According to Romans 7:14, the answer depends on one’s metaphysic. Today David explains why some Christians would find such an answer too philosophical and speculative sounding to be Christian, even perhaps even unbiblical. But Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper told us more than 100 years ago this would happen. Kuyper even saw the Calvinism he loved grinding to a metaphysical halt.

Today’s episode is an “extra” for this week in anticipation of Friday’s podcast on “A Christian View of Law.” It is a sermon David preached on Psalm 25:14 in November 2023 to re-ignite the imagination of those who might have lost the wonder of the “secret” God reveals to “those who fear him.”

What is a “Christian” view of law? David says the answer depends entirely on what the word “Christian” means. So, in this episode, he explains why he thinks the word has lost it original meaning,;  pans an emerging alternative, “Jesus follower;” and sets the stage for next week’s topic: Are “Christians” using the law lawfully?

Today, David looks at what esteemed jurist Joseph Story said about the First Amendment’s “Free Speech Clause”—debated this week in the U.S. Supreme Court—and a type of harm it did not protect. Today, even that harm makes no sense, and so it is allowed to proliferate. David explains what is missing in even doctrinally sound Christian thinking that prevents the scourge of pornography from being addressed properly in our law.

Today’s episode is David’s report on a “autopsy” performed by a few of the remaining sons of Issachar in America on the “Death of Evangelicalism.” Its death was pronounced by a Final Judgment, aptly named, issued by the United States Supreme Court in 2015. If you want to appreciate why evangelicalism seems so fruitlessness in culture and law, you will want to listen to the report. Thankfully, he notes, the dead are raised to life again according to the Gospel.

History shows that the purpose of the First Amendment's religion clauses was to continue the reformation between religious liberty and religious toleration that ended in England with the restoration of the monarchy and the Church of England's primacy. Recent arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court on religious liberty show that Christians in America have forgotten that purpose and providentially given mission. That failure has put Christians under the thumb of the godless. It is time that Church re-vive this stillborn reformation to reconcile religious liberty with righteous and just civil laws.

This week the U.S. Supreme Court considered the application of the Free Exercise Clause to a public school "story time" curriculum that some Christians parents objected to. Perhaps Christians should consider why they want a clause expressly directed to Congress applied to the states.

Easter is the perfect time for Christians to reflect on the providence of God in constituting our nation in such a way that a great gospel doctrine was placed in the Constitution's Free Exercise Clause. In the minds of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson it resolved a gospel debate that can be raced back to 16th century English theologian, William Perkins

The full text of John Adams’s letter saying “our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people” has been forgotten. In the forgotten portion, he wrote “this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the world” if certain specific things happened. What were they? Did they happen? If so, what should we do? In the mid-1800s, van Prinsterer gave an answer that would keep us from “whitewashing sepulchers.” Some will want to discuss this further at the conference announced in today’s podcast.

Today David examines Tennessee’s attorney general's defense before the U.S. Supreme Court of the state’s law prohibiting medical treatments for a minor’s gender dysphoria. It’s important to understand because it’s the same argument Christian legal and policy advocates are using around the country. Are the arguments based on a nihilistic or biblical cosmology? Listen to find out.