According to Paul, justification by faith is not merely about me and my personal salvation. It’s about us and our covenantal status in fellowship with one another.

It is a sad truth that wherever Jesus is setting people free with God's unconditional love, there will always be individuals who feel it is their God-ordained mission to pull them back into bondage. Paul says you can identify these “false brethren” by the fact that they seek to “compel” others with their views.

Are You Kidding Me?

As Paul opens his letter to the Galatians, it is evident that he is fired up, even angry. Something terrible is happening to people he loves dearly and has led to Christ, and he hits the issue head-on. Along the way, he reminds them that Christ, by His death, launched a new Exodus for the whole world and it is utter foolishness to turn back.

Is God a Control Freak?

If there’s one thing Almighty God does not want, it’s control. Within the biblical narrative, NO only exists for the sake of YES. All of God's prohibitions are actually promises pointing to better things.

Let’s not pretend there aren’t hard things in the Old Testament. What’s with God telling the Israelites to conquer the Canaanites and kill everything that breathes? Some have interpreted this as genocide. Is that really what’s going on here?

Is God a Sadistic Monster?

We all know that torture is wrong. We regard a person as evil if they deliberately inflict physical pain on another human being. And yet, the popular Christian doctrine of Hell claims God subjects countless people to torture for all eternity. In this message we discover that the Bible teaches no such thing.

Is God an Arbitrary Tyrant?
The answer, according to popular Christian doctrine is, Yes. It is not surprising that so many thinking and feeling people have turned away from Christianity. The horrific combination of predestination and eternal torment has driven many people straight in to atheism.

Often, the first thing that comes to a person’s mind when they think of God is “power,” by which they usually mean extreme force of might. Yes, God is powerful. But almost all bad theology begins with power as the main thing about God. Jesus came into the world to completely reframe the power of God.

Why does God tell us to worship Him, praise Him, exalt Him? Seriously, what’s that all about? Is God insecure? Does He have a fragile ego? Does He need to be told how great He is for His sake? Or is there something deeper going on here?

In our third and final part the Life and Death series we see that the line that separates the living from the dead is blurrier than it at first appears. Incredibly, according to Scripture, there are those that are alive and yet are already dead; too, there are those that appear to be dead, but whom God regards as quite alive! A little confused? Watch this concluding sermon and you won’t be.