The Gospel Pt.6 - What do you tell a person do to become a Christian?
The answer to this might seem very easy to some people. The Arminian might respond, “Repeat the words of this simple prayer after me”, or “Just ask Jesus into your heart”. Others might say, “If someone is not a Christian, then they are dead in trespasses and sins and so can’t do anything”. I believe what Jesus said in John 6:44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” But on the other hand Jesus very frequently told people to come to him, implying that this choice was available to them. We have to maintain the tension between: on the one hand that God is sovereign, sal

The Gospel Pt.5 - How do we Preach Repentance Today?
The command to repent is right at the core of the Gospel message preached in the New Testament, but repentance sits very ill with today’s self-righteous society. Three possible approaches are: Concentrate on preaching to those with obvious moral failings Spend time going into more and more detail about the required perfection in our thought life etc. Edit repentance out of our Gospel Unwilling to limit the gospel to the obviously immoral (a), to focus on moralism (b) or to change the Gospel (c), I want to find a way of convicting people of their most important sin—failure to love and acknowledge God as their creator and

Gospel Pt.4 - Should we give our testimony instead of preaching the Gospel?
Paul is arrested in Jerusalem by the Roman soldiers. As he is being carried away he says to the captain, “I beg you, permit me to speak to the people.” (Acts 21:39) Remarkably, Paul is given permission. “Paul, standing on the steps, motioned with his hand to the people. And when there was a great hush, he addressed them in the Hebrew language, saying:” What will he say? Now is his opportunity to preach Christ and him crucified. …but no! Instead, Paul gives his testimony!! What on earth was he thinking? I recently listened to a podcast from

The Gospel Pt3 - The Preaching of Paul to Pagans
We have several detailed accounts of Paul preaching the Gospel. It is very interesting to see how different his message is when he is preaching to pagan Gentiles as compared with his message to Jews. The two occasions are: Acts 14:8-20 at Lystra Acts 17:16-34 at Athens It is quite remarkable how similar these two sermons are. I have laid the two passages out in parallel here: Paul preaching to pagan Gentiles--Acts 14 and 17 laid out in parallel. Here are some observations: Both contexts describe an idolatry that