to the land of their forefathers (Jeremiah 31:31-40; Ezekiel 36:22-32). Then we saw Paul’s long section of confidence in Romans 9-11. God chose the nation of Israel for Himself, He chose to save many within the nation. He also purposed for many to reject His Son for time, before He will save all of them in the future. God is faithful. He will finish what He started. While the fullness of Gentiles are grafted into salvation in Christ, the ethnic people of Israel will also be grafted back in. This what it means to be a Dispensationalist.

What does that have to do with being a Kuyperian? We took a couple weeks to consider the adjective “Kuyperian” as a nickname for a way of looking at all the world as a good gift from God. Not anything that was made was not made by Him. He sustains it, and He’s interested in it. He also made image-bearers to reflect His interests, and commissioned them to steward and build and subdue the earth. Marriage and family, medicine and technology, a father’s labor and a mother’s labor, are all ways to glorify God, not things that keep us from glorifying Him. Any created thing could become an idol, but so can Bible reading and religious service. Lots of religious people go to hell.

A Kuyperian is a Christian who acknowledges Christ’s lordship over every thumb’s-width in creation. Earthly callings are God’s idea. Presenting our bodies as living sacrifices is His choice for our response to His[...]

Selected Scriptures

August 13, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 15:15 in the audio file.

Or, What is a Dispensationalist? (Part 3)

The series is going great so far. There have been numerous conversations provoked, and brothers are treating disagreeing brothers as brothers, even if one brother temporarily thinks the other brother is an idiot, which is as brothers do. It is good to drag our thinking through Bible verses, and also to put our thinking out in public for examination and sharpening. We are not snowflakes who need trigger warnings and safe spaces. We are living sacrifices of God who come to the Word for it to cut us up into acceptable pieces. We want to please God, and that means submitting our thoughts to His.

That’s is what the series is for, to put on the table what we believe God wants us to believe and do. As a church, we are a theological mutt, holding and practicing some things in tension because we think that’s what Scripture teaches even if that means we don’t conform neatly into one denominational branch. And, for what it’s worth, when I say that all the elders believe this, I’m not saying it to distance ourselves or draw a line in the sand across which everyone else must come in order to keep fellowship. The main reason I say it is to make myself feel better that I am not the only crazy one. I vividly recall a meeting the elders had some five years ago at Carl’s Jr. when we crossed the threshold, knowing that we were headed in a different direction than any of us had preciously traveled. This series is an attempt to explain why, and sure, it’d be great to persuade a throng to see these connections. We’re getting close to being done with the series, but the crescendo is still coming.

We’ve asked, What is a Kuyperian? A Kuyperian is a Christian who acknowledges God’s sovereignty over, and interest in, both spiritual and physical life. Christ is Lord who gives grace for salvation and who gives purpose for work. “Kuyperian” is just a tag for that way of looking at the world. For the last couple weeks we’ve been working on What is a Dispensationalist? Based on a certain approach to Bible reading, a Dispensationalist acknowledges similarities, overlap, and differences between the Church and the nation of Israel. We considered the New Covenant promises in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 last week, promises of new hearts to the household of Israel and also a return to the land of their fathers. I said that the New Testament itself does not allow us to read Gentiles into that promise in a way that makes the Jews irrelevant. That’s what I want to show this morning.

Before getting to that, though, I want to deal with a phrase that is approaching the level of misreading that “judge not” in Matthew 7 gets. The phrase is found a couple places in Paul’s letters, including Galatians 3:27-29.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:27–29)

What is Paul’s concern here? It is how to be justified with God. By faith in Jesus we are part of God’s family. Everyone who is in Christ is Christ’s by faith, not according to nationality, economic status, or gender. And praise the Lord! Amen! Yet it is a category mistake to say that because everyone is saved the same way that they are the same in every way. Male and female are God-ordained, biological categories of sex that are not flattened by faith into androgyny. Both can believe. Slave and free are a different sort of category, a civil identification. It is a category that a man could cross, but not by default because of being “in Christ.” So also whether one is a Jew or a Greek depends on one’s parents. God can be your Father regardless[...]

Selected Scriptures

August 6, 2017

Evening Service

Sean Higgins

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Or, How the Reformation Changed Things for Maternity

Last fall I became very discouraged. I was reading a biography on Martin Luther when I had a watershed realization. Normally that would be a good thing, and it was good. But the discouraging part was that it took me so long in my Christian/theological/pastoral life to have this realization.

When we think about the 16th Century Protestant Reformation we think about biblical doctrine, which is right. There were some, maybe we should even say many, within the Catholic Church who recognized the serious problems within the church and who boldly spoke out about those problems. Erasmus was a reformer, a man with his eyes open to the many sins in the clergy. He wrote numerous books to point out “religious people” issues, including his Praise of Folly in which he runs the bus back and forth over priests like he’s rolling out papal pie crust.

The capital “R” Reformers started a rumpus when they started swinging an axe at the root. They observed the sinful fruit on the limbs, but they believed that it grew out of wrong doctrine.

Protestants reproached the clergy not so much for living badly as for believing badly, for teaching false and dangerous things. (Eugene F. Rice, Jr., The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559)

Luther wasn’t trying to get Catholics to live up to Catholic teachings as much as he was denying Catholic teachings.

So the solas are not extraneous. Doctrine cannot be downplayed in any attempt to explain what the Reformers were doing. And while sola Scriptura was logically necessary for sake of learning biblical doctrine, it was sola fide that became the most significant scythe cutting down the dry grass of error.

We’ve talked about sola fide a lot. Martin Luther upset continents, plural, by preaching sola fide. Whole streams of modern Evangelical churches have a different set of problems because they’ve believed sola fide for so long. We are saved by faith alone. There are no works we can do, no religious quests we can make, no payments sufficient to please God. The Son of God laid down His life and rose again on the third day. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). Believe, alone.

Doctrine, theology, propositions, sentences and adjectives (like “sola”) of truth rent the Catholic Church asunder and this was all for the sake of the gospel. We do not have to do anything to earn acceptance from God, and we couldn’t even if we wanted to, which we didn’t. Doctrine, therefore, is our lifeblood. What we believe has consequences.

But this leads to the provocation of my discouragement. I believed that what we believe has consequences, so that we cannot remain knowingly in the Catholic Church, or in any church that teaches salvation by faith plus works. What we believe has consequences, so we must defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints. What we believe has consequences, so we must love the true church which is the pillar and support of truth.

And, as the doctrine of sola fide itself teaches, you do not have to believe in sola fide to be saved, you only have to believe in Christ. As the doctrine of sola fide implies, you are not more biblical or more spiritual or more Christlike if you read the Bible more or have a job in the church. As the doctrine of sola fide implies, you don’t have to be a monk or a missionary to please God, you can be a mom, or any other lawful occupation. We are justified by faith, not by the title on our business card.

The Reformation opened doors for all sorts of work not only to be allowable for men and women but also to be glorifying to God. The doctrine of sola fide is the greatest Reformation wrecking ball to smash the wall of dualism. This is what I’d missed. I don’t think I intended to undermine what I taught about sola fide as I urged others to study the Bible more seriously and even to learn [...]