everyday theology
Where is your hope today?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 31 Mar 2026
At the very end of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian looks back from the Celestial City and sees a man called Ignorance approaching the gate.
Ignorance began to knock, supposing that entrance should have been quickly administered to him; but he was asked by the men that looked over the top of the gate: “Whence came you, and what would you have?” He answered: “I have eat and drank in the presence of the King, and he has taught in our streets.” Then they asked him for his certificate, that they might go in and show it to the King; so he fumbled in his bosom for one, and found none.
everyday theology
Intellectualist faith?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 10 Mar 2026
Normally, those who think of themselves as people of the gospel do not openly deny the necessity of the new birth. But what if we did? We do not have to imagine, for that is effectively what happened in the 18th and 19th centuries with the Sandemanian sect. As Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) put it, the Sandemanians believed that saving faith is nothing but “bare belief of the bare truth”.
This was an intellectualist view of faith that sat especially well with the rationalistic times of the Enlightenment, though Robert Sandeman himself had an apparently evangelical logic for his view. Seeking to uphold a salvation that is all of grace, he argued that faith is really a human work if it involves any active leaning of the heart upon God. Faith must, he concluded, be nothing more than the mind’s assent that the gospel is true. It is an acknowledgment, not trust.
everyday theology
A melting heart
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 7 Feb 2026
Today, many rightly bemoan the lovelessness, superficiality, and spiritual hollowness they see spread all too widely across the church. Yet in our longing for a cure, we must not be seduced into thinking that superficial, pragmatic answers are the solution. A moral campaign for better Christian behaviour will not touch the roots of the problem.
The church today is surely in great need of reformation, but reformation of lives happens from the inside out as the Spirit heals hearts with the balm of the gospel. The gospel of Christ’s redemption and the Spirit’s regeneration is not just a message for outsiders: it is our only hope if we are to see the renewal and reformation of the church in our day.
everyday theology
'Lord, help me...'
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 30 Dec 2025
In the gospel accounts of both Matthew and Mark, Jesus’s rebuke of the Pharisees for their neglect of their hearts (Matt.15v10-20; Mark7v14-23) is immediately followed by His encounter with the Canaanite/ Syrophoenician woman (Matt.15v21-28; Mark 7v24-30). The juxtaposition of the woman next to the Pharisees is telling, for she lacks the qualities they value – yet she has the qualities that Jesus values and they lack.
Not only is she a Gentile; she is a Canaanite, of the traditional enemies of Israel. “Cursed be Canaan,” declared Noah in Genesis 9v25. The book of Zechariah ends with the thundering denouncement that on the day of the Lord there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty (Zech.14v21). Yet, having heard of Jesus, she seeks Him out for help, showing a startlingly perceptive appreciation of Jesus’s identity. “Lord, Son of David,” she calls Him (Matt.15v22).
everyday theology
Are we people of a sect or of the gospel?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 9 Dec 2025
In practice, evangelicals have often tended to be individualists in their faith. But our understanding of what it is to be truly evangelical should be taken not from evangelical practice but from the evangel.
Evangelicals are people who have been born again, but to be born again is to be born or baptised into Christ (Rom. 6v3; Gal. 3v27). From the moment of our regeneration, we are part of a bigger whole, the body of Christ (Rom. 12v5; 1 Cor. 12v13).
everyday theology
The gospel, our anchor
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 2 Nov 2025
For people of the gospel, the gospel serves as our mooring anchor. An anchor stops a ship from drifting while allowing it a certain amount of movement on the surface of the water. Just so, the gospel holds us to Scripture’s matters of first importance while allowing some slack for differences of opinion on other matters.
As Paul called the Romans and Corinthians to unity in the gospel and liberty in what to eat, so the anchor keeps us from making shipwreck of our faith (1 Tim. 1v19) without making our every disagreement a cause for schism.
Holiness rooted in the heart
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 16 Oct 2025
The difference between an evangelical and a non-evangelical understanding of holiness can be seen well in a difference between the 17th-century Puritans and their contemporaries, the high-church Caroline Divines. Perhaps the most influential of the Carolines was William Laud (1573–1645), Charles I’s Archbishop of Canterbury.
Laud loved what he called “the beauty of holiness”, by which he meant liturgical orderliness. He strictly insisted that the clergy must follow all the rubrics of the Church of England’s prayer book, and was deeply concerned with clergy attire and the maintenance of church buildings and their physical beauty. And it was a particular sort of building he preferred: despising the Reformation – or “Deformation,” as he called it – he preferred new churches to be built in the pre-Reformation, Gothic style, with an architectural emphasis on an altar instead of a Communion table. For, he said, “the altar is the greatest place of God’s residence upon earth, greater than the pulpit; for there ’tis Hoc est corpus meum, This is my body; but in the other it is at most but Hoc est verbum meum, This is my word.”
everyday theology
Finding true friendship
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 15 Sep 2025
I wonder if you’ve read C. S. Lewis’ The Four Loves? If you haven’t, you’ve got a treat to enjoy sometime. His chapter on friendship is a favourite of mine. It’s an insight-packed paean to friendship. And friendship is a vital part of our life together in Christ, a foretaste of what is to come.
A friendship is not the same thing as an exclusive coterie or cabal. “True Friendship,” says Lewis, “is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend.” The foundation for friendship, Lewis says, is companionship, which is what we often mean by the term “fellowship”. Companionship entails a basic willingness to get on and work well with others.
everyday theology
Why a band of brothers is better than a ‘great man’
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 30 Jul 2025
“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow... And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him – a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecc. 4v9-10, 12).
One of the greatest practical problems I see across the church is the isolation of so many church leaders. There are many contributing factors, but surely one of them is the idea that spiritual growth occurs only or mainly through the purposeful, influential actions of elevated individuals. We might call this the “great man” theory.
everyday theology
Mistakes in the Bible?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 7 Jul 2025
We can submit to Scripture with confidence because of our Lord. Jesus was consistently clear that what Scripture says, God says.
For example, conversing with the Pharisees, he said: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matt. 19:4–6)
everyday theology
Bibliolatry? Us? Really?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 4 Jun 2025
The reason why evangelicals treat Scripture as their supreme authority is because it is the word of God. In other words, evangelicals believe in what is traditionally called the “inspiration” of Scripture.
Today, the word “inspiration” can be a little misleading, as if Moses, Paul, and Luke simply felt enthused one day and started scribbling. That is not at all what is meant! By inspiration is meant what Paul teaches Timothy when he writes of how “from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings … All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:15-17).
everyday theology
To a better understanding of ‘Scripture trumps all’
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 6 May 2025
Again and again since the close of the New Testament, the church has reasserted the essential evangelical principle of the supremacy of Scripture alone. Why so? Quite simply, because that is what Jesus taught about how we can know the truth.
Mark 7:1-13 depicts Jesus’s controversy with the Pharisees over Scripture and its authority. A dispute had arisen over handwashing. The Pharisees’ concern was a religious one, that they might be “defiled” (v.2) and they therefore insisted on a ceremonial handwashing according “to the tradition of the elders” (v.3). Their objection to Jesus was that His disciples did not walk according to this tradition (v.5). To this, Jesus replied: “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men” (v.8).
everyday theology
What is the most urgent need of the church today?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 27 Mar 2025
What is the most urgent need of the church today? Better leadership? Better training? Healthier giving? Orthodoxy? Moral integrity? Each of these are undoubtedly needs, but underneath them all lies something even more vital: gospel integrity.
In Luke 12, when thousands had gathered together to hear Jesus, He began to say to His disciples first: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (v1). That might have been unsurprising had He been warning the people as a whole, but He said it to his disciples first, to those who had already left all and followed Him.
everyday theology
The good life in Christ: rejoicing in suffering
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 5 Mar 2025
Is ‘the good life’ a life without suffering? Ease and prosperity in and of themselves are not really what make up the good life. Christ Himself was made like His weak and tempted brothers in order that He might help those who are tempted (Heb.2:16-18), and in the same manner, it is weak and suffering people that God has chosen to minister to the weak and suffering.
The great Refiner uses the days of small things. He uses the setbacks and discouragements, and even severe suffering, for our ultimate blessing. He did just that at the cross: it was through that darkest and most discouraging day that He definitively overturned and defeated the very root of darkness and suffering. Through that death He defeated death; through our comparatively light sufferings He is able to defeat our selfish independence and our foolish wandering and to make us more like His free and victorious Son. For those who have even glimpsed the unfettered beauty of Jesus, that thought itself puts mettle in our joy.
everyday theology
Even our trials are in His kind hands
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 29 Jan 2025
‘Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings...’ (1 Pet. 4:12–13).
Peter can urge us to rejoice in our sufferings not because he’s a religious masochist but because he knows: Christ is the firstborn, our forerunner, and where He goes, we follow. He is our Head, and like in a birth, the body must follow where the head goes. This is the pathway through suffering to glory.
The power of calling God 'our Father'
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 30 Dec 2024
In Matthew 6:9, Jesus says: 'Pray … like this, "Our Father in heaven."' These words open the floodgates of prayer — and heavenly blessing.
We live in a world where people believe they are self-sufficient. They don’t need to cry out for help. And Christians are swept along: we are becoming like busy Martha, doing our many tasks but failing to sit with Mary at Jesus’ feet. But without prayer, Christians are hollow. For prayer is the mark of Christian integrity.
everyday theology
Whose glory do you love?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 27 Nov 2024
Underneath every mistake the Pharisees made lay a root problem. Jesus put it simply: ‘They loved the glory of men more than the glory of God’ (John 12:43, my translation).
Jesus’ words cut like a scalpel through to their fundamental motivation. They would not confess Him because of what they loved. But what exactly did Jesus mean? Did He mean that they loved the glory that comes from men more than the glory that comes from God? Or did He mean that they loved the glory of men more than the glory that belongs to and is due to God?
everyday theology
'We should not be content with bare doctrine'
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 4 Nov 2024
Evangelicals are never about propositions alone: we want the theological truths of the gospel to transform us by the renewing of our minds (Rom.12:2).
We want to know God, in a personal way. We don’t simply affirm that Scripture is our supreme authority and that we are justified by faith alone through Christ alone. We actually submit to Scripture as our supreme authority and enjoy Christ as our only Saviour, praising Him from our hearts for His all-sufficiency and grace.
everyday theology
Substitute ‘saviours’
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 18 Oct 2024
Justification of sinners by grace alone lies at the heart of the gospel. It is the proof and consequence of the fact that Christ is so entirely all-sufficient a Saviour that His work needs no supplementing by us. While this may be good news, it is not an easy truth for the fallen to swallow.
The fact that Jesus pronounces a foul sinner righteous while condemning a life committed to religious uprightness (see Luke 18:9-14) offends our pride. For the humbling effect of Jesus’s teaching, so entirely condemning our self-reliance, makes it far easier to reserve the message of justification by grace as one only for beginners or outsiders. Justification may be an essential evangelical truth, but it is one that all evangelicals struggle to live by.
everyday theology
Are you a ‘real sinner’?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 4 Sep 2024
Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’
everyday theology
Evangelicals? Humble?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
At the heart of being an evangelical is humility. That might seem a laughable claim amid all the empire-building and hubris that has blackened the name of evangelicalism.
And there is something about evangelicalism that can make it a fertile soil for pride. Evangelicals are people of the word, and so learning is in the blood. Yet learning so commonly fosters arrogance.
everyday theology
Do we downgrade Christ?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 18 Jul 2024
To be faithful to the gospel means treating Christ and His redeeming death and resurrection as matters ‘of first importance’ (1 Cor. 15:3-4). And yet, through the centuries, Christians have managed to downgrade Jesus, cast Him in their own image, or use Him as the icing to sell some other agenda.
But that is not the evangelical way. Evangelicals look to Scripture to know Christ, and there they find the unique Son of God, exclusive in His glorious identity and completely sufficient as a Saviour.
everyday theology
Showing Christ personally
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 1 Jun 2024
If the desire of the Father, the work of the Spirit, and the purpose of Scripture is to herald Jesus, then so it must be for the faithful preacher.
If the Son’s great and eternal goal is to win for Himself a bride, then His heralds must woo for Him. They are like Abraham’s servant in Genesis 24, commissioned to find a bride for His master’s son. Only when we take our eyes off ourselves and herald Him will we truly glorify God. But when we do that, we may be sure that our preaching will always be evangelistic and, at the same time, always edifying to the saints.
What shapes your faith? The Trinity?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 1 Apr 2024
‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8). Those three words could hardly be more bouncy.
They seem lively, lovely, and as warming as a crackling fire. But ‘God is Trinity’? No, hardly the same effect: that just sounds cold and stodgy. All quite understandable, but Christians must see the reality behind what can be off-putting language. Yes, the Trinity can be presented as a fusty and irrelevant dogma, but the truth is that God is love because God is a Trinity.