Christ is the head of all (Jew, Gentile, bond, free, male, female, living, or dead), Scripture is profitable for all (2 Tim. 3:16-17), and Satan is the common enemy of all. But once a man is saved, he is not to live his life independent from all other believers under the so-called impulse of the... Continue Reading

“I’ve been delegated to synod four times now, and each time increasingly feels like war,” pastor and Abide clerk Aaron Vriesman wrote after Synod 2023. “The CRC’s existential crisis has been building for some time. Each synod is a battle of opposing visions for the CRC, with diametrically opposing values. While synodical sermons trumpet Christian unity and... Continue Reading

Therapeutic treatment for mental conditions involves interaction with one’s sadness, whatever may have caused it. In group therapy, patients listen and theorize with others about their sadness. In individual therapy, patients rehearse their own sadness, often for months and even years at a time. In both cases, the focus is on looking within. This, Shrier... Continue Reading

Search engine companies such as Google have claimed that such SEME is not possible, and they seek to operate with transparency for the processes that inform their search engine algorithms. The chances are high that search engine companies do their best to operate in a fair and transparent manner. Nevertheless, this doesn’t preclude or eliminate... Continue Reading

We must tell them our stories—the real ones: both victories and failures, joys and sorrows, and how God taught us through these things. As appropriate, we need to tell them how God taught us when we struggled with sin, faced depression, failed the Lord. They need to hear about the ways God helped us through... Continue Reading

When we stand before the Lord, there is only one to whom we will point for our acceptance before God: Jesus Christ. He fulfilled the law that we could not, paid our debt on the cross, and credits his righteousness to our account. Even when we experience significant sanctification in this life through the work... Continue Reading

Over the past two years, these allegations have mushroomed into a much broader battle between warring factions within the ARP – with some accusing the denomination’s leadership of opportunistically exploiting the situation to seize control of Second Presbytery, purportedly in contravention of the ARP’s governing constitution.   The Second Presbytery of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian (ARP) church... Continue Reading

Councils may and do err because human leaders “stumble in many ways” (James 3:2). Even the apostles made poor decisions (e.g. Mark 10:13–16; Luke 9:49, 50). The conclusions of assemblies “are to be received with reverence and submission” only “if consonant to the Word of God.” There is some tension here. Not every side will... Continue Reading

How should we wage battle in the war on lies? As in everything, we must follow Jesus’s lead. First John 3:8 tells us, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” Jesus came to destroy the work of the Devil, and the work of the Devil is spreading... Continue Reading

A Christian account of beauty is shaped not primarily by envisioning a return to a paradise lost, but rather anticipating a glory yet to appear—a glory or beauty already seen in Jesus Christ but that is being spread about through the Holy Spirit. The beauty we discern now is a preview, given by the Spirit,... Continue Reading