Topic Archives: God

The following was first published in the Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 6, no. 1 (2001): 21-23. It can be found on the Grace to You website here, and was first republished on the Banner website on March 1, 2000. Near the end of his life, Augustine of Hippo meticulously reviewed everything he had […]

What would you say is the fundamental doctrine of the Christian Faith? For many of us, the instinctive answer would be, ‘justification by faith alone, in Christ alone’. There is no doubt, or should be no doubt, that this is a biblical and evangelical fundamental. Didn’t Martin Luther describe justification by faith alone, in Christ […]

One of the remarkable features of the early church was its preoccupation with the doctrine of God. Initially the concern of men like Athanasius (300-371) was to establish and defend the deity of Christ against men like Arius who taught that Jesus was a creature. Athanasius understood that if Jesus was not God in the […]

The following is excerpted from The Incomparableness of God by George Swinnock, which the Banner publishes as a Puritan Paperback, and which appears in Volume 4 of Swinnock’s Works. The incomparableness of God in his being. It is from itself, for itself, and wholly independent. The incomparableness of the divine being will appear in several […]

The following sermon, published as ‘The Personality of the Holy Ghost’, was delivered on Sabbath morning, January 21, 1855, by the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark. ‘And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth; […]

The following sermon, on the immutability of God, was delivered on Sabbath morning, January 7th, 1855, by the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark. ‘I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.’—Malachi 3:6. IT has been said by some one that ‘the proper study of […]

That supreme reverence for the glory of God which prompted Jesus to regard not his life dear unto him, provided his Father’s honour were maintained, must be the dominant principle of action in every Christian heart. The Divine character must be sacred in our eyes. The jealousy which the prophet Elijah expressed for the Lord […]

We remarked in an earlier article that contemporary evangelical theology has, to a significant extent, affirmed a view known as the eternal subordination or submission of the Son. This is sometimes abbreviated to the acronym ESS or alternatively, EFS, the eternal functional subordination of the Son. We previously looked at the teaching of Scripture in […]

Contemporary evangelical theology has recently, to varying degrees, affirmed a view known as subordinationism. This is the view that, within the Godhead itself, the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father. It is the purpose of this article to look at what Scripture tells us about the relationship within the Godhead between the Father and […]

It is now over sixty years since Professor John Murray, in his 1955 Peyton Lectures, later published in Principles of Conduct (IVP, London, 1957), spoke of the ‘eclipse of the fear of God’. It was such he said that ‘we have become reluctant to distinguish the earnest and consistent believer as God-fearing’. If that was […]

‘But God,’ -Ephesians 2:4a. God spoke and all things came into being. He gave freedom for man and woman to eat of any tree in the Garden of Eden except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve was deceived and Adam deliberately disobeyed God. And then death came upon all mankind, […]

According to Romans 1:18-21 everyone born into this world, including you the reader, knows that there is a God. But many people attempt to suppress these thoughts about God. Here Romans says: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since […]

‘. . . he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the sins of Israel.’ -Numbers 25:13 ‘Beginning in 1776, adultery was illegal in America. That ended in 2003 with the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas. That took two hundred and twenty-seven years. From 2003, homosexual marriage continued to be illegal […]

There are ultimately only two voices in the world – the voice of truth and the voice of the lie. We can trace the origin of the great divide back to the Garden of Eden. God is the God of truth and communicated Himself through His Word. The Word created all things, including man in […]

Introduction In addressing what are called ‘the Great Heresies,’ it is important for us to recall that heresies usually represent what Alister McGrath has called ‘a failed attempt at orthodoxy,’ (Heresy [London, SPCK, 2009] p. 13) an attempt to make sense of the Bible that fails to take into account the full richness of the […]