Posts by Alex McNeilly

“Life everlasting.” This might simultaneously be the most popular and the most unpopular teaching of Christianity. For some, the prospect of life after death is a fantastic relief. For others, it is an unspeakable terror. On Judgment Day, when the bodies of the righteous and of the unrighteous are…

“I am a soul; I have a body.” Have you ever heard that? It sounds nice, but it’s not actually what the Bible teaches us about ourselves. To be human is to be a spiritual and physical being. Each one of us is a body and a soul, together in one person. When Jesus Christ the Son of God became man, it…

The Most High God is ruler over the realm of mankind. And He is a just ruler, which means He pays fair wages to all of those under His rule. Now that sounds like a wonderful thing, except for one problem: The wages of sin is death. And we have all sinned, which means, instead of God owing us…

Being a Christian is not just about being a sinner saved by grace. Christ came to the earth, not just to save individual sinners, but to set apart for Himself a people. He came to establish a holy nation; and the citizens of that holy nation are called “saints.” By “saints” we don’t mean super-holy…

When we say, “I believe in the holy catholic Church,” we are not talking about the Roman Catholic Church, and we do not mean that we put our faith in any church. Our faith is in God and in God alone. Roman Catholics believe and teach that the “true” catholic church is recognizable because of a…

Whenever we recite the Apostles’ Creed, we proclaim that we believe in God the Father Almighty, in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, and in the Holy Ghost, or, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity; and faith in the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential to the…

During His earthly ministry, Jesus said He “did not come to judge the world, but to save the world” (John 12:47). When He said this, He was describing the purpose of His first coming. When Jesus came two thousand years ago into the world as a helpless baby, the purpose of His coming was not to…

We cannot see Jesus right now. That’s because, after rising from the dead, Jesus physically left the face of the earth. He ascended into heaven before the eyes of His eleven faithful disciples. But the fact that we cannot…

Jesus Christ rose from the dead. This historical fact is a foundational and indispensable tenet of our faith. Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no Christianity, since there would be no living Christ to worship. And without the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no hope for us…

Here we have what is probably the most controversial statement in the Apostles’ Creed: “He descended into hell.” When we make this statement, we do not mean that Jesus’ earthly body physically went to Hell, or that He went to some kind of limbo where Old Testament saints were waiting to be let into…