This is the second part in an ongoing series where I’m collaborating with my friend Adsum Try Ravenhill to blog through St Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians by writing each other letters. You can read the first part on Adsum’s blog here. Dear Adsum Thank you for your letter and for suggesting this little endeavour… Continue reading Prepare for Action: Polycarp part 2
Tag: Sermon on the Mount
On Judging Others
Are we supposed to judge others, or not? D. A. Carson has quipped, and is often quoted, that John 3.16 is no longer the best known verse of the Bible in western cultures. Instead, it’s Matthew 7.1: ‘judge not, that you not be judged.’ Which tells you a fair bit about our culture’s reception of… Continue reading On Judging Others
On Names and Naming
We don’t think much about the Ten Commandments in my corner of the Christian world, which some of us would think is exactly as it should be—“we’re a people of grace!”—and I fit in the other camp when I wonder if our resistance to the commandments as law means we lose them as wisdom. It… Continue reading On Names and Naming
On Fasting
As I write I’m on the third of three days of prayer and fasting. This is a normal practice for our church, we have corporate times—often three days—of prayer and fasting two to three times a year. Which is weird. In some ways I’m only waking up to how weird it is as I write.… Continue reading On Fasting



