Blogs:
- Perseverance and “False Faith” – Sam Storms
- Primer on Perseverance – Sam Storms
- A Defense of the Perseverance of the Saints Part 1 – Sam Storms
- A Defense of the Perseverance of the Saints Part 2 – Sam Storms
This question has perplexed—and distressed—believers for centuries. When faced with our sin and shortcomings, sometimes we’re tempted to conclude that we’ve strayed too far and that God no longer loves us.
In Kept for Jesus, pastor Sam Storms addresses common concerns that Christians have related to their eternal security, offering hope and assurance from the Bible. Examining every New Testament passage that speaks to this important issue, this book charts a biblical course between those who say that Christians can lose their salvation and those who carelessly declare, “Once saved, always saved.”
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One of the ambitious dreams that Reclaiming Adoption and its authors share with the Apostle Paul is that when Christians hear the word “adoption,” they will think first about their adoption by God. As it now stands, Christians usually think first about the adoption of children. Reclaiming Adoption sets out to change this situation by providing breathtaking views of God’s love for and delight in His children—views that will free you to live boldly in this world from God’s acceptance, not in order to gain it. Reclaiming Adoption begins by examining Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son because it ultimately puts God the Father’s love on display—a love that embraces the younger son with uninhibited joy (Luke 15:20) and goes out to entreat the self-righteous older son to come join the celebration (Luke 15:28). Reclaiming Adoption believes that behind the Parable of the Prodigal Son(s) is Scripture’s teaching on adoption. The story of the Bible is that God the Father sent His only true and eternal Son on a mission, and that mission was to bring many wayward and rebellious sons home to glory (Hebrews 2:10), to adopt them into His family. That is the Story behind the story of the Prodigal Sons. That is the only story that gives our stories any meaning or significance. Dan Cruver and his co-authors are convinced that if Christians learn to first think about their adoption by God, and only then about the adoption of children, they will enjoy deeper communion with the God who is love, and experience greater missional engagement with the pain and suffering of this world. That’s what this book is about. What the orphan, the stranger, and the marginalized in our world need most is churches that are filled with Christians who live daily in the reality of God’s delight in them. Reclaiming Adoption can transform the way you view and live in this world for the glory of God and the good of our world’s most needy.
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The relationship between God and his people is understood in various ways by the biblical writers, and it is arguably the apostle Paul who uses the richest vocabulary. Unique to Paul’s writings is the term huiothesia, the process or act of being “adopted as son(s).” It occurs five times in three of his letters, where it functions as a key theological metaphor. In this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume, Trevor Burke argues that huiothesia has been misunderstood, misrepresented or neglected through scholarly preoccupation with its cultural background. He redresses the balance in this comprehensive study, which discusses metaphor theory; explores the background to huiothesia; considers the roles of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; examines the moral implications of adoption, and its relationship with honor; and concludes with the consequences for Christian believers as they live in the tension between the “now” and the “not yet” of their adoption into God’s new family. Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.
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