Author: Jojo Agot

Pastor at Victory. Faculty and adviser at Every Nation Leadership Institute (ENLI). MA in Theology and Mission at Every Nation Seminary.

Dumbstruck

“If you really understand Reformed theology, we should all just sit around shaking our heads going, ‘It’s unbelievable. Why would God choose any of us?’ You are so amazed by grace, you’re not picking a fight with anyone, you’re just crying tears of amazement that should lead to a heart for lost people, that God does indeed save, when he doesn’t have to save anybody.”

—Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed

Ministry Qualifications

In 1 Tim 3:2, Paul insists on an elder’s holiness in five major life categories: public, marital, family, personal and doctrinal. Paul sums up these areas with two words: above reproach. This is Paul’s way of saying that the elder should have no loopholes in his character.

Being above reproach means you have an unimpeachable character, but it doesn’t mean you are flawless. There’s a difference between having a bad day and having a bad year; the elder should live in such a way as to be accusation-free and without any sustained or legitimate patterns of sin. 

—A Guide to Expository Ministry

Analogia Fidei

Analogia Fidei is a principle of biblical interpretation which supposes that since the Scripture has one Author, it cannot contradict itself and therefore, the primary interpreter of Scripture is the Scripture itself. The Westminster Confession states:

The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.

Charles Hodge concurs. In his book Systematic Theology, he wrote:

“If the Scriptures be what they claim to be, the word of God, they are the work of one mind, and that mind divine. From this it follows that Scripture cannot contradict Scripture. God cannot teach in one place anything which is inconsistent with what He teaches in another. Hence Scripture must explain Scripture. If a passage admits of different interpretations, that only can be the true one which agrees with what the Bible teaches elsewhere on the same subject.”

The principle is taken from Romans 12:6 (kata tes analogian tes pisteos- “according to the analogy of the faith”).

My Only Comfort in Life and Death

The Heidelberg Catechism Introduction:

What is thy only comfort in life and death?

That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

The Cause of Biblical Illiteracy

Dan Dumas on expository preaching:

Many churches aren’t getting expository preaching from the pulpit. This is a primary cause for the epidemic of biblical illiteracy in the pews. Preachers aren’t teaching the Bible, and they’re not teaching their people how to read it and study it for themselves. Not surprisingly, people grow disinterested in the Bible.

Faithful, expository preaching is instead being replaced with whatever scratches the itching ears of our self-centered, consumerist culture. Ironically, this pursuit of relevance has achieved just the opposite. People don’t see the immediate impact that the Bible has on their lives because preachers are too busy trying to chase the bankrupt idol that is relevance.

Why has expository preaching been exchanged for this pragmatism? Because it’s hard work. It takes serious commitment to spend time studying week in and week out, praying through the text, allowing it to marinate the preacher’s own soul, spending time in the original languages, trying to place himself in the first century and reading the insights of men past and present with more wisdom than he. Continue reading The Cause of Biblical Illiteracy