Ligonier Ministries The teaching fellowship of R.C. Sproul

Second Corinthians 11:28 always seemed like a strange verse to me — until I became a pastor. Here's Paul, rattling off all the ways he’s been beat up for Jesus — imprisonments, lashes, rods, stonings, shipwrecks, drifting at sea, sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, cold and exposure, danger from everyone everywhere (vv. 23–27). And then, as the cherry on top, Paul mentions one more trial: "apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches" (v. 28). This is the mighty apostle, the one who counted it a joy to "spend and be spent" for his people (12:15), the one who was sorrowful yet always rejoicing (6:10). This is the Paul who faced every imaginable opposition and yet learned to be content (Phil. 4:11) and anxious about nothing (4:6). And here he is admitting that even with everything else he's endured, he still feels anxiety for all the churches. Keep Reading

It's sexy among young people—my generation—to talk about ditching institutional religion and starting a revolution of real Christ-followers living in real community without the confines of church. Besides being unbiblical, such notions of churchless Christianity are unrealistic. Keep Reading

It may have sounded prophetic at one point, but now it's rather prosaic. Everyone knows (or is supposed to know) that individualism is bad. An emphasis on the individual — such a common theme in the West — has been blamed for myriad problems, including everything from friendlessness to consumerism, from contemporary praise music to gated communities. And no doubt, individualism has its downside. For the church, it's meant an aversion to authority, a reluctance to accept certain elements of covenant theology, and a community life that isn’t everything it could be. Problem duly noted. Keep Reading

Why reintroduce this long-forgotten, little-known French mystic? Because the same ideas that got her labeled a heretic are alive and well in the twenty-first-century church. Let me mention four problems with her free-spirit theology that seem particularly relevant to our situation today. Keep Reading

All else being equal, I'd rather have a mature Christian with simple theological knowledge than an extremely knowledgeable, well-read Christian without a lot of maturity. But, of course, neither situation is desirable. Let me explain. Keep Reading

Everyone who knows the Bible knows that King David was a great man. And yet everyone familiar with the Bible also recognizes that David did a lot of not-so-great things. Keep Reading