Without the work of the Holy Spirit, there would be no salvation. God the Spirit completes and perfects the plan of God the Father and the atonement of God the Son in the lives of God’s elect. The Spirit brings order to disordered souls. And he accomplishes all that he does through his sufficient Word. Don’t ever think that because the Holy Spirit …

When we truly understand the Holy Spirit’s purpose in empowering individuals throughout history, it ought to lead us to one unmistakable conclusion: the Holy Spirit of God wants us to trust in Christ. Everything he has done to order God’s plan through special empowerment led to the Anointed One, Jesus the Messiah. The fact that the Holy Spirit empo…

Spirit-inspired revelation is both for the purpose of order and produced in an orderly fashion.Di Scott Aniol

In ordering God’s creation, beautifying Israel’s tabernacle, and bringing life to the First Adam and the Last Adam, the Spirit perfects and completes God’s eternal plan in history.Di Scott Aniol

We should expect the Spirit to normally work today in ways that bring order and completion to the plan and people of God.Di Scott Aniol

Contemporary evangelicalism has been thoroughly Pentecostalized with the expectation that if the Holy Spirit is active and working, then we will witness extraordinary effects ranging from direct revelation, special gifting, and emotional euphoria. In addition to receiving new revelation from the Holy Spirit, many professing Christians today also be…

One significant way the Pentecostalization of Evangelicalism reveals itself even among those who would claim to be cessationists is in common evangelical expectations regarding how God speaks to us and how he reveals his will to us. It is very common in modern evangelicalism, for example, to hear Christians talk about how God “spoke” to them, revea…

If you were to ask the average Christian today what our expectation should be regarding how the Holy Spirit works, I believe most Christians would answer something like this: If the Holy Spirit is actively working, his work will be evidenced by some sort of extraordinary experience—intense feelings, inner promptings, miraculous gifts, or even visib…

One key reason Christians shy away from some of the psalms is the sometimes violent imprecatory language found in them. In this article, Scott Aniol explains that psalms like these are deeply rooted in confidence that God is the Sovereign King of Kings, and therefore to sing them helps form within us a hope-filled longing for the Return of the King…

Why is it so important to have our motivation right about how we live in society? Why is it important that we don’t try to motivate ourselves and others with grand ambitions of societal transformation?Di Scott Aniol

When the prophet Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up,” what he saw was the reality of God’s heavenly temple: “and the train of his robe filled the temple.” Heaven is a royal palace from which God sovereignly rules, but it is also a holy temple, filled with God’s glory.Di Scott Aniol

“Our church’s worship is pretty formal, but I prefer Holy Spirit-led worship.” Such was the comment I overheard recently by a young evangelical describing his church’s worship service, illustrating a very common perception by many evangelicals today—if the Holy Spirit actively works in worship, the results will be something extraordinary, an experi…

In order for worship to properly form God’s people as God has intended, every aspect of our worship—including our worship aesthetics, must be formed and shaped by the Word of God.Di Scott Aniol

In contrast to the Reformed understanding of the regulative principle, Baptists have historically and theologically insisted upon New Testament warrant for both the substance and forms of church practice.Di Scott Aniol

The immediate causes for Reformation in various regions, as well as what caused divisions among various Reformation figures, are diverse. However, much of what lay at the core of what both unified Reformers in their reaction against the Roman Catholic Church and what ended up dividing them in the end, involved theology and practice of worship. Yet …

Believers from the earliest years of Christianity—especially those coming out of Judaism—struggled with how to understand the relationship between Israel’s worship, Christian worship, and the real worship of heaven. In fact, the confusion escalated to such a point that some apostatized from Christianity in favor of returning to the worship of their…

"Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” This ancient hymn captures three eras of worship: as it was in the beginning—the worship of Old Testament Israel, as it is now—the worship of New Testament Christianity, and worship in the world without end—…