Articles

The words we say indicate what’s on our minds. Prayer probes even deeper, revealing what is going on not only in our minds but also in our hearts. As our use of money and time tell something of our priorities, so, too, do our prayers.

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The Scriptures sing a number of melodic lines about Jesus. John Calvin identified three in particular as the munus triplex,¹ the threefold dimension of our Lord’s ministry: Jesus is Prophet, declaring God’s glory; He is Priest, intervening to make atonement for sin; and He is King, ruling over God’s kingdom. The third of these—Jesus as the Divine King who governs His church and exercises “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18)—is a particular source of encouragement to Christians.

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For many, the nativity is an isolated scene in the biblical story, more familiar as holiday décor than as Holy Scripture. It’s like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle bearing the partial image of a baby in a manger: Few seem to know where it fits into the picture of the Bible’s commands and promises, let alone human history. Instead, it has been framed on its own, sentimentalized as a moral lesson about feeding the homeless, putting coins in the red kettle, and just trying to make a difference—“because, after all, isn’t giving and working together what Christmas is all about?”

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An old story is told about Brooke Foss Westcott, the last bishop of Durham in the nineteenth century. One of his clerical friends was traveling on a train and was asked by a Salvation Army officer, “Are you saved?” Curious to know how Bishop Westcott would have responded, the friend relayed the question. The bishop paused, smiled, and essentially answered, “Do you mean have I been saved, am I being saved, or will I be saved?”¹

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History records the rise and fall of countless principalities and empires. Take Winston Churchill as a somewhat recent example. During the Second World War, the prime minister enjoyed 83 percent approval of the people. By July of 1945, two months after the war ended, he and his Conservative Party experienced a crushing defeat. Swept out of power, their reign was over.

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What God begins, He completes. Paul said so in Philippians 1:6: “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” We ought not to look for comfort in ourselves and our ability to remain faithful. Rather, we can look to the preserving power of God, who causes us to persevere.

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The Bible teaches that the fear of the Lord is the basis for true wisdom (Ps. 111:10; Prov. 1:7; 9:10). Fearing God is the pathway into wisdom, the gate through which we walk to become wise.

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The epistle of Jude begins with an urgent message: “I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Because of the danger of false teachers who had “crept in unnoticed” to “pervert the grace of our God into sensuality” (v. 4), the believers to whom Jude wrote needed to be vigilant and active, exalting the truth and rejecting falsehood.

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Often in the New Testament, the apostles manage to summarize the beauty of the Gospel in only a few words. When they do, they give us ideal passages for meditation and memorization, and they provide us fuel for evangelism.

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We live in a largely self-absorbed world, and with that self-absorption inevitably comes a low view of God. While it’s not incapable of occasional flashes of altruism, ultimately, fallen humanity is imprisoned inside its own ego. Rather than living to the praise of God’s glory, we live to the praise of our own.

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