I’ve been meaning to share this one for a while… Rebecca Writes has a great series of posts listing Bible verses about the Gospel:

• Gospel List 1 – a series of verses answering the question “What is the Gospel?”
• Gospel List 2 – a series of verses describing what we should do with the Gospel
• Gospel List 3 – lastly, verses describing what the Gospel itself does

Ten Differences Between the Reformation and Rome: Pure Church: Are Protestants Still Protesting?.

“Love as integral to justification” – now there’s the rub. Is love an instrument? A basis or ground? Or an invariable accompaniment to justifying faith? Does love precede and ground or follow and evidence justification.

The Pope on Justification by Faith and Love – Reformation21 Blog.

We’d all like to believe that our struggle with sin involves only external enemies. We’re willing to say that Satan is to blame for our sin. We’re even willing to blame the world—as long as it’s an external cause. As long as we don’t have to take the blame on ourselves.

Pyromaniacs: The Devil Made me Do It.

In my experience, most Christians who have read the book adore it. There are people I respect greatly who love this book, without qualification, and consider it a great gift of God to thirsty people. There are others I respect as much who are deeply concerned about the book’s messages, both overt and subtle, and their impact on people. In a sense, both might be right, but both need to understand the other point of view and that many books that are good for some people are not good for others.

I believe that those who are well-grounded in the Word won’t be harmed by the weaknesses and deficiencies of the book. Unfortunately, few people these days are well-grounded in the Word.

Read the full review at TheResurgence.

It is good news that we will never be thanked by God.

Not thanking us is a form of love.

Read more: God Isn’t Grateful.

There are, as you can imagine, quite a few Christian responses floating out there to the Newsweek cover story on homosexuality and the Bible.

Among them…

• Christianity Today editorializes.
• Justin Taylor summarizes and links to Robert Gagnon’s 23-page response here.
• Darrell Bock responds here.
• Jeff Robinson of CBMW begins a series of responses here.
• John Mark Reynolds comes to the conclusion that the Bible’s support of traditional marriage is obvious.

Just in time for the holidays… A 22-volume set of Calvin’s commentaries on Scripture is on sale at CBD through Thursday night for only $99. This is a great deal, as the “retail” on the set is $1000, and the “regular” heavily discounted CBD price is $179 in their last catalog.

I own this set and it’s a great reference from one of the best expositors of Scripture in history.

Calvin’s Commentaries, 22 Volumes – By: John Calvin – Christianbook.com.

Melinda at Stand to Reason points out several differences between “atheist” holiday displays (particularly that in Olympia, Washington) and religious ones:

[T]he atheist display doesn’t simply express a tenant of their belief, it is actually mocking the religious displays along side it. A nativity and a mennorrah side by side each express something about the religion they represent without denigrating the other. It truly is pluralistic with various religious views of this season expressed. The atheist display, however, denigrates religion and I don’t think that’s in the spirit of these public displays. Let’s have a debate about their claims about religion in the proper setting. But this display is disrespectful in a way the religious ones are not.

Read more at Stand to Reason Blog: Reason’s Greetings.

For another thing, we may denigrate our Lord with a Santa Claus Christology. How sadly common it is for the church to manufacture a Jesus who is a mirror refection of Santa Claus. He becomes Santa Christ.

Santa Christ is sometimes a Pelagian Jesus. Like Santa, he simply asks us whether we have been good. More exactly, since the assumption is that we are all naturally good, Santa Christ asks us whether we have been “good enough.” So just as Christmas dinner is simply the better dinner we really deserve, Jesus becomes a kind of added bonus who makes a good life even better. He is not seen as the Savior of helpless sinners.

Santa Christ? | Ligonier Ministries.