Author: Fred Sanders
-
MeowsyLand Chronicles II: Bird Tuesday
Once upon a time in Meowsyland, the cat a-meows-ment park, the cats members were making a plan to eat some birds. They were all cats, you know, and cats love to eat birds. Suddenly, a tiny bird flew up and landed right in front of the main entrance to Meowsyland. “Chirp,” he said. That’s bird…
-
Hark! The Herald Angels… do they sing?
Christmas carols are usually pretty reliable teachers of theology. Of the sacred songs that we tend to hear a lot around Christmas time, we have a lot of great doctrine to sing in “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Joy to the World,” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Lift your voice with Watts and Wesley…
-
Popular Mechanics 1905
If you’re like me, you’re about 100 years behind the curve on understanding technology. Sure, you can make all the latest electronic doo-dads beep and hum and chug, but when you have to actually explain their functioning, you start sounding superstitious. “I touch the magic spot twice, and the machine knows what I want somehow,…
-
Assurance: Anchored in Jehovah
Believers should have confident assurance of their salvation, but on what grounds? I’ve explored several options and have commended a richly trinitarian understanding of salvation as the ultimate basis of assurance. Confidence in God and his salvation rests in intelligent belief in the Trinity. The reason for this is that, to put it as concisely…
-
MeowsyLand Chronicles: Snow Monday
Once upon a time in Meowsyland, the cat a-meows-ment park known as “The Meowiest Place on Earth,” the cats members were all getting ready for a very busy day. Stripey was the Mayor of Meowsyland, with a big office on Meown Street. He was also the Sheriff and the President. He was also the Boss…
-
Trinitarian Soteriology and Assurance
To have a proper confidence in salvation, believers don’t need to muster up greater and great conviction. Instead, we need deeper insight into what salvation is. When we understand our salvation thoroughly enough, conviction and assurance take care of themselves. An adequate doctrine of salvation —a soteriology— needs to be located first of all in…
-
White Lab Coat Syndrome
“Have you ever heard of the ‘white lab coat syndrome,’ Dave? It’s what happens when people like you step outside their area of expertise. You’re a scientist, so you have authority only when you speak as a scientist. But when you speak as a sociologist or a political psychologist, you have no more authority than…
-
Assurance of Election and Justification
Read Part One here. You can’t get assurance of salvation just by insisting ever more loudly that you are assured, or that the church or the Bible or God’s promise or God’s character assure you. All those appeals to authorities as objective grounds of assurance fail to establish a point of contact with the person…
-
How Assurance of Salvation Works
The doctrine of assurance can be slippery. Even among those Protestant evangelical traditions that have recognized the necessity of formulating a doctrine of assurance that answers to the biblical witness about faith’s confidence, there has long been a candid acknowledgement that the doctrine must simultaneously face two opposite directions. It must assure me that I,…
-
Creation from Dust: A Dialogue
A dialogue overheard between two school children, earlier this year. It is slightly abbreviated, especially around the singing part, but otherwise verbatim. Only one of the children is mine. Girl: You are made of dust. Boy: No I’m not. Girl: You don’t believe the Bible! Adam was made of dust. Boy: But Eve was made…
-
A Fight to the Death with His Own Conscience: Nietzsche
“I can write in letters which make even the blind see,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the influential German philosopher who interpreted modern life as the murder of God. Nietzsche worried that the very people who had spent the nineteenth century driving God out of their worldviews were failing to draw the necessary conclusions. “If God…
-
Sermon: The Trinity in Romans
A couple of weeks ago I preached at my home church, Grace Evangelical Free Church in La Mirada. We had just completed a months-long series that had taken us through the whole book of Romans, and were finishing up with a few sermons on big topics in Romans that required us to look at the…