Read the rest of From Vile to Victorious Bodies by David Murray.

A great way to judge the sexual nature of a physical activity is to consider the activity against the backdrop of the nuclear family. We call it the “family test”: if I wouldn’t engage in x activity with a biological relative because it would be sexually inappropriate to do so, then that activity is, by definition, a sexual activity. In other words, whatever activity would be sexually inappropriate between a brother and sister reveals what constitutes a sexual activity. There’s more to sexual purity than this, but framing things in this way provides a good deal of clarity regarding appropriate sexual boundaries.

Read the rest of An Interview with Gerald Hiestand on Sex, Dating, and Relationships: A Fresh Approach (Crossway, 2012), co-authored with Jay Thomas.

When we say, “That’s not fair”, we are saying to God, you haven’t distributed things as evenly as I would. Even though I’m a sinful human, I know much more about what is just and right than you. That’s a dangerous position to be in, because we know from Scripture that God is the perfect Heavenly Father and to trust ourselves to our own care, our own lordship, only spells disaster.

Read the rest of Don’t Let Your Kids Say This Phrase, “That’s Not Fair!” by Daniel Darling.

Gossip is a serious problem. It is a problem in the home, in the workplace, in the local church and in broader evangelicalism. It is a problem in the blogosphere, in social media, and beyond. In his book Resisting Gossip, Matthew Mitchell defines gossip as “bearing bad news behind someone’s back out of a bad heart” and shows that when the book of Proverbs uses the word “gossip,” it does so in the noun form, not the verb form. In other words, the Bible is concerned less with the words that are spoken and more with the heart and mouth that generate such destruction. Words matter, but they are simply the overflow of the heart. As always, the heart is the heart of the matter.

Here, drawn from Mitchell’s book, is a gallery of gossips, five different gossiping people you will meet in life.

Read the rest of The 5 Gossips You Will Meet by Tim Challies.

Evangelical Christians are often told not to judge. If there is one verse non-Christians know (after, perhaps, some reference to the “least of these”) is that’s Jesus taught people, “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matt. 7:1). Of course, what the casual Christian critic misses is that Jesus was not calling for a moratorium on moral discernment or spiritual evaluation. After all, he assumes five verses later that his followers will have the wherewithal to tell what sort of people in the world are dogs and pigs (Matt. 7:6). Believing in the sinfulness of sin, the exclusivity of Christ, and moral absolutes does not make one judgmental. Just look at Jesus. But this doesn’t mean Matthew 7:1 has nothing to teach conservative Christians.

Read the rest of Yes, We are Judgmental (But Not in the Way Everyone Thinks) by Kevin DeYoung.