The beginning of Isaiah is like the whole book in miniature. On its surface, the book is a tale of one city, Jerusalem. The first half is about Jerusalem in her rebellious stage, and the second half is about Jerusalem in her redeemed stage. But the people of Jerusalem are a picture of all God’s people. And what transforms the city is the gospel—the good news of how God saves his people, through...
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27 In Genesis 1:26, after the creation of the world and all that is in it, God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” That’s a very big deal, and the implications of our being created in the image of God (Imago Dei) are many and profound. It’s the reason every...
Are you feeling displaced? That’s often what it feels like to be a Christian in an increasingly post-Christian world. You speak the language and understand the culture, yet don’t quite feel at home. How do you live as a Christian in a world that doesn’t share your convictions? Can you still hold firmly to biblical truth even as you love others? This moment in our culture might seem new to us, but...
I was sitting in my office, talking with a woman whose marriage was a wreck. Her husband was lying. Their daily conversations often spiraled into nuclear war. Her resentment was growing. There was no peace, and she was holding off the possibility of divorce, but you could sense it hovering like a dark cloud. At one point she said to me, “When we were dating, he never initiated spiritual...
A number of years ago, to my wife’s great delight, her father gave her the family heirloom photo albums. We’re not talking snapshots of Disney World held in vinyl pages. These hundred-year-old photos were carefully bound in two deeply embossed gilded leather albums. Even guests who had parted the pages of these regal books had stood in awe of the history represented in the sepia tone portraits of...
