"Unless we hold to a covenant of creation distinct from a covenant of grace, we will have no basis for speaking to certain public policy issues of the day, like homosexual marriage" (Rules for Reformers, p. 145). … [Read more...]

"Worship and honor were required by the knowledge that natural revelation brought. This they refused to do, in defiance of this light from natural revelation, and this light from natural revelation can certainly be called a natural law. It has all the ingredients -- a lawgiver, a standard, a subject, and moral responsibility. Nothing is missing" (Rules for Reformers, p. 144). … [Read more...]

"So we should be in the market for young Christian men and women who are willing to be trained in genuine cultural engagement. They won't be embarrassed by old-fashioned virtues, like hard work and discipline. They will respect authority and defy the authorities. They won't get fired from jobs because of laziness, and they will get fired from them because of something they said about homosexuality. They won't resent money and success, and they won't be dazzled by money and success. They will laugh at the hipsters, and they will laugh at themselves laughing at the hipsters. They will loathe the enticements of corrupt entertainment, and they will love a true story. They would rather die than become one of the cool kids. They will be cool" (Rules, p. 138). … [Read more...]

"Those who had taunted these religious conservatives for being disengaged were dismayed by what their engagement looked like, and so they began to taunt them for that. We were only to be allowed back into the public square if we immediately veered over to the left" (Rules, p. 137). … [Read more...]

"Adam did not rebel against God because he was tired of living in a slum. No, his children live in slums because he grew tired of living in Paradise . . . The cause of the evil is our revolt against the good, which we routinely justify by pointing at the evil" (Rules, p. 135). … [Read more...]

"Apart from Christ, all sorts of people in black robes and white lab coats, want to be the final word. They want to act like they are pacing back and forth on the widow's walk of humanity's great house, gazing heroically out to sea, under the azure sky, when they are actually down in the crawl space trying to suppress those darn coughing fits" (Rules, pp. 133-134). … [Read more...]

"This is why the theory of evolution is such a big issue -- the theory of evolution is a jurisdictional claim that the devil is making. If we were not created in the image of God, then this means that we have no jurisdictional appeal beyond Caesar. If there is no God above Caesar, then Caesar is God. If there is a God in Heaven, and He has placed His image on us, then this absolutely requires the biblical concept of limited government" (Rules, pp. 132-133). … [Read more...]

"The answer is that we are coin from God's mint. We are created in the image of God, and are therefore forbidden to render ourselves to Caesar. We give one thing to Caesar and another to God. We may not render it all to Caesar. It is prohibited. And they marveled at him" (Rules, p. 131). … [Read more...]

"We tend to assume that if the existing authorities tell us to do anything short of swearing an oath to worship Satan, then we have to do it. This does not exhibit a mature theology of resistance" (Rules, p. 129). … [Read more...]

"When someone is spiraling toward the darkness, the light doesn't get any better as he goes. This is happening to them because they can't see" (Rules, p. 126). … [Read more...]

"According to Scripture, blood is something that returns to those who shed it. It also returns to the land where it was shed. And our vast reservoir of guilt is larger and deeper than it has ever been. The only blood that does not return with compounded guilt is the blood of Jesus" (Rules, p. 120). … [Read more...]

"It is not possible to build a culture around a denial of God-given standards, and then arbitrarily reintroduce those standards at your convenience, whenever you need a word like evil to describe what has just happened. Those words cannot just be whistled up from the place where we exiled them. If we have banished them, and their definitions, and every possible support for them, we need to reckon with the fact that they are now gone" (Rules, p. 118). … [Read more...]

"In the Olympic games of our culture wars, it is possible to win a gold medal from God when a bunch of your fellow Christians are embarrassed even to look at you" (Rules, p. 111). … [Read more...]

"Anyone who has not noticed that 'demands for apologies' have become one of the central political and culture tactics of our day has simply not been paying attention" (Rules, p. 105). … [Read more...]

"The object of his satirical observations might be the lesbian bishop who thinks the central message of Romans is about global warming, but the more he says or writes anything about it, the more it is his behavior that is thought to be clearly 'unscriptural.' Right -- like who cares about that anymore?" (Rules, p. 102). … [Read more...]