John Mark Hicks

What is salvation? In my first post in this series I proposed the below chart as a way of answering that important question. In this post I will comment on the sixth sector (6).   Past Justification Present Sanctification Future Glorification Personal Forgiveness of Sins and Relationship with God (1) Moral (Inner and Outer)  Transformation (2) […]

The “Son of Man” is Jesus’ own self-description—he uses the title twelve times in the Gospel of John (1:51; 3:13, 14; 5:27; 6:27, 53, 62; 8:28; 9:35; 12:23; 13:31; in 12:34 his language is quoted back to him). It ranks second behind “Son” (in the sense of Son of God) as Jesus’ favorite self-description in […]

They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer (Acts 2:42, NASV) Borrowing from Brother Lawrence, I have been using the language of “practicing the kingdom of God” in recent years. I don’t mean that as an alternative to or a substitute for Brother […]

A.  I have conducted several seminars on 1 Corinthians, especially for newer church plants (e.g., Kiev).  I have uploaded the lecture outlines and small group question materials for a series on 1 Corinthians that I put together for the Cordova Community Church in the late 1990s.  This was the congregation that Gary Ealy and I, […]

My quest continues as I post older materials to my website, some published, some previously unpublished. 1.  On October 8-9, 1993, I led a Men’s Leadership Retreat at Camp Idlewild, Virginia on the topic “Where’s the Grace?”  (It is not my fault, Bob Clark invited me!) I have uploaded the lesson handouts and my rough […]

In my previous post, I repoduced two responses to a question asked by J. Wesley Smith of Lynchburg, TN, in 1905.  He asked:  “Is it right to make a knowledge of baptism for remission of sins a test of fellowship?” David Lipscomb, editor of the Gospel Advocate, answered in the negative and George W. Savage, […]

It is not legalism to seek patterns or to live by patterns.     It is legalism to use those patterns in such a way that they undermine salvation by grace through faith. That is my summary of what I thought was the sentiment of Cecil May, Jr.’s concluding comments in his February 3, 2009 Freed-Hardeman Lectureship […]

Winchester, Kentucky, is a small town of only 16,000 in a county (Clark) of 33,000.  The city lies in the heart of the origins of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Within a sixty mile radius are Lexington, Cane Ridge, Mt. Sterling, Georgetown and other famous cities of the early years of that history. The story of the Stone-Campbell Movement […]

Peter Abelard (1079-1142), who pioneered the scholastic method of theologizing, produced a volume entitled Sic et Non (or, “Yes and No”) for use in teaching through the dialectic method. It is a composition of quotes from earlier theologians and fathers on a variety of topics, but they are arranged oppositionally, that is, some theologians say […]

The article below, by the hand of J. N. Armstrong, first appeared in The Way entitled “United, Yet Divided” [4 (14 August 1902) 156-158].    Contextually, several factors are involved.  First, the Firm Foundation out of Austin, Texas–under the editorship of Austin McGary–was pushing a sectarian agenda which demanded unity on many fronts as a prerequiste for […]