Tag Jesus
Don't Wait for the Rebuke: Repent and Confess Your Sin
There are many reasons Christians don’t rebuke one another. But perhaps the one that runs deepest is that we just want people to like us. We fear coming across as...
Christian, Pray to the Lord of the Harvest
Last year I attended a conference for African Presbyterians. It was a privilege to meet brothers and sisters from around the continent, and hear how God’s gospel is gaining ground...
Social Justice as Obedience to God
You don’t polish the brass on a sinking ship. Though only a few Christians would explicitly say that, many implicitly endorse it in the way that they think and speak...
Words of Eternal Life
After a particularly challenging sermon during Jesus’ earthly ministry we are told, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (John 6:66). Some of Jesus’ followers...
Jesus' Resurrection and the Christian Life
Though the reference eludes me, C. S. Lewis once wrote, “A man can't always be defending the truth; there must be a time to feed on it.” In the past...
Doodle: Did Jesus Decriminalise Sex Work?
Just over a year ago, Central Methodist Mission (CMM), in partnership with a local organisation for sex workers, printed and hung a large yellow banner that read: ‘Jesus was the...
Thank God for the Old Testament
Habakkuk opens with a question, “O LORD, how long shall I cry out for help and you will not hear?” But I imagine many people were asking another question as...
Can I be Friends with Girls?
Let me start this post with two short anecdotes. Firstly, a couple of years ago I was rebuked by an older Christian man in my church after he saw me...
The Wickedness of Word of Faith
We have written about evil, darkness, and sin at Rekindle, but last week I encountered first hand an evil that both broke my heart and enraged me. A friend in...
Doodle: Constantine, the Caesars, and Jesus Christ
Last week I posted an article on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I argued that the birth of the early Christian church is more than a historical peculiarity, for it...
How the Early Church Proves the Resurrection
In her most recent novel, Lila, Marilynne Robinson draws back the curtain on a character who, though present in her previous two novels, Gilead and Home, has remained fairly mysterious....
What Easter Teaches Us About Prayer
Timothy Keller muses, in Prayer, “It is remarkable that in all of his writings Paul’s prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances. It is certain...
The Holy Spirit's Ministry and Jesus' Humanity
If you share a similar Christian tradition to me then I am sure you that have heard comments akin to these about the Holy Spirit, “He is the shy...
The Pharisees According to Jesus
Last year I wrote a three part series on the Pharisees, prompted by my frustration at how the Pharisees are often portrayed in teaching and writing. My appeal throughout the...
Doodle: Pharisees versus Prophets
Being passionate about literature I often attempt to pull threads of thought through multiple works. I realise that occasionally the result of this is that my writing resembles little more...
Good Friday: The Cry of Dereliction
The day had turned to dark, long before the sun set, as Jesus Christ hung on the cross. His enduring faith in his Father in heaven had brought him to...
Holy Week: What Lies Ahead
'The hardest action to take is the course previously unexplored.’ That is a line from William Horwood’s Duncton Quest, an epic tale about heroic perseverance amidst tragedy and hopeless circumstances....
Christ's Temptation and Our Own
I recently posted on Jesus’ temptation in Matthew’s Gospel and argued that the event showed Satan offering Jesus means other than the cross of becoming the Messiah; signified Jesus’ overthrow...
Was Jesus Really Tempted?
In the last post Graham began a series on Jesus' temptation in Matthew. In it, he claimed that "Jesus was truly tempted, because the task set before him was overwhelmingly...
Matthew: The Temptation of Christ
At his baptism, Jesus is called God’s “beloved Son” (Matthew 3:17), he is then partnered by the Holy Spirit and sent into the wilderness to be tempted (4:1). Having been...
Authenticity in Strange Places
I recently moved office and in the process uncovered my copy A. N. Wilson’s Paul: The Mind of the Apostle. In this imaginative biography, replete with dogmatic scepticism, Wilson plies...
Why Acts? Luke's Purpose for Writing the Sequel
What are we to make of the book of Acts? There is no other book like it in the New Testament, bridging the Gospels and the Epistles. Most agree that...
Does Barabbas' Release Illustrate Substitution?
‘When Jesus is held back for execution and Barabbas is set free we have a wonderful picture of substitution.’ Have you heard that before? I have. Perhaps you have even...
Doodle: 'He's not Safe, but He's Good'
The number of times I have heard that line from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the pulpit defies reason. I say this namely because I cannot remember a...
How Literary Criticism has Damaged Our View of the Gospels
I few months back I posted lauding literary criticism, propounded specifically by Old Testament scholar Robert Alter. Those posts might have given the impression that literary criticism is faultless, perhaps...
Who is the Son of God?
Not a bad question if you live in the first century. Most Christians today will tell you without hesitating that the answer to that question is Jesus. What's interesting is...
Andrew Heard's Challenging Points from Generate
A few weeks ago I attended Generate, a church planting conference for leaders and pastors in South Africa. Our speaker was Andrew Heard, senior minister of EV Church and the...
The Christ Event and True Christmas Spirit
In his classic work, Knowing God, Packer writes that the incarnation is the greatest mystery of the Christian faith. Referring to John 1:14, he says that at the first Christmas the...
Luke's Innocent Jesus: A Point From Repetition
Six times in Luke 23 the author wants us to see that Jesus really was innocent, and this comes from the lips of four different people. Three times Pilate states...
The road to Emmaus and all the things concerning Christ...
The adventures of leaving theological training to starting in full time church ministry present to me familiar challenges that my three years of training could not solve. And one such...
How can God become King? The Son of God and Jesus Christ
Recently I reread N.T. Wright’s small but helpful book on worship, For All God’s Worth. This practically rich and theologically thought-provoking book was written when Wright was the Dean of...
Yeshua and the Crowd
Reposted from the blog of Francis Spufford's book "Unapologetic" Daylight finds him in a procession again, but this time no one could mistake him for a king. He’s stumbling along under...
The Victory of Christ over Demons in the African Worldview
“He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it...
An Exhortation to Emptying
It was Jonathan Edwards in his “Religious Affections” who said that, “holy desire, exercised in longings, hungerings, and thirstings after God and holiness, is often mentioned in Scripture as an...
Jesus and the Answer to Jehovah's Witnesses
Colourful booklets and smart attire make it easy for the person on the other side of the spyhole to figure out that the pair standing outside the door is a...
