Meet the Puritans

Dear Timothy, The Puritans show us the importance of catechizing your own church people and your neighbors. Like the Reformers, the Puritans were catechists. They believed that pulpit messages should be reinforced by personalized ministry through catechesis —the instruction in the doctrines of...

Fear. It’s an emotion we all know well, and in recent weeks, it’s one that has asserted itself in our minds and hearts. We fear both ourselves and loved ones catching the virus. We fear what will happen to our finances because of lost wages. We fear how long our life will be put on hold. We fear...

Dear Timothy, As we've seen , when God’s Word is preached experientially, the Holy Spirit uses it to transform people and nations. And in this experiential preaching, the Puritans focused on Christ. As Scripture clearly shows, evangelism must bear witness to the record God has given of His only...

Dear Timothy, I've written to you about how the Puritans stressed the practice of a piety that flows out of sound doctrine. And yet they also promoted the experiential dimension of Reformed preaching. Puritan preaching explained how a Christian experiences biblical truth in his life. The term...

Editor's Note: Find previous entries in this series at the end of this article. The law/gospel hermeneutic wrongly separates the Bible's indicatives from its imperatives. That's the first problem that we addressed in our last article . But there's a second problem with this hermeneutic: It tends to...

Satan shows us the disappointments and difficulties that godly men face. Following the Lord Jesus Christ means that you will share (to some measure) in Christ's experience of hardship and difficulty. God's people are not immune to affliction. Some godly men are financially distressed, others are in...

Editor's Note: Find previous entries in this series at the end of this article. In this article, we will look at one key reason the law/gospel hermeneutic is problematic, and then another reason in a subsequent article. The law/gospel hermeneutic is problematic because it separates what Scripture...

"Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." So says God to Abraham in the opening verse of Genesis 15. In his commentary, Calvin admits that, at first glance, God's encouragement to Abraham "to be of good courage" seems strange if not "superfluous." Abraham has just waged a...

Dear Timothy, In my last letter , I wrote that the Puritans show us how to marry doctrine and practice in our preaching. I'd like to add that they stressed the practice of piety (praxis pietatis), or practical godliness, flowing out of sound doctrine—just as much as Augustine and Calvin before them...

Dear Timothy, In my last letter , I wrote that the Puritans show us how to shape our entire lives and preaching by the Holy Scriptures. But they also show us how to marry doctrine and practice in our preaching. They accomplished this by addressing the mind with clarity, confronting the conscience...