Theological term
Atonement
64 sermons · All terms
The Sanctity of Life
The sanctity of human life is grounded not in sentiment but in the biblical doctrine that God created man in his own image — a dignity that persists after the fall and extends to every category of person, including the preborn. Exodus 21:22–25 is examined as a text that directly addresses the legal standing of the unborn: the lex talionis applied to a premature birth demonstrates that God's law protects prenatal life with the same weight it protects any other. The sermon then takes up the wickedness of murder across its biblical dimensions — divine prohibition, divine hatred, divine observation, and divine punishment, including eternal judgment — while insisting that the church's primary instrument against these evils is the preaching of the gospel and the doctrine of justification by faith alone, under which even those guilty of abortion may find forgiveness in Christ.
Amazing Love
What does it mean that God has 'bestowed' his love on believers, calling them children of God? Expounding 1 John 3:1, this sermon traces the love of God across three horizons — before the foundation of the world in eternal election, in redemptive history at the cross, and throughout eternity to come — while pressing the permanence of that love against any notion that it can be forfeited. The sermon closes by drawing from Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3 to show that the believer's calling is not to measure the intensity of his own love for Christ, but to be spiritually strengthened, educated, and saturated in the inexhaustible love Christ has for his people.
The Adamic Covenant
Genesis 3:14–24 records the first historical expression of the covenant of grace — what covenant theologians call the Adamic covenant. This sermon works through the fall of Adam and Eve, the immediate context of that catastrophe, and then the divine initiative by which God addresses the serpent, the woman, and the man with both curse and promise. The protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 stands at the centre: God sovereignly places enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, pointing forward to the One who would crush the serpent's head through suffering at Calvary. The sermon calls hearers to see themselves either in the first Adam under condemnation, or in the second Adam under grace, and to trust the covenant-keeping God who seeks out sinners and covers them with what they cannot provide for themselves.
Paul's Sufferings for Christ and the Church
Colossians 1:24 confronts the assumption — doctrinal or practical — that the Christian life is one of health, wealth, and prosperity. Paul's declaration that he rejoices in his sufferings for the church raises two difficult questions: what does it mean to fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, and why would any apostle rejoice in prison, beatings, and stonings? This exposition works through both questions, demolishing the Roman Catholic reading that Christ's atonement was incomplete, and arguing instead that Christ so identifies with His body that their sufferings are in some sense His own, and that Paul's willingness to absorb suffering on behalf of the church is the pattern of genuine Christian ministry and churchmanship.