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Showing posts from June, 2023

Built to Serve: God’s Design for the Home

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Part 2 of the series: Built by Grace: God's Design for Family and Faith by Bart Denny Walk into almost any home and you can learn a lot just by looking around. Family photos on the wall. A few diplomas. Maybe a trophy case, a military plaque, or — if you're in certain parts of the country — a deer head mounted above the fireplace. But the walls only tell part of the story. The real story is told by the rhythms of a home: what gets talked about most, what creates stress, what gets sacrificed for, and what gets quietly pushed aside. Every home has a center of gravity. Something is pulling it in a certain direction — whether that home is full or quiet, blended or aging, just starting out or starting over. And it's tempting to assume that if we love the Lord, the spiritual direction of our home will simply take care of itself. It won't. You can believe the right things and still let lesser things set the pace. You can want a Christ-centered hom...

Original Sin: Inherited Corruption or Inherited Guilt? (and Why It Matters)

by Bart L. Denny, Ph.D., Th.M. Maybe you’ve heard the term “original sin.” You might be surprised to learn that there is considerable debate about precisely what the phrase “original sin” entails. Christians hear the term original sin and have differing conceptions of it. Reading the Bible, I have always understood original sin to mean what I more often heard described as a “sin nature,” an invariable propensity to sin inherited from our first father, Adam. Except for Jesus Christ, the God-man, all have sinned, and none can help but sin. All flavors of orthodox Christianity have accepted that humankind inherits a sinful nature and that no human can attain sinless perfection in this life. This sinful nature, because it has come down through Adam, might be considered “inherited corruption.” One of the consequences of this inherited corruption is the eventual physical death of all human beings. But I never recognized that this understanding of original sin, common among Baptists, Arminian...