How can we know God exists?

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I am excited to launch a new series that tackles some of the most common and pressing questions people have about the Christian faith today. We will look at them honestly and carefully. We will not dodge the difficult ones.

If someone claims to own a rare and priceless jewel, the best way to prove it is simple: invite people to examine it closely, hold it to the light, test it, and ask tough questions. A real jewel can take the scrutiny. Christianity makes an even bolder claim. It says it is not just one religious option among many, but the actual truth about God, reality, and the human condition. If that claim is legitimate, honest questions, even the sharpest ones, are not a threat. They are an opportunity.

That is exactly what this “Got Questions?” series is about. We are putting the jewel on the table, turning on the lights, and examining it together. I hope you will discover the Christian faith does not shrink from investigation. It welcomes it, and it offers thoughtful, satisfying answers to those who are willing to listen with an open mind and weigh the evidence fairly.

Here is the first one: “How can we know God exists?”

This is not just a philosophical puzzle. It is a deeply personal question. If there is no God, then we are alone in a silent universe, left to invent our own meaning. If there is a God, everything changes. If you are asking this question, you are not alone, and the Bible does not tell you to shut off your mind. Scripture teaches that God has not left us in the dark about His existence. He has given clear pointers in the world around us, in our own hearts, and supremely in His Son, Jesus Christ.

The first thing to notice is this: the Bible does not begin with formal philosophical arguments for God’s existence. From the very first verse, “In the beginning, God…” (Genesis 1:1), His reality is simply assumed. There is no opening chapter of arguments, only the declaration that God is, and that He is the Creator of all things. The Bible also says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God'” (Psalm 14:1). Now, nobody likes being called a fool, and I’m not using this verse to insult anyone’s intelligence. The Bible’s point is that denying God isn’t a sign of superior thinking but of a heart condition all of us naturally share until God opens our eyes. In Scripture, “the fool” is not someone mentally slow, but someone who denies what is plain and obvious.

Romans 1 says that people “suppress the truth” about God. The idea is to hold down what keeps pushing up, like pressing a beach ball underwater. Paul writes that God’s eternal power and divine nature “have been clearly perceived … so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). In other words, not believing in God is not just one respectable option among many. It is a moral response to truth we know deep down, even as we push it away. Many honest atheists would say, “I’m not suppressing anything. I genuinely don’t see the evidence.” The Bible’s answer is that sin’s distorting effect runs deeper than we realize, affecting even what seems obvious to us. This isn’t about intelligence or sincerity, but about the spiritual condition we all share until God opens our eyes. That should not make Christians proud or harsh, but humble, because all of us by nature resist the God who has made Himself known to us.

First, we see evidence of God in creation itself. Whether you look through a telescope at the vastness of space or through a microscope at the intricate machinery of a single cell, you are not looking at an accident. Consider DNA: a four-letter information system that writes the instructions for every cell in your body. Even the fine balance of our own planet points to this. The sun is about 93 million miles away from the earth. If our planet were significantly closer, life would burn away. If it were much farther, the earth would freeze. Critics say we only think this is remarkable because we’re the ones who survived to notice it. But that doesn’t explain why the universe permits life at all, or why its fundamental constants are set with such precision that even tiny variations would make chemistry itself impossible. The odds against a life-permitting universe are staggeringly high.

Now, some will say, “But couldn’t evolution explain apparent design without a Designer?” Here’s the thing: even if evolution describes how life develops, it doesn’t explain why there’s a universe capable of evolution in the first place, or why it’s governed by rational laws our minds can understand. You still need a Lawgiver behind the laws of nature.

Many thoughtful scientists have been struck by this kind of design. Dr. Ming Wang, a Harvard and MIT trained eye surgeon, spent decades as an atheist. After performing over 55,000 eye surgeries, he concluded that the staggering complexity of the human eye could not be explained by blind chance. A professor’s simple question shattered his atheism: “If a pile of random metal cannot assemble itself into a car, how could the far more complex human eye arise by pure randomness?” Dr. Wang now tells young people they do not have to choose between science and faith, but can embrace both under the Lordship of Christ. The Bible says, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Just as a painting points to a painter, the finely tuned, intelligible world we live in points to an intelligent, powerful Creator. It is reasonable to believe that a personal God stands behind a world filled with design, order, and beauty.

Second, we sense God’s reality in our own consciences. Across cultures and throughout history, people have had an inner sense that some things are truly right and wrong, and that our choices matter. The Bible explains that God has written His law on our hearts (Romans 2:15). Even when we do something wrong in secret, we often feel that inner sting. That is more than social conditioning. It is God’s law pressing on our consciences. Our thirst for justice, our outrage at evil, and our longing for ultimate meaning are not random feelings. They are signposts that point beyond ourselves to a moral Lawgiver, One who cares about good and evil and will one day set all things right.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that when two people argue, they almost always appeal to some standard of fairness they expect the other person to recognize. We don’t just have different preferences. We act as if real moral truth exists that applies to both of us. That only makes sense if there’s a Moral Lawgiver beyond us both.

Here’s why this matters so urgently: that inner sense of right and wrong isn’t just informing you that God exists. It’s warning you that you’ll one day answer to Him. Every one of us has violated that law written on our hearts. The bad news is we’re accountable. The good news is that God has provided a way of escape through Jesus Christ.

Third, God has made Himself known in history through Jesus Christ. The claim of Christianity is not that we discovered God by our own efforts, but that God came to us. Jesus did not only teach about God. He claimed to be God in human flesh and backed that claim with His sinless life, His public miracles, His sacrificial death, and His bodily resurrection on the third day. The New Testament does not present the resurrection as a vague spiritual idea, but as a real historical event. The tomb was empty. The risen Christ appeared to many witnesses. The resurrection isn’t just well-attested. It explains things that otherwise make no sense. Why would the disciples, terrified and scattered after the crucifixion, suddenly become bold enough to face torture and death? Why would they invent a story where women (whose testimony wasn’t valued in that culture) were the first witnesses? Why did the movement explode in the very city where Jesus was executed, where His body could have been produced to stop Christianity before it started? The apostles were willing to suffer and die rather than deny what they had seen and heard. On that basis, they proclaimed that God has made Jesus “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), and that He “will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).

Ultimately, the question of God’s existence is not merely about winning a debate. It is an invitation. The God who made you calls you to know Him, to be forgiven through Jesus’ death on the cross, and to receive new life by His resurrection. If you are wrestling with this, here is a good next step: pray honestly, “God, if You are there, please show Yourself to me.” Then begin reading the Gospel of John with an open Bible and an open mind. Christians are not better than anyone else. We are sinners whom God has graciously opened to the truth we once resisted. If you sense that you have been pushing this truth away, you are not alone. All of us, by nature, do the same until God, in His kindness, opens our eyes. If you want to go deeper on this, consider reading Tim Keller’s The Reason for God or R. C. Sproul’s If There’s a God, Why Are There Atheists?, and we would be glad to talk with you in person at King’s Church.

N. T. Wright’s Quiet Undoing of the Gospel

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The Scholar Who Softened Sin:

N. T. Wright and the New Perspective’s Quiet Undoing of the Gospel

Sheepfold Under Siege — Article 6

✒️ The Pilgrim’s Post (facebook)

Introduction — When Brilliance Becomes a Mist

Some wolves roar.

Some wolves charm.

But some wolves simply rearrange words until clarity dissolves like breath on a mirror.

N. T. Wright is not a villain of the faith.

He is a man of stunning intellect, warm pastoral tone, and genuine love for Scripture. His writings pulse with literary beauty and historical insight. He is the kind of author whose books young seminarians dog-ear and underline, whose lectures flood YouTube with academic gentleness, and whose commentaries adorn the shelves of pastors longing to sound learned.

And yet, the danger he represents is not loud—it is quiet.

Not rebellious—it is respectable.

Not flamboyant—it is scholarly.

Wright’s influence has shaped an entire generation of pastors into believing that the classical Reformed doctrines were “misreadings,” that the Reformers misunderstood Paul, and that justification—the doctrine by which the Church stands or falls—is something more ecclesial, more eschatological, more nuanced… something less sharp, less judicial, less about guilt and wrath.

In Wright’s hands, sin becomes a failure of vocation more than a moral revolt.

Justification becomes a declaration of covenant membership more than a verdict of righteousness.

The gospel becomes a story of God’s big project rather than Christ saving sinners from the penalty of their sin.

The cross becomes a doorway into the new creation more than the substitutionary sacrifice that bore divine wrath.

Wright does not deny the gospel.

He simply detunes it—shifting the frequency until the melody of grace becomes a background hum instead of a trumpet blast.

And because he speaks softly, the danger spreads widely.

This article is not an assault on Wright’s character.

It is a pastoral lament over the fruit of his theology—a drift that has quietly unstitched some of the Church’s most essential threads.

For as Paul warned:

> “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”

— Galatians 5:9

With Wright, the leaven is nuance.

—

1. The Teacher & His Appeal — Why N. T. Wright Became a Hero to the Modern Church

N. T. Wright is the kind of scholar whose appeal seems obvious the moment one reads him.

He is brilliant.

He reads Scripture in stereo while many read it in mono. His historical imagination brings first-century Judaism alive.

He is pastoral.

Unlike many academics, Wright writes as though he loves ordinary Christians.

He is hopeful.

His emphasis on resurrection, new creation, and kingdom renewal appeals deeply to modern believers weary of cultural decay.

He is gentle.

His tone lacks harshness; his critiques are indirect; his persona is that of a patient teacher, not a bombastic polemicist.

He offers a “bigger story.”

Modern Christians feel starved for narrative richness. Wright’s sweeping description of God’s renewal project feels like a feast.

He speaks the academic language younger pastors want to master.

Many evangelicals are academically insecure. Wright gives them a way to speak like scholars without sounding fundamentalist.

He seems to unify things that others divide.

Law and gospel. Kingdom and cross. History and theology. Church and world. Sin and brokenness.

In short:

Wright makes Christianity feel intelligent, beautiful, and narratively compelling.

This is the appeal.

And that appeal makes his drift all the more subtle—and all the more dangerous.

—

2. The Drift — The New Perspective on Paul and the Rewriting of the Gospel’s Grammar

The center of Wright’s doctrinal shift is his advocacy of the New Perspective on Paul (NPP)—a scholarly movement that reinterprets:

justification

righteousness

law

works

covenant

and sin itself

in ways that depart significantly from historic Reformed theology.

To be clear, Wright is not the originator of NPP; that belongs largely to E. P. Sanders and James D. G. Dunn. But Wright became its most popular and pastoral voice—its ambassador to the broader evangelical world.

His tone softened what should have alarmed.

His gentleness carried ideas that sharper men would have resisted.

Let’s examine the drift.

—

A. Justification Redefined — From Courtroom Verdict to Covenant Membership

Historically, Scripture teaches:

Justification = God declaring sinners righteous on the basis of Christ’s imputed righteousness.

(Rom. 3:21–26; 4:1–8; 5:1; Phil. 3:9)

Wright teaches something else:

1. Justification is not about how you get saved, but about who is in the covenant community.

He calls justification a “lawcourt metaphor”—not the heart of the gospel but its boundary-marking declaration.

2. Righteousness is not imputed righteousness but “covenant faithfulness.”

In Wright’s framework, “the righteousness of God” is God’s faithful action to keep His covenant, not His gift of righteousness to sinners.

3. The final justification will rest partly on the believer’s Spirit-produced life.

This last point dangerously blurs the line between:

faith and faithfulness

justification and sanctification

grace and works

The Reformed tradition has always insisted:

We are justified by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is never alone.

Wright subtly shifts this:

We are justified by belonging to the covenant community—and our final justification reflects that belonging.

This is not mere nuance.

It is a redefinition.

—

B. Sin Softened — From Guilt Before God to Failure of Vocation

For Wright:

Sin is humanity failing to “image God” properly.

It is brokenness more than rebellion.

It is dysfunction more than treason.

It is missing our calling more than incurring divine wrath.

Wright does speak of sin as rebellion at times—but functionally, his system frames sin primarily as a vocational failure, not a courtroom guilt demanding atonement.

This matters because if sin is a failure of vocation, then salvation becomes restoration of purpose, not rescue from punishment.

Wright does not deny substitutionary atonement.

But he tends to eclipse it under the weight of “kingdom theology” and “new creation participation.”

The result:

The cross becomes less a wrath-bearing sacrifice and more a symbol of how God launches new creation.

A beautiful idea—

but one that dilutes the horror of our guilt and the glory of Christ’s substitution.

—

C. The Gospel Reframed — From Christ Saving Sinners to God Launching His Renewed Creation

In Wright’s hands, the gospel becomes:

“Jesus is Lord, therefore new creation has begun.”

“Jesus is raised, therefore the world is renewed.”

“Jesus is king, therefore the kingdom is here.”

All true.

But incomplete.

Wright’s gospel is cosmic—

but not sufficiently personal.

Biblical gospel:

Christ bore our sins.

Christ satisfied wrath.

Christ redeemed sinners.

Christ grants righteousness.

Wright’s gospel:

Christ defeated death.

Christ launched new creation.

Christ fulfills Israel’s story.

Christ restores humanity’s vocation.

Again, true.

But insufficient.

There is a difference between:

“You are guilty, and Christ takes your place,”

and

“Humanity has failed, and Christ shows the true story.”

Wright emphasizes the latter until the former becomes a footnote.

—

D. The Reformers Critiqued — The Historic Gospel Cast as a Misreading

Wright frequently claims:

Luther misunderstood Judaism.

The Reformers misread Paul.

The church has exaggerated justification.

Imputation is a later invention.

Reformed categories are “medieval.”

But the burden of proof lies not on Paul, nor on 2,000 years of consistent exegesis, but on Wright’s reconstruction.

A reconstruction that is elegant, learned, beautiful—

but not apostolic.

—

3. The Fruit — A Church With Great Storytelling but Weak Repentance

Wright’s drift is subtle, but its fruit is not.

A. A Generation Embarrassed by Imputation

Pastors influenced by Wright speak glowingly of the kingdom…

and awkwardly of the cross.

They speak confidently of justice…

and hesitantly of justification.

They love speaking of story…

but grow uneasy speaking of wrath.

B. Sin Becomes Sociological, Not Moral

In Wright’s framework, sin is often:

exile

brokenness

the “fracturing of vocation”

systemic disorder

Rarely is it:

personal guilt before a holy God.

C. Churches Preach Resurrection Life But Not Penal Substitution

Wright’s emphasis on resurrection is glorious—but often unbalanced.

It becomes:

“God’s new world has begun!”

without

“Flee from the wrath to come.”

D. The Urgency of Conversion Is Replaced with the Calm of Vocation

Wright’s message sounds like:

“Live into your renewed humanity.”

“Join God’s larger story.”

“Become what creation intended.”

Missing is the burning urgency of:

“Repent and believe the gospel.”

E. The Gospel Becomes a Symphony Without a Melody

Beautiful orchestra.

No saving note.

—

4. The Call — Receive Wright’s Gifts, Reject His Drift

We must be careful and gracious here.

N. T. Wright is not a heretic.

He is a flawed brother whose gifts we may receive with thanksgiving:

his love for Scripture

his historical imagination

his literary clarity

his pastoral gentleness

his emphasis on resurrection hope

his insistence that Christianity is not escapist but world-renewing

These are precious gifts.

But we must also reject, firmly:

his redefinition of justification

his softening of sin

his eclipsing of substitution

his vocational reframing of salvation

his critique of imputation

his diminishing of penal atonement

his overemphasis on kingdom themes at the expense of the cross

We can honor his scholarship while refusing his system.

For the gospel is not a vocational summons.

It is a divine rescue.

The cross is not a symbol of renewed humanity.

It is the bloody satisfaction of divine justice.

Justification is not a declaration of community membership.

It is the declaration that guilty sinners are righteous because Another stands in their place.

Wright tells a grand story.

But sinners do not need a grand story.

They need a Savior.

And they need Him not as Guide, Vision, and Vocation—

but as Substitute, Sacrifice, and Righteousness.

Christ for us.

Christ instead of us.

Christ in our place.

This is the heart of the gospel Wright obscures.

—

Citations / Sources

Primary Wright Works Referenced:

What St. Paul Really Said

Paul and the Faithfulness of God

Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision

Various public lectures & interviews

Reformed Responses:

John Piper, The Future of Justification

Thomas Schreiner, articles on NPP

Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul

Douglas Moo, Romans commentary

Guy Waters, Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul

Scripture Anchors:

Romans 3–5; Galatians 1–3; Philippians 3:9; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 9–10.

The Parable of the Elephant and the Blind Men

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Here in America, God has given us a remarkable gift: religious freedom. Our Constitution does not punish people for being theologically wrong. In a civil sense, you are free even to be a heretic. That allows people with profound differences about God to live side by side without the threat of persecution or prison time, and we should be genuinely thankful for that. But this blessing has brought with it a powerful illusion. Because the law treats all religions the same, many assume that all religious ideas must be equally valid. To say, “This is true and that is false,” has become the one unforgivable heresy in a culture that refuses to rock anyone’s boat.

Into that confusion, the Bible and the Christ it proclaims speak with a very different voice. Scripture does not treat beliefs about God as personal preferences; it distinguishes between truth and error. Some things are true, other things are untrue, and Jesus does not present Himself as one option among many, but as the only Lord and Savior.

The air we breathe today is full of two closely related ideas. The first is theological liberalism, which quietly trades the hard edges of biblical truth for warm religious feelings.

The second is religious pluralism, which insists that all religions are simply different paths up the same mountain.

Together, they create a message that sounds kind, humble, and generous. In reality, they strip Christianity of its substance and leave people groping in the dark, clutching their experiences, with no sure word from God.

Theological liberalism tells us that doctrine divides, but “God’s love” unites. It says that what really matters is not what is true, but what feels authentic and affirming to you. The historic truths of the faith, a real incarnation, a bloody atonement, a bodily resurrection, a coming judgment, are quietly pushed to the edges. In their place comes a vague sense of “divine love” and a Christianity reduced to moral uplift and spiritual therapy. The problem is simple and devastating: if you replace God’s revealed truth with your religious experience, you no longer have Christianity at all. You have a tailor-made spirituality that sits in judgment over the Bible instead of kneeling before it.

Religious pluralism takes this one step further. It insists that God is at work in all religions as “pathways” to Himself and uses a familiar story to make its case. The parable goes like this.

Several blind men approach an elephant. One feels its side and says, “It is like a wall.” Another feels the trunk and says, “It is like a snake.” A third takes hold of a leg and declares, “It is like a tree.” They argue, each sure he is right. The moral to be gleaned from the parable is that every religion has a piece of the truth, and no one should claim to see the whole.

It sounds humble. It appeals to our compassion and to the mystery of a God we cannot fully understand.

But look more closely. Hidden inside this “humble” story is a staggering arrogance. For the parable to work, someone must stand above all the blind men and see what they cannot see. Someone must know that there is an elephant, that each man has only a part, and that no one has the whole truth. Religious pluralism quietly assigns itself that role. Pluralism says, “No religion can claim to know God as He really is,” while at the same time claiming to know how all religions relate to God. In other words, it insists that no one can see the whole elephant, while reserving the right to see the entire elephant for itself. That is not humility. That is a sweeping claim to superior insight dressed up as tolerance.

There is another fatal assumption buried in this story. The parable only works if the elephant is silent. It assumes that God never speaks clearly, never makes Himself known in words, never breaks into the darkness with light. Everyone is blind, everyone is guessing, and no one can do any better than grope and argue. But what if the elephant speaks? What if the living God has not left us to our own religious experiments, but has spoken with clarity and authority? That is precisely what Christianity proclaims. We are not boasting that Christians are the sharpest of the blind. We are saying that God has opened His mouth.

The Bible declares that “God, who at many times and in many ways spoke to our fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son.” God has not mumbled. He has not stuttered. He has spoken in the Scriptures He breathed out, and supremely in the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son made flesh. Christ is not one more religious perspective. He is “the way, the truth, and the life,” the one Mediator between God and man, the only name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. This is not arrogance. It is obedience to what God Himself has said.

So when the world tells you that doctrine must bow to feelings, and that all religions are equally valid guesses about a silent God, do not be intimidated. You can be gentle with people and unashamed about Christ at the same time. You do not claim to see farther because you are wiser; you rest on the fact that God has spoken when you were blind and lost. In a fog of spiritual opinion, the Christian does not stand on personal brilliance, but on divine revelation. The elephant has spoken. Our call is to listen, believe, and lovingly point others to the One who is not one path among many, but the living Lord over all.