Extend Hospitality Beyond Your Church

While our hospitality should start in our local churches, it shouldn’t stop there. In addition to welcoming one another, we should welcome unbelievers, as well as needy saints.

March 16, 2025 by: Keri Folmar

Love of Strangers

The New Testament word translated as hospitality is literally “love of strangers.” We know we’re not wrong in applying the term to welcoming those in our churches because each of the hospitality commands is nestled within passages about brotherly love. At the same time, while our hospitality should start in our local churches, it shouldn’t stop there. In addition to welcoming one another, we should welcome unbelievers, as well as needy saints.

Once when Jesus dined in the house of a Pharisee, he said to his host:
When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. (Luke 14:12–14)

The world schemes and calculates, “What can I get out of this in this life?” But Christians are strategically storing up treasure in heaven. Imagine the meals and accommodation there!

We bonded with our former next-door neighbors because they had kids the same age as ours and a friendly labrador who liked to play with our golden retriever. They had lived in Dubai for a long time and were happy to join us for dinner and attend our Christmas carol parties, but they never showed interest in the gospel.

Nevertheless, when a Muslim friend of theirs wanted a Bible, they came to us. As a result, I was able to lead my neighbor and her Muslim friend in a Bible study through the Gospel of Mark. Eventually both started coming to church.

How well do you know your neighbors? I confess, my husband and I have gone through seasons of being more or less involved with our neighbors—often realizing that we had wrongly become too “busy” to reach out. But fellow Christian, make time to invite your unbelieving neighbors into your life for the sake of the gospel.

Remember, you don’t have to go it alone. Are there other church members in your neighborhood with whom you can partner? For instance, I know several women who rotate hosting neighbors for dessert. They use “get to know you” questions aimed at deepening their conversations and have found that many neighborhood women are lonely and in need of friends. Through rotating dessert nights, they have ample opportunity to share the best news in the world with their neighbors.

Thank God that Jesus extends his welcome beyond those of worldly repute—even to the likes of you and me!

Do you have neighbors, coworkers, friends from school, or other relationships you can invest in for kingdom purposes?

And what about the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind? Is there a prison you can visit? A retirement home? A crisis pregnancy center? Is someone in the hospital? Can you invite someone into your home who cannot return the favor? Jesus welcomes those with nothing to give, and so it should also be with us. Thank God that Jesus extends his welcome beyond those of worldly repute—even to the likes of you and me!

Another way of extending hospitality beyond your church is by opening your home to missionaries or traveling saints. Living in Dubai, we’ve had this kind of welcome offered to us numerous times when we’ve traveled back to the United States. We’ve been shown hospitality by longtime friends in Austin, new friends in Williamsburg, a single pastor who bought a big home in Texas to house missionaries on furlough, and other dear saints who have sacrificed their time and space to make us feel welcome. We’ve even had a family give us their car to drive for months at a time. These saints remind me of Gaius whom John commends in 3 John 5–6:

Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God.

Gospel-workers depend on the hospitality of the saints.

The book of Acts is a record of hospitality extended in the early church. People like Jason, Priscilla, and Aquila risked their necks to show hospitality to those who were preaching the gospel. Hospitality toward gospel-workers is all over Paul’s epistles. He expects hospitality for himself from both churches and individuals (Rom. 15:24, 32; Philem. 22). He asks the churches in Rome to show hospitality to Phoebe, writing, “Welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you” (Rom. 16:2). He asks the Colossians to welcome Mark and Titus and to help Zenus and Apollos as they travel through Crete, instructing, “See that they lack nothing” (Titus 3:13).

Housing and supporting traveling missionaries and gospel-workers is a privilege— one that is mutually beneficial. Hearing about what’s happening in other parts of the world makes us thankful for our access to Bibles and fellow believers, and it spurs us on to pray for those who haven’t yet heard the gospel. One day, we’ll worship God face-to-face with the people we’ve prayed for!

Do you have a spare room or an empty basement? Use them to bless missionaries you know or that your church supports. Who knows? The Lord may just use one visiting missionary to get you overseas for gospel work too.

As God has welcomed us, we have the responsibility and privilege to extend our welcome to others beyond our local church.

This article is adapted from How Can I Grow in Hospitality? by Keri Folmar.

Keri Folmar is a member of the Evangelical Christian Church of Dubai, where her husband is the senior pastor. She has three adult children and is the author of The Good Portion: Scripture and the Delighting in the Word Bible study series.

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How to Respect the Dignity of Loved Ones with Dementia

God has made us social people; we thrive in the context of relationships. So do many of those with dementia, who are often desperate for human companionship and an escape from loneliness.

March 15, 2025 by: John Dunlop, MD

Give the Gift of Your Time

God has made us social people; we thrive in the context of relationships. So do many of those with dementia, who are often desperate for human companionship and an escape from loneliness. All too often, they are ignored by others, including those they love. Their loneliness is exacerbated by their illness, for they often quickly forget when someone has spent time with them. I well remember a time when my mother-in-law told my wife that I no longer loved her because I never came to see her. Based on the facts as she viewed them, her conclusion was valid. But the truth was that I had visited her daily, and she had forgotten. Though Mother would forget my visits, the time was not wasted because she enjoyed them at the time.

Contrary to what we might think, the gift of presence is perhaps most significant in the advanced stages of dementia. It is not infrequent at that time for loved ones to feel that their visits do not count for anything. They assume that they won’t be recognized or their visit remembered, which may be precisely the wrong conclusion. Those with advanced dementia are often like a three-monthold baby. She will not say, “Mommy, I love you, and I’m so glad you are here,” but she is conscious of her mother’s presence, allowing her to feel comfortable and secure. Of course, adults with dementia are not children and should never be treated as if they are.

Focus on the Person

When dealing with dementia patients, it is easy to forget that they are unique people with needs, abilities, and potential. We have seen that they still have feelings and need human relationships. We must never see them as a problem to fix. I learned a lot from Elizabeth, a patient I saw several years ago. She came to the office with her sister, Frances. Immediately Frances told me that Elizabeth had wandered out at night, and the police had found her and taken her home. Frances was in tears when she related the incident, fearful that something worse might happen. Elizabeth herself sat there sulking and rather indignantly tried to explain that she had gotten hungry and wanted to go out to get something to eat. Then she said, “But no one listens to me! Aren’t I important too?” I was taken aback and ashamed, recognizing that though Frances was telling the truth, Elizabeth deserved to be involved in the discussion, and out of respect for her dignity I should have interrupted Frances and asked Elizabeth what her concerns were at the start of the visit.

All too often, the needs and feelings of people with dementia are discounted. It happens within families as well as in the medical community. How often have I heard remarks like this one: “Mr. Jones was complaining of a headache this afternoon, but he is demented, so who knows what he really feels?” Not only is that bad medicine; it also denies Mr. Jones’s value. It focuses on his disease but loses sight of him. Mr. Jones’s description of his pain may have been inaccurate, but it should not have been discounted.

Learn How to Communicate

Recognizing people’s dignity requires us to aspire to understand what they intend and, as much as possible, assure that they understand us. As we noted earlier, effective communication may require much patience from both speaker and listener. When those with dementia have trouble choosing the right word, they might appreciate a suggestion; at other times, they might find that insulting. A great deal of sensitivity is required in our efforts to respect their dignity.

In the later stages of dementia, limited cognition may curtail all verbal communication. At that point various odd behaviors may, in fact, be efforts at communication. Those seeking to understand a specific behavior must be willing to wrestle with what the behavior communicates. Spitting out food might be a way of saying, “I really don’t like what you gave me. Could you feed me something else?” Undressing in public may mean, “I want to use the toilet,” or “I am too hot.” Wandering may mean, “I’m bored and looking for something to do.” I hear patients with dementia repeatedly say, “Please let me go home,” which frequently means, “Can’t I go back to a world where I know and understand what’s going on?”

At such times, we can articulate what we think they mean and ask them if we are right. They may be able to answer us. If they spit out food, we can ask if they would rather eat something else. At times they will not be able to respond appropriately. If they are crying out, and we suspect they are trying to tell us about a particular pain, we can ask if they are hurting and, if so, to point to where it hurts. If we fail to recognize that offensive behaviors might actually be efforts at communication, we might get angry. But if we try to correctly interpret their efforts to communicate, we are respecting their dignity.

Effective communication requires not only trying to understand dementia patients but also enabling the patients to understand us. It may help to speak slowly, using short sentences and simple vocabulary and introducing only one thought at a time. Make sure patients have their hearing aids in and glasses on so they can read your lips. Face them when speaking and repeat your words. It may help to use gestures and body language to make sure you get your message across.

Jesus entered our world so that he could effectively serve us. So, too, we need to enter the world of those who suffer from dementia to effectively serve and respond to them.

Respect Their Autonomy

In earlier stages of dementia, patients are quite capable of making many decisions on their own, and when this is the case their wishes should be followed. As dementia progresses they may still be capable of choosing between a few options but be unable to make wise decisions when faced with more complex issues. So, for example, if you go out for ice cream, offer them a choice between only their two favorite flavors; it is best not to list all the flavors. As decisions become more complex and the implications of those decisions weightier, it is necessary to assess whether patients have the capacity to understand the intricacies of a decision before asking them to make it. A patient quite capable of making a decision about ice cream may not be able to understand the issues involved in deciding to have open-heart surgery. Still, as much as possible, the more we allow the patient to feel they have significant control over their choices, the more we show respect for their inherent dignity.

Respecting autonomy is not always easy. All too often I have seen conflict between an individual with mild to moderate dementia whose primary value is independence, and his family who above everything else desires his safety. I remember Edwardo, who, in the context of a moderate dementia, refused to accept any help from his loving sister and brother-in-law. He insisted on living independently, cooking his own meals, and caring for his apartment. As a result, he lived in filth and became malnourished, and his health rapidly declined. At least his independence did no harm to anyone else. It was extremely troubling not only for his family but also for me, his doctor, to allow him to live that way. Knowing he would be miserable in any other situation, we let him continue till a crisis occurred that required nursing-home care.

Protect Their Dignity

Preserving autonomy as a means of respecting dignity is important, but it is not the only thing to consider. At times we have to protect people with dementia from making mistakes that would discredit their dignity and their reputation. This is necessary because dementia often causes poor judgment, illogical thinking, and lack of inhibition that prevent them from recognizing they have any problem at all. This may be particularly true in frontotemporal degeneration, the form of dementia that Nick and Suzanne had to struggle with. It was complicated because Nick could hold a reasonably decent conversation, and his memory was pretty good.

On first meeting him, no one would guess that he had dementia. Nevertheless, his social skills and judgment were profoundly affected, and his ability to take on a task and get it done (executive function) was very limited. Most distressingly, he lacked the insight to recognize that anything was wrong. Nick insisted that he was capable of continuing in his profession in which many depended on him for their health and livelihood. Everyone but Nick recognized that he was incapable of doing his job. When confronted with his failures, he became upset and angry. Suzanne did not want to embarrass Nick by sharing his diagnosis with his friends and employers. At the same time something had to be done, or others would be hurt and his good reputation damaged. Suzanne finally had to intervene, working behind his back, and she arranged to have Nick relieved of his responsibilities. In this case, respect for autonomy and dignity had to be trumped by the need to protect his good reputation and keep him from hurting others, and in so doing, God was honored.

Driving poses a similar challenge. Allowing those unfit to continue to drive will not uphold their dignity, and it puts others at risk.

Enter Their World

People with more advanced dementia often live in their own little world. This makes it critical for those who relate to them to seek to understand what their world is like. This is intriguingly Christlike, as Jesus took on “the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself” (Phil. 2:7–8). Jesus entered our world so that he could effectively serve us. So, too, we need to enter the world of those who suffer from dementia to effectively serve and respond to them.

Early in the disease, practicing what is termed “reality orientation” can be an effective way to respond to the confusion. When my mom started to think I was someone else, I would gently remind her, “No, Mom, I’m your son, John.” Then every time I saw her, I announced myself, saying, “Hi, Mom, it’s John.” She responded to that for a while, but as her disease progressed, reality orientation was no longer helpful. When later she was convinced I was my dad, my best efforts to tell her otherwise only frustrated her, and she became convinced I was trying to play a trick. That was the time to practice “validation,” to enter her world and go along with her thinking. So I responded by telling her how much I loved her and reminiscing about some of the great family times we had in the past. I didn’t lie to her, but neither did I correct her, much like entering a child’s imaginary world. I remember practicing validation when our eldest son was three. For several weeks he decided he was a frog. Whatever he was eating, he said it was mosquitos. At bedtime he would lie down on his “lily pad,” croak, and say, “Ribbit, ribbit,” and then go off to sleep. It was great fun, and we never felt obligated to practice “reality orientation” by insisting he wasn’t a frog.

There are a number of practical ways in which we can respect dignity by entering the world of people with dementia. Here are a few examples:

  1. Get to know their past history, if you are not already familiar with it. Talk to them about stories from their past to allow them to enjoy the memories they still have. It may help to compile a picture book and have them explain the pictures in it.

  2. Share some funny stories. They may not understand them, but if you laugh, they may enjoy laughing along with you.

  3. Learn what they prefer to be called and use that when speaking with them. It may be the nickname they had as a child.

  4. Learn their likes and dislikes from earlier in their lives. You might take them to places they used to enjoy and serve them the comfort foods they once relished. Their forgetfulness may enable you to do this repeatedly. If they used to love mac and cheese, they may be fine eating it every day.

  5. Play the music and sing the songs they used to love.

  6. Slow down to get into their world. Life for those with dementia moves slowly. Anything you do together will take more time, as it may upset them or even lead to a meltdown if they feel rushed.

  7. Respect the constrictions of dementia. As the disease progresses, patients will be less interested in the past and future and more focused on the present. They will be less interested in news of the world outside and may not want to leave the comfort of their home or room. What is going on in the lives of other people may not be important to them; eventually, however, they will care only about how they feel in the here and now. To respect their dignity, those around them must learn to enjoy the present moment with them. At times, being touched and held may be all they want. Recognize that caregivers’ need for activity may be far greater than theirs.

  8. Respect their resistance to change. Establish routines they are comfortable with. Having meals at the same time and going to bed and getting up on a regular schedule are usually best. The world they live in does not require much variety.

  9. If they perceive that you did something wrong and have become upset by it, accept that their understanding of what happened may be totally different from yours. Do not make excuses but apologize profusely. That will affirm them, avoid arguments, and allow them to feel better.

This article is adapted from Finding Grace in the Face of Dementia by John Dunlop, MD.

John Dunlop (MD, Johns Hopkins University) practiced geriatric medicine for thirty-eight years and taught in the bioethics program at Trinity International University. He now lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he taught at the Yale School of Medicine. Dunlop is the author of Finishing Well to the Glory of God; Wellness for the Glory of God; and Finding Grace in the Face of Dementia.

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How to Pray about Aging

Susan Hunt

January 09, 2021

In God’s sweet providence, I began studying Psalm 90 about a year before my eightieth birthday, asking the Lord to teach me how to glorify him in old age.

“Because He Loves Us!”

Because He Loves Us!

In the final sentence of His prayer in John 17, Jesus declares that He made known God’s name to His disciples and “will continue to make it known.” Then He explains why: “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” In his final sermon in the series The High Priestly Prayer, Alistair Begg considers where this love comes from and how it is expressed:

Because He Loves Us!

In the final sentence of His prayer in John 17, Jesus declares that He made known God’s name to His disciples and “will continue to make it known.” Then He explains why: “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” In his final sermon in the series The High Priestly Prayer, Alistair Begg considers where this love comes from and how it is expressed:

Remember, in John 13, John tells us that Jesus, “having loved his own who were [with him] in the world, he loved them to the end.”1 Here he is, loving them all the way to the end. And the love to which he refers here in the twenty-sixth verse is not our love to God. Notice: It is God’s love to us. “That the love with which you have loved me,” he says to the Father, might “be in them, and I in them.” That is dramatic, and it’s vitally important. I’m glad it doesn’t say that “their love for you” might be the key. Because if we’re honest, our love towards God and towards one another, actually, ebbs and flows on all kinds of bases. That is not the ground of our security. That is not the basis of our understanding of things. If that was the case, we could never have sung, “I Am His, and He Is Mine”: “Loved with everlasting love.”2 

What love? The love that the Father had for the Son has been manifested in Jesus so that we might know that love—that God is love and that the greatest assurance of his love has been in sending Jesus. That’s why we read, again, Psalm 118. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.”3 God’s love is such that he doesn’t give up on us. Why has he kept us? Because he loves us! Why is he sanctifying us? Because he loves us! Why does he want us to be united? Because he loves us! Why would he want us to share his glory? Because he loves us! It’s so obvious. His love is unchangeable. His love is irreversible. “How deep the Father’s love for us”!4

Stream or Read Alistair’s Latest Sermons


  1. John 13:1 (ESV). ↩︎

  2. George Wade Robinson, “I Am His, and He Is Mine” (1876). ↩︎

  3. Lamentations 3:22 (ESV). ↩︎

  4. Stuart Townend, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” (1995). ↩︎

Do the Psalms Contain Self-Righteous Boasting? (Psalms 7, 17, and 26)

A number of psalms include professions of innocence, and these professions are not casual but prominent in the songs. Some have taken the claims of innocence here as a kind of self-righteous boasting, but this is a mistake.

March 14, 2025 by: C. John Collins

This article is part of the Tough Passages series.

Listen to the Passages

The Apparently “Self-Righteous” Passages in Psalms

A number of psalms include professions of innocence, and these professions are not casual but prominent in the songs. The allegedly innocent party is the particular worshiper (Psalms 7; 17; 26), the king (Psalm 18), and the whole community (Psalm 44). These passages can strike the reader as silly (“I am a victim of circumstance!”), as self-deceiving (contrary to Prov. 20:9; Eccles. 7:20, 29), as portraying an unattainable level of perfection, or as something more sinister—a kind of repulsive bombast and self-promotion (e.g., Luke 18:9–14).1

A better approach is to begin with the meaning of such words as “righteous” in the Psalter. When applied to members of Israel, the terms “righteous” and “righteousness” can be used in several ways.2 First, the terms can be applied to the whole people, who have the covenantal revelation of the righteous Creator (Hab. 1:13), as opposed to the Gentiles, who do not. Second, it can be applied to those members of the people who embrace the covenant from the heart, who have sincere faith and seek to please the Lord in their conduct and character (Deut. 6:25; 24:13; Isa. 1:21, 26; 5:7; Hab. 2:4; Zeph. 2:3; Mal. 3:3). This second usage appears often in the Psalms (e.g., Pss. 7:8; 37:16–17), which also make clear that these “righteous” are people who readily confess their sins (Ps. 32:11). A third usage is for persons among the faithful who are especially noteworthy for their healthy role in the community and are therefore worthy of honor and imitation (a good king, Ps. 18:20, 24; ordinary folk, Pss. 37:30; 112:3–4, 6, 9). And finally, the words can be applied to the innocent party in a dispute (e.g., Gen. 38:26; 44:16 [“clear” = “make righteous”]; Ex. 23:7; Deut. 25:1) and hardly claims moral perfection.

We can also find the complementary phenomenon with negative terms, such as “wicked,” “sinner,” and “fool.” These words can denote those who are not God’s people, the unfaithful within Israel, or those whose impiety leads to distinctively evil behavior.

We discern which sense is present in a given text by way of the contrasts in view. As C. S. Lewis put it, “The best clue is to ask oneself in each instance what is the implied opposite.”3 Further, different psalms focus on different oppositions. For example, some of these are individual laments, well suited for a worshiping congregation with a member under threat from “enemies” using false accusations to harm the faithful person (Psalms 7; 17; 26). In these cases “we need therefore by no means assume that the Psalmists are deceived or lying when they assert that, as against their particular enemies at some particular moment, they are completely in the right.”4 To use these psalms in such instances allows the congregation to rally around its unjustly accused brethren and also reinforces its commitment to love the virtues and hate the vices depicted in these texts and to honor those who display these virtues.

Psalm 18, by contrast, is especially about the ideal for the Davidic kingship. A congregation could use it to foster the community’s shared yearning that its king would embody these ideals, which would lead to prayer that the current king would indeed embody them. Christians profess that Jesus, as the ultimate heir of David, does in fact embody the ideals and is therefore worthy of admiration and imitation (John 13:15–16; 1 Cor. 11:1; Eph. 5:1; 1 Thess. 1:6; Phil. 2:5).

It bears repeating: to use these psalms well requires careful and bold pastoral leadership. Self-identification as an innocent sufferer is neither healthy nor invited!

Psalm 7

O Lord my God, if I have done this,
   if there is wrong in my hands,
if I have repaid my friend with evil
   or plundered my enemy without cause,
let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
   and let him trample my life to the ground
   and lay my glory in the dust. (Ps. 7:3–5)

Psalm 7 is an individual lament from David. The title refers to an otherwise unknown incident in the life of David on which a man of Benjamin (the tribe of Saul) said some “words”; from the content of the psalm we may infer that these words were slanderous. Hence the situation shows us how to understand the claims of innocence here (Ps. 7:3–4, 8): the innocence is relative to the accusations being made, rather than absolute. Hence this psalm provides a vehicle by which people may call to God for help when they are unfairly criticized or persecuted.

The first movement of the psalm professes the singer’s innocence: the person singing this in good faith claims not to have betrayed the trust that should bind the people of God together.

Observe how the general expression in Psalm 7:3 (“wrong in my hands”) finds closer clarification in verse 4 (“repaid my friend with evil,” “plundered my enemy without cause”). That is, the specific wrongdoing in view concerns the social connections between the fellow members of God’s people. The Sinai covenant established Israel as (ideally, anyhow) God’s new humanity, whose relationships are to show forth true humanness for all the Gentiles to see. Hence often in both the Psalms and the Prophets the sins denounced are “social,” for the ethic assumed throughout the Bible prizes a peaceful and loving community.

This psalm is suited only for those cases in which the danger stems from the malice of the persecutors, not from the wrongdoing of the person in trouble. Thus verse 5 offers a prayer of self-malediction: “If I am guilty of the things of which I am accused, then let my enemy succeed.” A person who cannot make the claim of verses 3–4 in good faith ought not sing this! Hence this serves as an implicit warning that those who commit the evils listed here ought, rather than using this psalm to ask for God’s help, to begin with confession of sin (i.e., a different song, such as Psalm 6).

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Psalm 17

You have tried my heart, you have visited me by night,
   you have tested me, and you will find nothing;
   I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress.
With regard to the works of man, by the word of your lips
   I have avoided the ways of the violent.
My steps have held fast to your paths;
   my feet have not slipped. (Ps. 17:3-5)

Like Psalm 7, this psalm provides a prayer for supporting members of the faithful who face persecution in the form of false accusations.

Professions of innocence such as we find here, and in Psalms 7; 17; 26, can trouble sensitive Christians. C. S. Lewis wisely observes an important distinction “between the conviction that one is in the right [about the particular issue of the accusations] and the conviction that one is ‘righteous.’”5 Lewis, however, was not sure that the psalmists themselves always preserve this distinction. I certainly support Lewis’s spiritual concern to protect Christians against self-righteousness, but I do not think he has seen the particular psalms in the proper light. First, Lewis himself rightly saw that the Psalms are songs for worship,6 but he did not consistently apply that observation in his discussions. Since they are songs, they are used under the pastoral guidance of the personnel who choose them, each one in the spiritual context of all the others.

A pastorally wise form of prayer for such circumstances must both caution the faithful to be sure they really are innocent and also warn the unfaithful of what awaits them unless they repent — and this song does just that. Further, in professing innocence it reinforces the feelings of approval for the kind of social relationships for which God called Israel from the start.

Indeed, by the way this psalm closes, it equips the faithful to trust God in their trials, ready to await their own eternal reward for their full and final vindication (and hence it strengthens them to resist the temptation to forfeit that vindication by turning to unfaithfulness).

Psalm 26

I do not sit with men of falsehood,
   nor do I consort with hypocrites.
I hate the assembly of evildoers,
   and I will not sit with the wicked.
I wash my hands in innocence
   and go around your altar, O LORD,
proclaiming thanksgiving aloud,
   and telling all your wondrous deeds.
O LORD, I love the habitation of your house
   and the place where your glory dwells. (Ps. 26:4–8)

Some have taken the claims of innocence here as a kind of self-righteous boasting, but, as already argued on Psalm 7 and Psalm 17, this is a mistake. First, the mention of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness (Ps. 26:3), a clear echo of Exodus 34:6, shows that divine grace is the foundation for holy living. Second, the references to worship in God’s house (Ps. 26:6–8) indicate that the covenantal means of grace, with their focus on atonement and forgiveness, are in view. And third, singing this psalm serves to enable worshipers more and more to like and embrace the ideal of faithful covenant membership—but it does not make achieving that ideal a precondition for true worship.

Like Psalm 7 and Psalm 17, this psalm has worshipers singing to profess integrity in their lives; like the case for those psalms, it would be an easy mistake to suppose that this is self-righteous braggadocio. Pastoral wisdom would have been called for on the part of the priests arranging and leading the worship.

But also like Psalm 7 and Psalm 17, one crucial function of singing a song like this one is to set the virtues as the ideal toward which the faithful will more readily give themselves the more honestly they sing the words. The integrity that it praises covers both observable deeds and one’s invisible inner life, actions and feelings.

A similar situation faces Christians as they read, say, 1 John, with its various terms for genuine believers (those who keep God’s word, abide in God, have been born of God, etc.), and its variety of expressions for what they do (walk as Jesus walked, confess their sins, love their brethren, listen to the apostles, etc.).7 Extensive discussions have pondered what these assertions in 1 John mean, but certainly they do not claim sinless perfection, as 1 John 1:9; 2:1 make clear. Better is the idea that the statements using the present form of the verb describe the prevailing practices of the faithful—as over against particular lapses, for which the aorist would be normal. Nevertheless, I think that, in view of the disputative context (a group of false teachers have left; 1 John 2:18–19), the author’s goals recognize that those who remain true to the apostles must be regrounded in their identity. They must learn to say, “This is what we do.”

It would probably be going too far to see the violations of the approved way of life in the Psalms and in 1 John as disqualifications for membership; rather, the grace of God sets a person on the path of faithfulness by equipping him or her with the proper likes and dislikes. The affirmations of positive virtues enable the congregation to feel their own approval of those virtues, and the denunciations of vices enable them to feel their own disapproval of those vices.

This is the life Christians admire, this is the kind of people we want to be. This is our graciously given identity, and as a body we support and nourish in one another the aspiration to be good as we simultaneously create a safe environment for those who are not yet very good at being good.

Notes:

  1. A helpful resource is Gert Kwakkel, ‘According to My Righteousness’: Upright Behaviour as Grounds for Deliverance in Psalms 7, 17, 18, 26 and 44 (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
  2. I leave out “righteousness” as “deserving” (Deut. 9:4–6) as having no bearing on this discussion.
  3. C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1967), 43.
  4. C.S. Lewis, Reflection on the Psalms,18. Unfortunately Lewis, lacking the kind of social analysis given here (and not following his own principle about the Psalms as hymnody), attributes a kind of self-righteousness not simply to abuse of these psalms but even to the psalms themselves.
  5. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 17.
  6. “What must be said, however, is that the Psalms are poems, and poems intended to be sung: not doctrinal treatises, nor even sermons.” Kirkpatrick, Book of Psalms , 1:2.
  7. I have given an analysis of some of the literary and linguistic features in C. John Collins, “What the Reader Wants and the Translator Can Give: 1 John as a Test Case,” in Translating Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 77–111, esp. 94–105.

This article by C. John Collins and is adapted from ESV Expository Commentary: Psalms–Song of Solomon (Volume 5).

C. John Collins (PhD, University of Liverpool) is professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. He has been a research engineer, church-planter, and teacher. He was the Old Testament Chairman for the English Standard Version Bible and is author of The God of Miracles, Science and Faith: Friends or Foes?, and Genesis 1–4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary. He and his wife have two grown children.

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The Biggest Challenge the Church Faces Today Is to Think Differently than the World

The greatest challenge that the church faces today to avoid thinking like the world is the same as the greatest challenge that the church always faces to avoid thinking like the world.

March 14, 2025 by: D. A. Carson

Same Old Challenge

The greatest challenge that the church faces today to avoid thinking like the world is the same as the greatest challenge that the church always faces to avoid thinking like the world. Now, one can specify peculiar temptations today that have not been dominant in another time or culture.

For example, if I’m speaking at a university mission today in the Western world, somewhere along the line in the Q and A that follows, people are going to say, “Well, that’s just your view of truth. People have a different view of truth.” The truth question, and the subjectivity of human claims, and knowledge attributions, and so on will always come up in the discussion.

But if I’m speaking at a university in the Middle East, nobody asks the question, “Yeah, but what is truth?” They may have some disagreements about what truth is and where it’s hidden and what it says, but very few people think there’s no such certainty as something called truth. If you’re in a part of the world where what the truth is is disputed, that doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily in the same part of the world arguing about whether truth exists.

Christians in every generation, including ours, are responsible for getting a firm grasp of what the gospel is, as taught by Scripture.

The church is constantly faced with one form or another of denial of the truth, or a modification of the truth, or a re-slanting or re-shaping of the truth. So in that sense, there’s nothing new when that happens today. There are some forms of such debates that have novel features to them. But as in Paul’s day, as in Jesus’s day, so in our day. People think that the most important thing about the Bible or the most important emphasis in the Scripture is such and such, and there will always be temptations to steer away from the centrality of the gospel—deeply, richly, and biblically defined. In that sense, there’s nothing new.

The particular element that’s being questioned will vary from culture to culture from time to time. But the danger of skirting the truth, ducking the truth, domesticating the truth, being bored with the truth, or confusing the truth with something that sounds much like it, that sort of phenomenon keeps coming back and back and back and back. So Christians in every generation, including ours, are responsible for getting such a firm grasp of what the gospel is, as taught by Scripture, and such a firm grasp of Scripture itself that at the end of the day, they’re less likely to be snookered by popular add-ons or popular adjuncts or the like.

D. A. Carson is the author of The Gospel and the Modern World: A Theological Vision for the Church.

D. A. Carson (PhD, Cambridge University) is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is a cofounder and theologian-at-large of the Gospel Coalition and has written and edited nearly two hundred books. He and his wife, Joy, have two children and live in the north suburbs of Chicago.

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Some claim that Christianity is oppressive and toxic, but in this video, Dr. Sharon James argues that a biblical worldview is essential for human freedom, flourishing, and fulfillment.

From the Garden to Glory: A Musical Journey Through the Story of Redemption

From the Garden to Glory

On Sunday, March 2, 2025, musicians who are members of Parkside Church were joined by members of the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Institute of Music for a special evening of classical music and a survey of God’s redemptive plan. Beginning with the opening pages of Scripture and concluding with Revelation and the believer’s new home, the concert From the Garden to Glory featured curated musical selections paired with the biblical text to help us reflect on the Bible’s overarching message: the hope found in Jesus alone. As you can see in the video below, each musical theme was accompanied by brief commentary from Alistair Begg.

On Sunday, March 2, 2025, musicians who are members of Parkside Church were joined by members of the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Institute of Music for a special evening of classical music and a survey of God’s redemptive plan. Beginning with the opening pages of Scripture and concluding with Revelation and the believer’s new home, the concert From the Garden to Glory featured curated musical selections paired with the biblical text to help us reflect on the Bible’s overarching message: the hope found in Jesus alone. As you can see in the video below, each musical theme was accompanied by brief commentary from Alistair Begg.

The Garden

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. … And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. … Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Gen. 1:1, 31; 2:7)

Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007: I. Prélude

Johann Sebastian Bach

The Fall

“Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…” (Rom. 5:12)

String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110: II. Allegro molto

Dmitri Shostakovich

The Promise

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Gen. 3:15)

“Gabriel’s Oboe”

Ennio Morricone

The Child

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isa. 9:6)

Opus 31, No. 23, “Mouvement de Prière Religieuse”

Fernando Sor

The Cross

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” (1 Peter 3:18)

Adagio for Strings, Op. 11

Samuel Barber

The Resurrection

“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” (1 Cor. 15:13–14)

Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, “Spring” (La primavera): I. Allegro

Antonio Vivaldi

The Church

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” (Rev. 11:15)

String Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, MWV R 20: IV. Presto

Felix Mendelssohn

The New Home

“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Rev. 7:9–10)

“Morgen!” ("Tomorrow!"), Op. 27, No. 4

Richard Strauss

Close / “How Great Thou Art”

 

 

Listen to The Kingdom of God: The Bible’s Story, from Genesis to Revelation

Why We Must Face Our Sinful Selves

We cannot fully comprehend the horror of our spiritual condition, and our spiritual condition is the reason why. Our sin prevents us from seeing the scope and depth of our sin.

March 13, 2025 by: Mitchell L. Chase

Our Spiritual Condition

We cannot fully comprehend the horror of our spiritual condition, and our spiritual condition is the reason why. Our sin prevents us from seeing the scope and depth of our sin. But as the nature of our condition becomes clearer, we might recoil at what we do see. Think of the prophet Isaiah when he had a vision of the Lord. He saw the glorious presence of God, which was hailed by angelic voices. The seraphim cried out,

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
     the whole earth is full of his glory! (Isa. 6:3)

In the presence of glory and holiness, Isaiah had a keen sense of his own sin. “Woe is me!” he declared. “For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa. 6:5). The prophet’s recognition and confession are refreshing. He doesn’t sound like Adam. Isaiah knew God’s holiness, so he had a better understanding of his guilt and desperate condition. The response of the Lord is seen in the action of a seraph, who touched Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Isa. 6:7).

Loincloths and tree coverings cannot atone for sin. We need confession and forgiveness. We offer the former, and God provides the latter. A true sense of sin confronts us with our unworthiness to receive mercy, yet the beauty of mercy is that it is undeserved. To mix metaphors, our loincloths are just filthy rags (Gen. 3:7; Isa. 64:6). We need our guilt removed. We need our sins covered, and only God can cover the deeds we have done against him. Sin, says Mark Jones, is “the soul’s disease, blinding the mind, hardening the heart, disordering the will, stealing strength, and dampening the affections.”1 We are helpless before God, and our only hope is God.

Our admission could sound like the words of Peter. In Luke 5, Jesus performs a miracle from a boat, and the fishermen witness an extraordinary catch of fish (Luke 5:6–7). In the presence of such power and wonder, Peter immediately senses his own unworthiness. They have never met anyone like Jesus. The holy, holy, holy God is walking among sinners. Peter says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8).

Peter’s instinct is like Adam’s: in the presence of such greatness and glory, create some distance. But the sinfulness of Peter is not new information to Jesus. He knows Peter’s condition before getting into the boat! Peter knows he is a sinner, but that doesn’t bring the scene to an end; sinners are the people Jesus came for. Peter wants to put up some distance, but Jesus has already crossed the distance to come to him. Jesus tells Peter words that calm the soul of anxious and terrified sinners: “Do not be afraid” (Luke 5:10). Jesus knows the fear in Peter’s heart, so he addresses it. In the presence of unrivaled glory and holiness, fear seems reasonable. But Peter’s fear isn’t a reason to distance himself, and his sin isn’t a reason to send Jesus away.

Jesus has come to call sinners out of the darkness and into the light. He came—and still comes—for the hiding and the fearful, the ashamed and the sinful. Do not be afraid. The rescuing grace of God has stepped into the boat.

This Christian Life

The promise of the new covenant is a deep cleansing of the heart.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezek. 36:25–26) Do you see the truth of your defilement? There is cleansing in Christ.

Do you understand your hardness of heart? There is a new heart in Christ. The new covenant consists of sinners who are now united to Jesus by grace through faith. They have forsaken the loincloths and tree coverings. They have come out of hiding in order to find a new refuge. The work of Jesus is the burning coal to purify us.

The promise of the new covenant is a deep cleansing of the heart.

Because Christians have not experienced the resurrection of the body and the fullness of God’s sanctifying work, we are still short of glory. Nevertheless, we are free in him from the penalty and power of our transgressions. We can walk in honesty, confessing our sins and rejoicing in the finished work of Christ on our behalf. It would be futile to err in the ways that John wrote about in his first letter: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). Or, “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:10). Let’s not be deceived, and let’s not call God a liar. We have sinned and have sin.

The believer’s answer to the question “Where are you?” is different from the Genesis 3 context. We now answer “Where are you?” by saying, “I am in Christ.” My covering comes not from fig leaves but from the old rugged cross. Our refuge is not among the trees but under the tree. The cross has become the tree of life for sinners. It is there that our atonement was accomplished.

We may feel tempted to say to Jesus, “Depart from me,” but he is saying to us, “Come to me.” As the light of God’s word reveals our transgressions and we sense greater depths of our shame, we may feel overwhelmed. But your sin does not overwhelm Christ. If you say to him, “I am afraid, for I cannot bear my sin,” he will say to you, “Fear not, for I already bore your sin.” Don’t walk—flee—to the refuge of his mercy tree. The very reasons you think he should depart are the very reasons he tells you to come.

Notes:

  1. Mark Jones, Knowing Sin: Seeing a Neglected Doctrine through the Eyes of the Puritans (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2022), 39.

This article is adapted from Short of Glory: A Biblical and Theological Exploration of the Fall by Mitchell L. Chase.

Mitchell L. Chase (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is an associate professor of biblical studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also the preaching pastor of Kosmosdale Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and is the author of several books. He blogs regularly at Biblical Theology on Substack.

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Hymn: “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken” by John Newton

Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken

Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God;
He whose Word cannot be broken
Formed thee for His own abode.
On the Rock of Ages founded,
What can shake thy sure repose?
With salvation’s walls surrounded,
Thou may’st smile at all thy foes.

Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken by John Newton

Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God;
He whose Word cannot be broken
Formed thee for His own abode.
On the Rock of Ages founded,
What can shake thy sure repose?
With salvation’s walls surrounded,
Thou may’st smile at all thy foes.

See, the streams of living waters,
Springing from eternal love,
Well supply thy sons and daughters
And all fear of want remove.
Who can faint while such a river
Ever flows their thirst t’assuage?
Grace, which like the Lord, the giver,
Never fails from age to age.

’Round each habitation hov’ring,
See the cloud and fire appear
For a glory and a cov’ring,
Showing that the Lord is near.
Thus deriving from their banner
Light by night and shade by day,
Safe they feed upon the manna
Which He gives them when they pray.

Blest inhabitants of Zion,
Washed in the Redeemer’s blood!
Jesus, whom their souls rely on,
Makes them kings and priests to God.
’Tis His love His people raises
Over self to reign as kings,
And as priests, His solemn praises
Each for a thank offering brings.

Savior, if of Zion’s city
I, through grace, a member am,
Let the world deride or pity;
I will glory in Thy name.
Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,
All his boasted pomp and show;
Solid joys and lasting treasure
None but Zion’s children know.

Listen to the message "Learning How to Worship: An Application"

The lyrics for this hymn are in the public domain and may be shared or reproduced without obtaining permission.

How the Author of Hebrews Reads the Book of Psalms

If we look to the way the New Testament uses the Psalms, we will discover that in addition to an emotional outpouring to God, the New Testament authors find a rich theology of God in the Psalter.

March 12, 2025 by: Daniel Stevens

The Psalms

The Psalms have always been at the heart of Christian worship. Believers sing, pray, and meditate on the words of the Psalms week in and week out, and they have done so since the foundation of the church. This frequent devotion, however, is often only partially formed. We go to the Psalms looking to find ourselves, to put words to the emotions we already feel or hope to feel. We go to the Psalms as a voice for our heart, as a counselor, as a comfort. None of this is wrong—it is part of why God gave us the Psalms—but it is incomplete.

If we look to the way the New Testament uses the Psalms, we will discover that in addition to an emotional outpouring to God, the New Testament authors find a rich theology of God in the Psalter. The Psalms, in the New Testament’s reading, are the songs of the Son. The Father speaks to the Son, and the Son speaks in return.1 It is not just that some psalms predict things about Jesus; it is that in many of the psalms, we hear the voice of Jesus speaking and the Father speaking to him. The Son speaks in his preincarnate glory. He speaks in his earthly life and suffering. He even speaks in the role of his people, taking their sin and their suffering onto himself.

Paul, the unknown author of Hebrews, and Jesus himself all go to the Psalms to find Jesus, the Son of God, speaking and being spoken to. In earlier eras, the church has been more conscious of this, singing the Psalms regularly and finding the words of Jesus in their mouths even as they saw Jesus singing their own thoughts, emotions, and confessions through the Psalter. More than any other book of the Old Testament, the Psalms presents us with the unity between Christ and his people as the psalmists quickly shift between speaking of the Son in his glory, in his humility, and in his representation of his people. Theophylact, a medieval Greek bishop whose New Testament commentaries proved influential in both the Western and Eastern churches, would generalize from specific quotations and claim that Paul read entire psalms as being about Jesus. This was likely uncontroversial. This is not to say that an interpretation is right because it is old or was widely accepted; but in this case, those Scripture-saturated Christians were more sensitive to the Bible’s own way of reading itself. The Psalms are, in their fullness, the songs of the Son, the hymnbook of the greater David.

This is plain throughout the New Testament, but it is particularly poignant in the epistle to the Hebrews.

Read by the Author of Hebrews

In the book of Hebrews, we are presented with the God who speaks. He speaks to us in his word and in his Son. But this is not all we see. The Father speaks to the Son, and the Son speaks back. The author finds throughout Scripture, but particularly in the Psalms, this call and response within the Trinity. A divine conversation plays out before our eyes as the world is made, as salvation is accomplished, and as all things are made new in the Son of God. Our God is a speaking God, and before he ever spoke to us, God has always been the one who speaks within the Trinity. As this speaking God turns to that which is not himself, all creation bursts into being and is sustained by that same word. Within history, God speaks again and again, until at last that Son comes in whom God communicates perfectly and finally. By grace, Hebrews gives us glimpses of this divine conversation. To do so, the author turns to the language of the Psalms.

Within history, God speaks again and again, until at last that Son comes in whom God communicates perfectly and finally.

While any book of the New Testament could be used to help us understand God’s revelation in the Old, few books offer as extended, deep, and explicit an interaction with the Old Testament as does the epistle to the Hebrews. In particular, in this one letter, we are shown time and again how the Psalms form our understanding of Jesus: his nature, his work, and his relationships. Through paying close attention to how Hebrews reasons with the Psalms, we will see Jesus more clearly and learn to read the Psalms the apostles’ way, as the songs of the Son.

More than any other inspired writer, the author of Hebrews develops his argument by reasoning with the Scriptures of Israel and particularly with the Psalms. Far more than simply quoting the Psalms as illustrations or proof texts, the author of Hebrews composes his entire letter as a series of arguments from the Psalms and other Old Testament texts in light of Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, ascension, ongoing work, and coming return.

Nowhere else do we have such a dense and sustained interaction with one book of Scripture by another. While the author weaves together texts from all of the Old Testament canon, deftly synthesizing the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings as he demonstrates the superiority of Christ, it is to the Psalms that he returns again and again. At crucial points in his argument as he explains or applies or clarifies, the author of Hebrews reaches consistently for the Psalms. Since this is the case, it is particularly helpful for us to explore how the author reads the Psalms.

It is my conviction that if we read the Psalms with the author of Hebrews, we will learn to read the Psalms for what they truly are. Their meanings will unfold as we see precisely how they witness to Christ: not only as predictions to be fulfilled but also as testimony to the very voice of God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. In the voice of the psalmists, the Son reveals his nature, his mission, and his relationships with his Father and his people.

Notes:

  1. While this type of observation is common in the older theological tradition, in modern scholarship on Hebrews it has been most clearly argued in Madison Pierce, Divine Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews: The Recontextualization of Spoken Quotations of Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

This article is adapted from ​​​​Songs of the Son: Reading the Psalms with the Author of Hebrews by Daniel Stevens.

Daniel Stevens (PhD, University of Cambridge) is assistant professor of New Testament Interpretation at Boyce College, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Daniel lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Hannah, and two children.

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God’s Final Word for His People

God's Final Word for His People

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets” (Heb. 1:1). But, the book of Hebrews tells us, the situation has changed. God’s Word has come to us in its fullness not as a series of propositions or promises but as a person: “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (v. 2). In Jesus Christ, presented to us infallibly in the Scriptures, God essentially says about Himself and His eternal plan, “Here is My final word. There is nothing better to say.”

GodsFinalWord_BlogHeader_03.12


“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets” (Heb. 1:1). But, the book of Hebrews tells us, the situation has changed. God’s Word has come to us in its fullness not as a series of propositions or promises but as a person: “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (v. 2). In Jesus Christ, presented to us infallibly in the Scriptures, God essentially says about Himself and His eternal plan, “Here is My final word. There is nothing better to say.”

That is why Hebrews 2:1 tells us, “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” What is it that “we have heard”? It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which the author of Hebrews has summarized for us in the opening of his letter. Hebrews 1:2–3 gives us five details about the Son that demand our attention, consideration, and meditation.

1. Jesus Is the Heir of All Things

In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things. (Heb. 1:2)

From all eternity, the Son has had the promise of an inheritance. It is evident from the beginning of His life on earth. The angel told Mary about Jesus, “The Lord God will give to him”—that is, as His inheritance—“the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32–33).

At the end His ministry, in John 16:15, Jesus affirmed the scope of this inheritance: “All that the Father has is mine”—in other words, everything! As the hymn says,

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills,
The wealth in ev’ry mine;
He owns the rivers and the rocks and rills,
The sun and stars that shine.1

And this same heir of all things, the hymn writer reminds us, cares for us. To know Jesus Christ is to share in the promises and blessings of this inheritance (Rom. 8:17).

2. Jesus Is God’s Creative Agent

In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, … through whom also he created the world. (Heb. 1:2)

Paul says of the Son that “all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16). And John affirms that “all things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). So not only is everything to be placed in the Son’s hand, but actually, He was involved in it all in the first place. Everything that is and was and will be has come through Him and is destined for Him.

In Jesus Christ, presented to us infallibly in the Scriptures, God essentially says about Himself and His eternal plan, “Here is My final word. There is nothing better to say.”

There is no truth that does not have its origin in the Son. No scientist, no historian, no poet has ever said or done anything outside the bounds that the Lord Jesus set for them before time began. He is the starting point of the world and all we can know about it.

3. Jesus Displays God’s Glory

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. (Heb. 1:3)

God’s “glory” is the visible expression of His presence. Moses asked to see God’s glory on the mountain (Ex. 33:18). This is the same glory that the apostles saw in the face of Jesus Christ: “We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

When we see what the Son is like, we see exactly what God is like. That’s why when Philip repeated Moses’s request—“Lord, show us the Father”—Jesus answered, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:8–9). The true and the full character of God is made open and clear to us in the person of Jesus.

4. Jesus Upholds the Universe

He upholds the universe by the word of his power. (Heb. 1:3)

The Son, in His role as Creator, was not a watchmaker who wound the earth up and let it go. No, the same powerful word that created something out of nothing actually keeps the creation going. “In him,” Paul says of the Lord Jesus, “all things hold together” (Col. 1:17).

There is no truth that does not have its origin in the Son.

Jesus’ miracles reveal this cosmic reality as through Him, the power of God breaks into the course of normal events. It took only a word for Jesus to calm the storm on the Sea of Galilee, just as it had taken only a word to create the Sea of Galilee. In awe, the disciples asked, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41). He is the very one who “upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

5. Jesus Purifies and Petitions

After making purification for sins he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Heb. 1:3)

Because He upholds the universe, it is also in the scope of Jesus’ power to uphold His creation—the pinnacle of which is humanity, made in the very image of God. Most remarkably, He this did by “making purification” on the cross. At a moment in time, the creator of time “bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).

Jesus’ humanity was a necessity, but His divine identity made this purification possible and totally effective. A priest of the old covenant “stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins” (Heb. 10:11). But Jesus “has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26)—an incomparable sacrifice.

Furthermore, unlike the priests of the old covenant, Jesus “is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25). There will never be a day when He ceases to intervene on our behalf, putting His righteousness before the Father and attributing it to all who believe in Him as Lord and Savior. There will never be a day when we cannot draw near to God in full assurance of faith (Heb. 10:22).

Pay Attention!

In a pluralistic, syncretistic world, we may be tempted to say, “Whatever works for you!” But the Scriptures have not left that path open to us. God’s final Word has come to us in the person of His Son.

“Therefore,” the writer to the Hebrews reminds us, “we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard” about this Jesus. When we feel ourselves beginning to drift away, we must lift our eyes again to God’s glory revealed in God’s Son, who will inherit all things, who made us, who sustains us, who saved us, and who keeps us.

This article was adapted from the sermon “Heed These Warnings” by Alistair Begg.

A Study in Hebrews, Volume 1 by Alistair Begg


  1. John Willard Peterson, “He Owns the Cattle on a Thousand Hills” (1948). ↩︎