Every Last Word

Guest (Male): Peter has a reputation for being the loudmouth of the disciples. When asked who Jesus is, he blurts out that he is the Christ of God. This confession has a lot of implications for who Christ is and what he does. Are you able to make this same confession? Do you know Jesus as your Christ?

Welcome to Every Last Word, a radio and internet program with Dr. Philip Ryken, teaching the whole Bible to change your whole life. Today we hear the radical confession of Peter, that Jesus is the Christ of God. Stay with us to hear more about the implications of Peter's claim.

Mark: Phil, of all the names or titles that Peter could have used, why is it significant that Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ of God?

Dr. Philip Ryken: Mark, that's a great question. Today we're at one of the great passages in the whole gospel of Luke when Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ. That is to say, the Messiah, or to be a little clearer about it, the anointed one.

If you look at the Old Testament, there were three people who were anointed for their service: prophets, priests, and kings. Whether Peter fully realized it or not, he's saying that Jesus Christ is the final prophet, the final priest, the final king. He is the total savior that we need, the one anointed by God to do the whole work of our salvation.

Mark: Another thing about this story that I've never really understood is why Jesus told his disciples to keep his identity a secret. Can you explain it to me?

Dr. Philip Ryken: Mark, I wish you'd come to me with some of the easy ones. That is a real mystery about the gospels, isn't it? Why was Jesus so, in a way you might say, secretive about his identity?

I think maybe I understand it, Mark. The disciples were just beginning to understand who Jesus was, that he was the Christ of God, but they weren't anywhere close to understanding his saving work, his sufferings on the cross, coming back from the dead with the power of eternal life.

The disciples really didn't understand any of that, and they were not yet ready to preach the gospel until they did understand those things. Of course, they didn't understand them until Jesus actually died on the cross and rose again. Then it was the time for them to be his witnesses. So, we're going to have to wait until the end of the gospel for the disciples to be ready to preach the gospel.

Mark: All right, thank you, Phil. Let's turn together now to Luke 9 verses 18 to 22 and listen to Dr. Ryken.

Dr. Philip Ryken: There are times in life when suddenly it all becomes so clear. For a long time, we can't quite seem to gain perspective, but then in a moment, everything opens out and we are able to see with perfect vision.

And so it is that the mind unexpectedly seizes upon the solution to a mathematical equation. Or the plane that has been seemingly lost in the clouds drops below the cloud deck and suddenly the runway lights appear below. Or a group of mountain climbers rises above the timberline and when they turn back, they can see the whole valley stretched out before them. Everything laid out to see. Everything has become clear.

And so it is with faith in Jesus Christ. For a time, maybe a long time for some of us, we can't quite seem to gain the spiritual perspective that we seek. God seems to remain just beyond our grasp. At times we can see the shapes moving in the mist of eternity, but we can't quite make out the meaning of life.

Or to change the analogy, we wander through a dark forest of doubt, wondering if we will ever come out into the clearing. And then suddenly it happens. Our souls are bathed in spiritual sunlight, and we see the salvation of God in the person and work of his son.

C.S. Lewis writes about this experience in his spiritual autobiography, *Surprised by Joy*. Lewis had been wrestling with the claims of Christ and as God pursued him, he gradually came more and more to believe in the truth of Christianity. And yet he had not fully accepted the deity of Jesus Christ until one day it happened.

Lewis writes that, "I know very well when, but hardly how, that final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out, I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo, I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought or in great emotion. It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake."

I think as we read the gospel of Luke, we find the disciples having a very similar experience. For months, or perhaps even years, they had been following Jesus, listening to his words, witnessing his miracles. And all during that time, Jesus was inviting the disciples to consider his person, to come to know him in the hope that they would trust him for their salvation.

He brought them along very slowly and gradually. He seems almost to have allowed them to reach their own conclusions on the basis of inductive reasoning. But finally the time came for Jesus to ask them straight out, who did they think that he was?

You'll see in the gospel that Jesus asked this question when he was alone with his disciples praying, because what was about to happen was so significant, away from the crowds. Jesus began by inquiring about the opinion of others. We read that it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him, and he asked them, "Who do the crowds say that I am?"

In other words, what was the word on the street? What verdict were people reaching in the court of public opinion? And Jesus, of course, was not asking for his own information, but he was testing his disciples, leading them to recognize his person and his work.

The disciples gave several plausible answers, all based on things that they had heard. They answered, "Well, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, some say one of the prophets of old has risen." Apparently, John the Baptist was the number one answer. It may sound strange to us because we know that John and Jesus were two different people from two different families with two different names and two different missions in life. Remember, John was the herald, but Jesus was the king.

Yet perhaps we can understand why people had this mistaken identity. Many people here in Galilee had probably never met John. They only knew him by his reputation. Since what they knew about Jesus sounded very much like what they had heard about John, it was natural to make some kind of connection.

Both men had a large religious following. They both were preaching the same basic message of the kingdom of God. Some people might have even wondered whether now, after John's beheading, whether Jesus might be the second coming of the Baptist.

And then there was the second leading vote-getter, Elijah the prophet. Largely, I think, on the basis of the prophecy from Malachi: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the day of the Lord." On the basis of that prophecy, pious Jews were waiting for the coming of Elijah.

Actually, that prophecy was not about Jesus. It was about John the Baptist and his ministry in preparing the way for Christ, but we can again see how people would make that kind of connection. Jesus was performing some of the same kinds of miracles that Elijah had performed. Maybe he was the coming of Elijah.

And then, of course, other people had other opinions. It's not mentioned here, but some thought he was Jeremiah. Some said he was like Moses, giving bread in the wilderness, teaching the law. Others weren't quite sure which prophet he was, but they knew that he was someone great, like one of the mighty men from the scriptures. People had all of these different opinions about Jesus.

And of course, really the same thing is true today. People aren't making a comparison with Elijah perhaps or with Jeremiah, but people disagree about the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth and they have all different kinds of opinions. Some say really that he's only a legend, that the gospels are merely a fiction.

Others admit that Jesus existed, and let me just say that no serious historian can reasonably doubt that he did. And yet they still deny his deity. That's a matter of faith. Their only interest is in his teaching. They're not interested in his miracles, certainly not his atoning death or his resurrection from the dead. And so they believe, perhaps, that Jesus was a noble prophet or a moral teacher or maybe a successful politician, but they don't believe that he was the Son of God.

And then there are many other people, perhaps many people even in the church, who recognize that there is something special about Jesus, but aren't quite clear what it is. They respect his teaching. They admire his life, but are not yet worshipping him as their savior and their God. They are wandering somewhere in the mist of spirituality, still waiting to get a clear vision of Jesus.

And then still others, perhaps knowing all the right answers, somewhere in the mind they have a sort of belief in Jesus, but it has not yet transformed and consumed their entire lives so that they have entrusted their very selves to his lordship and salvation. And these people, too, are not yet awake, fully awake, to his true identity as the son of God and the savior of the world.

It's always interesting to hear what people think about Jesus. It was interesting in this case. Asking about Jesus is a great way to start a question about spiritual things: "What do you think about Jesus?" That was the kind of question Jesus was wanting people to think about.

But notice here that the real question is not what other people believe about Jesus, but what we ourselves believe about Jesus. That's where Jesus wanted to go with his disciples. What other people were saying was all very interesting as far as it went, but it wasn't as important as what was happening in their own minds and hearts.

And so Jesus pressed them for their own opinion about his true identity. If you've been studying along in the gospel of Luke, you know that Luke has been answering this question, really, from the beginning of his gospel. Way back in the dedication, Luke explained that he wrote the gospel to help people be more certain about Jesus Christ.

To that end, he carefully wrote down the events surrounding the savior's birth, the messages from the angels. He told about Jesus' childhood. He gave his genealogy. He recorded his first sermon. He documented his early miracles. All along the way, Luke is showing us how people responded to Jesus. His goal has been to help us be absolutely sure who Jesus is.

And now it is time, here in chapter 9, at one of the climactic moments in the whole gospel, for Jesus to lay the question directly before his disciples: "Who do you say that I am?" The word "you," as you see it there in verse 20, is emphatic from the standpoint of the Greek grammar. Jesus is saying something like this: "Look, some people say one thing, other people say something else, but you, what do you say?"

Jesus was wanting to bring them to a point of personal commitment. What mattered was not what other people were saying about Jesus, but what they believed for themselves.

And of course, understand that as Jesus was asking his disciples, in a way, as we read the gospel, he is asking us. He's putting the same question before us: "Who do you say that Jesus is?" What is your opinion about Jesus Christ? What conclusion have you reached about who he is?

I think it's the most important question in the world. It's important because Jesus is the most important person in the world. The Bible says that through him all things were made. They were made through him and for him. The Bible says that in Jesus, all things hold together. Really, if you want to understand anything about anything, you have to know who Jesus is. It's that important.

But the question is also important for this reason: because it determines your destiny. Heaven and hell are hanging in the balance as you consider this question of who Jesus is and what kind of salvation he has to offer. The Bible says that the free gift of eternal life is only for those who know Jesus Christ. And how can we have that kind of life if we don't even know who Jesus is?

And so Jesus asks the crucial question: "Who do you say that I am?" I suppose that when he asked this, really the whole universe should have stopped to wait for the answer. Here was the very Son of God. He had come into the world and now he was asking for people to declare his true identity.

Before any of that kind of suspense could build, Peter just blurted out the answer: "You are," he said, "the Christ of God." How typical it was for Peter to answer, by far the most outspoken disciple, often serving as he does here as a kind of spokesman for the others.

Peter always had something to say, even if he didn't always raise his hand, and even if he had a knack sometimes for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. We have a sort of fondness for Peter because of this. I wonder, though, if we had been one of the disciples, if we would have been all that fond of him after all. Probably he would have been the disciple that annoyed us the most. But here on this occasion, Peter gets it absolutely right. Jesus is the Christ.

Why did Peter say this? He had many good reasons for saying it, that's for sure. He had been thinking about this question, and he had thought through these alternatives. Was he Elijah or was he one of the other prophets? None of those answers really seemed to fit. They were true as far as they went, because really all the prophets were pointing to Christ, so it would be natural enough to see some kind of connection.

Yet those answers didn't go far enough in recognizing the unique supremacy of Jesus. Peter knew this. He had been with Jesus from the very beginning. He had watched his power over demons and disease and death. He had seen that he had the authority to rule over the wind and the waves. He had tasted the bread that Jesus was bringing down from heaven.

As he considered all of that, all of the things that he had seen and heard, suddenly it became perfectly clear: Jesus is the Christ of God. Peter, I suppose, in a way, could have reasoned his way to that conclusion, but it was more than a matter of inductive reasoning. This was a matter of faith.

As we learn from the gospel of Matthew, Peter said this because God the Father revealed it to him. And that's how anyone comes to know Jesus as the Christ. You need to study what he has said and done in the gospels. How can you know him at all unless you read what the scriptures say?

But it's not just that. It's also by the supernatural work of God. It's by the witness of the Holy Spirit who alone can reveal the true identity of Jesus. When people are struggling with the claims of Christ, you may be struggling with them yourselves, trying to think through who Jesus really is. You may know other people who are struggling with that very question. Understand it's not just more evidence that you need or that they need. Ultimately it is a gracious work of God that will change your mind and your heart to believe in Jesus.

If the change comes from God, he's the one we need to go to in prayer, asking him to convince us of these things and help us understand who Jesus really is. This is the true biblical doctrine of salvation and of conversion: that God is the one who enables us to confess faith in Christ.

It is surely rational to believe in Jesus for salvation. I mean, it's a rational conclusion that you can reach on the basis of evidence in scripture. But no one ever comes to that belief by reason alone. It's the Spirit of God who uses the scripture to persuade us to believe that Jesus is the Christ.

What do we mean when we say that Jesus is the Christ? Or what does this expression mean here when Peter says "the Christ of God"? I suppose sometimes we think of Christ as part of Jesus' name: Jesus Christ. Almost as if it is his last name.

But of course, it is not so much a name as it is a title, a title of honor. The word Christ is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew word Messiah. So to say that Jesus is the Christ is to say that he is the Messiah, but of course that raises another question: what does Messiah mean?

Literally, the Messiah is the anointed one. He is the one who has been chosen by God and consecrated for some sacred office. Here, it helps to know a little bit of the Old Testament background. When a prophet or a priest or a king was set apart for the holy service of God, he was anointed with oil.

And so, for example, when Aaron was ordained as high priest over Israel, Moses was instructed to anoint him with oil, to pour the oil over his head. The other priests of Israel were consecrated the same way. And on occasion, the prophets also were anointed. You might think of the prophet Isaiah who said, "The Lord has anointed me to bring good news."

But anointing, although it was for prophets and priests, was especially for kings. Most of the references in the Old Testament that have to do with anointing have to do with royalty. And so it was that Samuel anointed David to be king over Israel. And after him, Zadok anointed Solomon, and so forth.

The anointing of the king with oil was a physical act that was also a symbol of a spiritual calling. And so from that time forward, the king was called the anointed one, the Messiah, or if you wanted to put it in Greek, you could call him the Christ.

Many prophets and priests and kings were anointed this way. And yet all along the way, there were hints that God one day would send the greatest prophet, the highest priest, and the mightiest king of all. The people of God in the time of Jesus Christ knew all of those ancient prophecies. They knew that one day a deliverer would crush Satan's head. They knew that God would raise up a prophet like Moses from among his brothers. They knew all the promises about David and about a mighty king coming from the city of Bethlehem. They knew that his kingdom would last forever.

And so the people were waiting for the anointed one. They were waiting for the Messiah. They were waiting for the Christ. Different people in those days had different ideas about what the Messiah would do when he came. People usually think more or less in earthly terms, and so it's not surprising that many people were looking for some kind of political deliverance, for the establishment of an earthly dominion, the defeat of Israel's enemies.

Others, I'm sure, understood the more spiritual aspects of the kingdom of the Messiah, but whatever people were expecting, it took them a long time to recognize Jesus as the Christ.

Now, Luke has been giving us hints about this ever since the beginning of the gospel. He showed us how Jesus came from the royal house of David, how he was born in Bethlehem, how he had the right to reign on David's throne. Through the witness of the angels and through Zechariah and others, Luke testifies to the ancient promises of salvation. Then you have the testimony of the Christmas angels themselves, that Jesus is the savior, that he is Christ the Lord.

And so, by this point in the gospel, we are ourselves ready, I think, for this confession from Peter. Peter probably didn't know all of that. He may not have understood all of the things yet about the childhood of Jesus or what the angels had said, but he had seen Jesus in action. He had been thinking about who Jesus must be. He had been taking it all in.

When Jesus finally asked him to say who he was, the answer came right out. Peter said, "Jesus, you are the Christ of God. You are the Messiah. You are the savior."

Let me just ask you, are you able to make that same confession? Are you able to make the confession that Peter made? What is your considered, thoughtful response to Jesus Christ as he is presented to you in the gospel? Is it clear to you that he came from God? Do you see that he is the savior that God promised to send?

Understand, it is not enough to admire Jesus as some great man. Even Muslims will agree that Jesus is a prophet. Even secular historians may admire the wisdom of his teaching. The question about Jesus is really the most important question in the universe is whether he is, in fact, the Christ. Whether he is, in fact, the true God and the unique savior of the world. What is your response? What is your confession? Anyone who confesses that Jesus is the Christ will be saved.

Peter's confession here surely seems like it must be the climax of Luke's gospel to this point. It would seem, therefore, like the perfect moment to have some kind of celebration, to have some kind of worship service perhaps. After months of training, the disciples finally understand who Jesus is. Surely, it's time for them to rejoice in Jesus as the Christ, for Jesus, perhaps, to praise them for their profound understanding of his person. High fives all the way around.

But notice what Jesus does instead. Immediately, he begins to preach to them about the cross. He preaches the gospel of his crucifixion and his resurrection. Before there could be any misunderstanding of what it meant for him to be the Messiah, Jesus, notice verse 21, strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised."

And so, as climactic as that confession in verse 20 seems to be, knowing Jesus as the Christ is not the end. Really, it's only the beginning. Now Jesus opens up a whole deeper understanding, not only of his person, but now of his work. As soon as his disciples understood who he was, Jesus began to tell them what he had come to do.

Knowing the person of Jesus was the prerequisite for understanding the work of Jesus. Really, to this day, these two things go together. We need to understand for ourselves who Jesus is and what he has come to do. That's what we share with others when we share the gospel. We try to explain to them who Jesus is as he is presented in the scripture, and not just who he is, but what he has come to do for salvation.

I suppose we can scarcely imagine the disciples' confusion and dismay as they heard these extraordinary words. What on earth was Jesus talking about? Why was he talking about suffering and dying? Why wouldn't he let them tell anyone that he was the Christ? This was something they had been struggling for months to understand. They had been watching his miracles and listening to his words. They'd been searching the scriptures, no doubt talking amongst themselves, trying to figure out the answer to this puzzle: who was this man?

Now they finally had the answer. They heard Peter's confession. They knew in their minds and hearts that this had to be the right answer. And yet, as soon as they get the right answer, Jesus starts talking about things that raise all kinds of further questions. Now they understand that they understand even less than they understood before. What was Jesus trying to say to them? And why was he swearing them to silence?

Scholars still to this day debate the purpose of this so-called Messianic secret, but I think the reason is fairly obvious. The disciples were just beginning to understand who Jesus was, and they really had no clear idea what he had come to do. Imagine what would have happened if they had gone out and started to tell everyone who Jesus was. They were bound to give people the wrong idea. At most, they would have a kind of half-gospel that wouldn't save anybody at all.

It would have been something like when a parent starts giving instructions to a child and then the child runs off before the instructions are finished. Never happens at our house, of course, but it might happen at yours. If you've had that experience, you know the job really doesn't get done right.

Waiting for the instructions was especially important in this case because it had to do with Jesus and about the gospel and because people had all kinds of wrong ideas about the Messiah. Remember, many of their aspirations and expectations were military and political. They were looking for a Christ who would bring earthly deliverance, and so if the disciples didn't wait until they really understood what Jesus had come to do, the gospel would get all mixed up with the wrong kind of politics.

Of course, later Jesus told his disciples to go out and tell everyone who he was and what he had come to do. But that was only after their training was complete, when they were ready to go global. For now, they had to keep listening to what Jesus had to teach. They had to understand the gospel before they could give it away.

Waiting was also important in this case because when Jesus started talking about that saving work, the disciples didn't understand what he was talking about. Jesus said that he would suffer and die, and really that was about the last thing you would expect the Messiah to say, at least the last thing the disciples expected him to say.

The Messiah was a mighty deliverer. He was a triumphant ruler. For him to suffer and die in weakness was incomprehensible, which no doubt partly explains why the disciples abandoned Jesus at the cross. They didn't understand what was happening. They didn't understand it even though Jesus had been trying to explain it many times in advance. For the disciples, a rejected Christ was virtually an oxymoron. It was a self-contradiction of all the things that Jesus said to them, the most confusing, the most shocking, the most impossible to understand.

Here we see at this critical juncture in the gospel so clearly that Jesus did not come to meet their expectations or your expectations or my expectations or anyone else's expectations. But he came to do the will of his Father in working out the plan of our salvation. That meant suffering and dying for sin. There is only one Christ that anyone can confess, and that Christ is Christ crucified.

Of course, all of the things that Jesus prophesied here came true, didn't they? He suffered many things: the accusation of enemies, the betrayal of friends, the abuse of soldiers, the scorn of low criminals. He was rejected by the leaders of Israel, here described as the elders and chief priests and scribes.

This refers, I think, most specifically to that trial where the Jewish council known as the Sanhedrin denied that Jesus was in fact the Christ. It was interested to read in one commentary that the word rejected here is a technical term to denote rejection after a careful legal scrutiny held to see whether a candidate for office was qualified. Therefore, it implies here that the hierarchy of Israel would consider Jesus' claims to be the Messiah, but they would decide against him.

Of course, that's exactly what happened in the trial of Jesus. We'll get to that later in the gospel. That was part of his suffering, that he came to his own people and his own people rejected him for not being the very savior that he was.

Then, of course, Jesus was killed. That happened too. This was the completion of his sufferings, the painful, shameful death of the cross when Jesus was nailed to the cursed tree and left to die a slow, bloody, excruciating, God-forsaken death.

Notice what Jesus was saying, not simply that these things would happen, but that they had to happen. Notice what Jesus says in verse 22: "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected and killed." He was under a kind of divine compulsion. He was the Christ, and these were all things it was necessary for him to endure to do the work of the Christ.

These things were necessary because they were promised again and again in the scriptures. They were necessary because they were part of God's plan. They were part of that eternal covenant between the Father and the Son, the everlasting agreement for our salvation.

This was included: the sufferings, the agony, the death, all of it. These things were necessary because in the courts of eternal justice, there was no other way for sin to be forgiven except through the atoning death of the perfect Son of God.

Jesus knew this. He knew it in advance. He prophesied about it. He embraced it as the purpose of his entire coming to Earth. He did all of these things long before they happened. No, the things that Jesus suffered were not incidental or accidental, but fundamental to his person and work as the Christ.

And so the very moment that Peter made that confession and said that Jesus was the Christ, Jesus said to him, "Yes, I am the Christ, but if you want to make that confession, you have to understand that to confess me is to confess me as the crucified Christ."

Even that is not all because Jesus went on to say that he would also be raised from the dead. On the third day. Jesus knew this in advance as well. It was part of the plan. There would be triumph in the end. There would be a crown after the cross. Because after Jesus was crucified, he would be raised in a body of glorious splendor, and he would have the power to give away the free gift of eternal life and the blessings of God in heaven to everyone who believes in him.

So here really, I suppose, for the first time in the history of the universe, you have the full preaching of the gospel. Not just the kingdom and repentance, as had been preached before, but now the cross and also the empty tomb.

This is what it means for Jesus to be the Christ. It means suffering, rejection, crucifixion, before dying and rising again. Can you even imagine what the disciples were thinking when Jesus said this? Can you imagine the blank looks on their faces as Jesus began to present to them the gospel for the first time? Can you understand why they were not yet ready to proclaim him as the Christ, how necessary it was for Jesus at this point to swear them to secrecy? The only person qualified to preach the gospel at this point was Jesus himself.

Then, over the course of the rest of the gospel, all of these events would unfold. Understand here the structure of Luke's gospel. He's taken nine chapters to introduce us to the person of Jesus. He's given us a clear answer to the question: who is Jesus? And the answer is that he is the Christ. He is the Messiah. He is the Son of God anointed to be the savior.

And now from this point, Luke will lay out for us the work of Christ, what he came to do. The gospel will tell us how Jesus came to suffer and to die for our sins and to rise again with the free gift of eternal life for everyone who confesses him as the crucified and risen Christ.

What is your confession? Who do you say that Jesus is? What do you understand about his work? Do you confess him as the Christ of God who suffered and died on the cross for your sins, who was raised from the dead to give you eternal life?

If you don't understand all of that, you're in pretty good company. Even the disciples didn't understand that the first time that Jesus explained it to them. They needed to hear the gospel many times before it began to make sense to them. Maybe you've heard the gospel many times. Maybe it still doesn't fully make sense to you.

But I pray that eventually you'll get to the point that these disciples reached, and that was they believed it, and they were saved. When did the gospel become clear to you? For some here this morning, many, maybe many years ago. When was it that you were able to say that Jesus is the Christ?

When were you able to confess by what you read in the scriptures and by what God's Spirit was doing in your mind and heart that Jesus is, in fact, the Christ? When did you awaken to the full realization of the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in him? Is all of that clear to you now? Or are there still some things that you are trying to understand?

Well, let me tell you the way to understand it is by continuing to read and to study and to hear this gospel that Jesus preached to his own disciples. And as you read and consider, to ask God for the gift of faith so that you too might believe in Jesus as the Christ.

Father, we want to believe this ourselves. And we pray for ourselves for a firm faith in Jesus as the Christ. And we pray for others here this morning, others who are on our hearts, Lord, who have not yet made this confession. Father, would you do a work of grace in their lives so that they may know Jesus Christ and have life in him. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Every Last Word with Bible teacher Dr. Philip Ryken, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance exists to promote a biblical understanding and world view. Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of reformed theologians from decades and even centuries gone by, we seek to provide Christian teaching that will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place.

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