As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“There is more to our union than just receiving our justification. But there would also be no justification upon the believer in Christ is there was not this deep and close intimate union between Jesus and the believer that is established by God. I am in Christ and Christ is in me.” - Ref21
“…there is one kind of review that I have especially wished for, a review that is both 1) academic and 2) critical. One such review has indeed been published, and the author, Dr. Jeffrey Riddle, was kind enough to share it with me. I wish to respond to Riddle’s review” - Mark Ward
“If our identity is riding on our differences with other believers, we will tend to major in the study of differences. We may even find ourselves looking for faults in others in order to define ourselves.” - TGC
The questions I’ve raised above are not ivory tower speculations. I believe these questions are important to answer if we are to understand fully the implications Christ’s temptation as well as his victory over temptation for you and me. Consider the following three points of practical application:
Some Christians have always been troubled by God’s command to the Israelites to kill all the pagan inhabitants of the Promised Land. Moses ordered the people to “devote them to complete destruction,” (Deut 7:2). Why would God do this? Where’s the mercy? Where’s the love?
There are at least two reasons why God did this.
First, God did it because of the terrible sins of the pagan nations
“Distributing Bibles in the US has also grown more difficult. The number of hotels accepting Bibles has dropped about 20 percentage points over the past decade…. Apart from that, according to Heighway, the Gideons are in a period of “refocusing and rebalancing” the ministry.” - CToday
“Perhaps instead of insisting on the use of a particular word [complemenetarian], if we are really interested in knowing what someone believes about the role of husbands, women elders, or plumb colored pants, we should simply ask.” - Ref21
“…the difficulty of discovering some truths ought not blind us to the preponderance of evidence. Anecdotally—which is the first step of empiricism, and was the only step available before the scientific revolution—marijuana produces potheads, dropouts, deadbeats. Empirically, Berenson shows that in many people marijuana does something worse.” - Mark Ward
Discussion