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Holiness and Sanctification

The Stingy Religious?

According to a highly publicised 2015 paper in Current Biology, children who have been brought up religiously are less generous than their religion-free peers. The good news, if you can call it that, is that only in the last couple of months and some four years after the event, it’s now reported in Psychology Today that the paper has been formally retracted (you can see the retraction here). According to a highly publicised 2015 paper in Current Biology, children who have been brought up religiously are less generous than their religion-free peers … four years after the event, the paper has been formally retracted Better late than...

Gordon Cheng

Hard Lessons About Sanctification from John Newton

Brianna McClean

Sanctification and Sin John Newton was famously familiar with grace. As a slave-trader turned clergyman, he was a living depiction of his much-beloved hymn, Amazing Grace. However, Newton’s experience of grace did not climax at conversion. In a less remembered hymn, I Asked the Lord that I Might Grow, Newton captures the tension which lies at the heart of every Christian life: sanctification and sin. Accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour demands a whole-hearted and life changing pursuit of righteousness. The Bible commands us to flee from sin and God promises to mould us into the image of Christ. How...

MA is a Warning that Mature Adults Will Take Seriously

Matthew Payne

When I was growing up I thought that TV ratings (G, PG, M, MA15+, R18+) indicated age suitability. I thought that the MA rating meant ‘this is good and healthy for people who are 15 or older’. It was only natural that I should look forward to being of the age when ‘MA’ and ‘R’ rated movies would be good and healthy things for me to watch. But that’s not what those ratings mean. At least, that’s not how Christians can possibly view them. Growing up means recognising that a lot of things are not good or healthy for anyone...

Romans 7. The Death that’s Giving Way to Life

Andrew Moody

This post is published together with Matthew Payne’s on the same question The puzzle of Romans 7 is generally posed as a simple choice between the Christian and non-Christian: how can Paul be speaking as a Christian when he speaks of being “unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin” (7:14)? Yet, how can he be a non-Christian if he “delights in God’s law”? (7:22) Notice the Dynamics But what if Romans 7 isn’t just about two states of existence but also about different dynamics at work the lives of humans? Romans 7 and 8 are clearly, in part, about different...

Romans 7 is About Christians … Sort of

Matthew Payne

The question of whether Roman 7 is about Jews, Gentiles, Christians or some other group is perennial, though the popularity of the different answers has varied over the years. Here we publish two arguments for the current minority opinion that Paul’s comments include his experience as a Christian. This article by Matthew Payne (which is the beginning of a miniseries), argues that Romans 7 is part of a now-and-not-yet tension seen throughout Romans 6-8. The second article by Andrew Moody arrives at similar conclusions through thinking about the meaning of life and death in Romans 7 and 8. Christians have...

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