All articles in category Guest column

By Paul Smith

Article

June 2019

Articles > Guest column

How I am is not who I am

Struggling for the right words, the prop forward tried to answer the question. Talking about his feelings obviously didn’t come easily. ‘I really loved my wife and children’ he said, ‘but then I started to have these urges – and I had to be true to my urges’. The BBC interviewer obviously approved – he did not ask why. The media believes ‘who I am’ is who I feel I am. And since my strongest feelings are sexual, I must define myself by my sexual urges. Not to act to gratify these urges is repression, a denial of who I am. But as Christians we...

By Dan Peters

Article

May 2019

Articles > Guest column

Christian liberty

In different ways the Christian has been set free. Supremely, we are free in relation to sin. Sin made us debtors to divine justice, but Christ has paid the price. Sin made us incapable of godly behaviour, but Christ has renewed our hearts. This liberation from sin is the heart of the gospel. But there is another type of liberty that belongs to the Christian. John Calvin wrote of ‘The liberty of the consciences of believers, which ought to be laid under no obligation in things that are not necessary’ (Institutes, III.xix.3). Of course, this liberty of conscience is not absolute. We are under Christ’s...

By Dan Peters

Article

March 2019

Articles > Guest column

Humour in the Bible

Different parts of the Bible affect us in different ways. Reading Isaiah 6, we tremble before the majesty of the transcendent Lord. Studying the New Testament passion narratives, we are moved by the sight of our suffering Saviour. Poring over the book of Revelation, our minds reel at this kaleidoscope of lurid imagery. But there is another response which Scripture can evoke. There are passages which make us smile. We may even at times find ourselves chuckling. Why is that? The Bible is not a piece of light entertainment. It is the weightiest of books, dealing with the most serious matters of all. Why then,...

By Mark Thomas

Article

February 2019

Articles > Guest column

Healthy Christianity: Transformed Life and Conduct

In previous articles we have been looking at the importance of balance in the Christian life, following the lead of William Williams, Pantycelyn (1717-91) who wrote a letter at the end of his life in which he said, ‘I have come to see that true religion consists of three parts: first true light respecting the plan of salvation; … [second] intimate fellowship with God … Lastly, … life and conduct, such as would reveal to the ungodly that there is a great difference between us and them’. This month, I want us to consider the third element Williams identifies, the practical character of the Christian...

By Mark Thomas

Article

December 2018

Articles > Guest column

Healthy Christianity

Christianity is to affect the whole of life, and one of the great dangers Christians face is that of imbalance. They must always be on the lookout not to overemphasise some things and underemphasise others. Church history teaches us that imbalances not corrected can lead Christians away from the faith altogether. If Christianity is predominantly in our heads (intellectual understanding of the faith), with little emphasis on the heart (what we experience and feel) or hands (how we live from day to day), then we are in danger of a dry or dead orthodoxy. Balance If we overemphasise experience and feeling, it can lead to...

By Andy Young

Article

November 2018

Articles > Guest column

The means of grace (3)

When you are weak in your faith, where do you go for strength? When you are discouraged, what are your sources of encouragement? When you doubt, struggle and need God’s help, when and where and how do you find it? Our world, and even the church, offers many and varied solutions to our problems: self-help therapy; entertainment; mindfulness; family and friends; Charismatic experiences. We could go on. Some of these may help, yet many either offer only a sticking plaster to our deeply felt problems, or are just so un-biblical as to be dangerous. The triune God has clearly given us the ‘means’ by which...

By Andy Young

Article

October 2018

Articles > Guest column

GUEST COLUMN: The means of grace (2): baptism and the Lord’s Supper

Have you met with God recently? Did you enjoy his presence and bask in his glory? Was your faith strengthened as Christ himself ministered to your needs? Would you even know where to go to find these things? Or perhaps you have given up looking for that elusive experience of God that evangelical Christianity so craves? Maybe that sensational personal encounter with Christ, so prized in many church circles today, is something you despair of ever having? The reality is that God continues to speak to us, and Christ can easily be found and experienced. The problem is that we are looking for him in...

By Edgar Andrews

Article

August 2018

Articles > Guest column

GUEST COLUMN: A wide open door

In the two previous Guest Columns, I extended C. H. Spurgeon’s famous caged-lion allegory by suggesting that freeing the lion (the Bible) to defend itself involves three steps. We must: (1) find the key to the cage door (adopt a biblical doctrine of Scripture); (2) lubricate the door hinges (employ biblical apologetics and argumentation, as did Christ and his apostles); and (3) open the door wide enough for the lion to get out. The problem with lions is that you can’t let them out of a cage paw-by-paw. It has to be the whole lion or nothing. Opening the door just a little won’t work....

By Edgar Andrews

Article

July 2018

Articles > Guest column

GUEST COLUMN: Oiling the hinges of the lion’s cage

C. H. Spurgeon famously likened the Bible to a caged lion. To defend it, he said, all we need to do is let it out. But this requires us to open the cage door, and that is no trivial task. Last month (extending Spurgeon’s allegory) I suggested that to open the door involves three steps; (1) we must find the key; (2) we must oil the hinges; and (3) we must open the door wide enough for the lion to get out. In the first Guest Column we saw that the key is the Bible’s own doctrine of Scripture, namely, that ‘all scripture is breathed...

By Edgar Andrews

Article

June 2018

Articles > Guest column

GUEST COLUMN: Spurgeon and the caged lion

Asked how he would defend the Bible, C. H. Spurgeon famously likened it to a caged lion. He declared: ‘Open the door and let the lion out; he will take care of himself … He no sooner goes forth in his strength than his assailants flee. The way to meet infidelity is to spread the Bible. The answer to every objection against the Bible is the Bible’ (at British and Foreign Bible Society meeting, 5 May 1875). Let me say immediately that I agree totally with the great preacher, but his wisdom is misapplied if we respond with passive inaction when the Bible comes under...

By Michael Reeves

Article

May 2018

Articles > Guest column

GUEST COLUMN: A Christ-centred pastor

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a man who went at all of life full-on. He laughed and cried much; he read avidly and felt deeply; he was a zealously industrious worker and a sociable lover of play and beauty. Christ and the Bible Spurgeon was soaked in scripture. You can pick almost any sermon — and most of his letters — to prove the point: scriptural images, idioms, and references crowd Spurgeon’s every paragraph and seemed to spill out of him in an entirely natural and unforced way. It was really the natural consequence of having the highest and warmest view of the Bible. For Spurgeon,...

By Michael Reeves

Article

April 2018

Articles > Guest column

GUEST COLUMN: A man full of life

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a man who went at all of life full-on. He laughed and cried much; he read avidly and felt deeply; he was a zealously industrious worker and a sociable lover of play and beauty. He was, in other words, a man who embodied the truth that to be in Christ means to be made ever more roundly human, more fully alive. Mr Great Heart It takes no great insight to see that Spurgeon in his ministry was a big-hearted man of deep affections. His printed sermons and lectures still throb with passion. At times the emotional freight of his sermon would...