Essays, updates, and reflections on the life, ministry, and ongoing influence of C. John “Jack” Miller — written by Michael A. Graham, author of Cheer Up! and founder of The Jack Miller Project.
Article Index — All posts by year
Article Index
2026
- Oct 25, 2026 — Moses as Guest Preacher
- Oct 14, 2026 — Incentives, Presuppositions, and “Digital Life”
- Sep 19, 2026 — What Do You Mean, Everyone Dies?
- Sep 16, 2026 — Make of Him What You Will
- Sep 8, 2026 — The Question Nobody Would Answer
- Aug 17, 2026 — “I tend to go around and help God pick out the elect.”
- Aug 8, 2026 — Handing It On
- Aug 8, 2026 — Read Your Bible
- Aug 2, 2026 — Pray Constantly
- Jul 22, 2026 — Aseity — the Gift of Dependence and the Wound of Dependence
- Jul 19, 2026 — How We Receive New Life — Handed Over to the King
- Jul 11, 2026 — God’s Solution — Perfect Record, New Heart, Good Master
- Jul 3, 2026 — Bad Record, Bad Heart, Bad Master
- Jun 27, 2026 — Self-Centered, Not God-Centered
- Jun 22, 2026 — Graham Family & Ministry Update
- Jun 15, 2026 — A Loving God Sent His Son
- May 21, 2026 — The Gospel Poured Out
- Apr 8, 2026 — Cheer Up! Come On, Let’s Die Together: It’s a Great Way to Come to Life
- Mar 26, 2026 — The Website Is Rebuilt — and a Word About Rose Marie Miller
- Mar 14, 2026 — A Higher Life Theology in Old School Clothing: What Jack Miller Wrote to His Elders About the OPC, the PCA, and the Unity of the Church
- Mar 11, 2026 — Graham Family & Ministry Update
- Mar 7, 2026 — How Beautiful Are the Dirty Feet
- Mar 5, 2026 — How to Build on Your Justification: Jack Miller on Romans, Justification, and the Life of the Justified
- Jan 28, 2026 — Representation and Reality: Reading Scripture Through the Lens of Another Gospel
- Jan 28, 2026 — Having Begun by the Spirit: Artificial Intelligence (AI) as Another Gospel
- Jan 25, 2026 — The Remnant of One: From Remnant Theology to a Theology of Abundance
- Jan 11, 2026 — What Is Grace? (And Why ‘Undeserving’ Isn’t Enough) — A Second Follow Up
- Jan 11, 2026 — Repenting of Being Right: Why Grace Matters More Than Ever Right Now — A Follow-Up
- Jan 9, 2026 — What’s So Amazing About Grace … Especially Right Now!
2025
- Dec 3, 2025 — Master List of Publications at The Jack Miller Project (with Hyper-links)
- Dec 3, 2025 — The Jack Miller Project and the Gary North Challenge
- Nov 24, 2025 — “Faith Working by Love”: The Relationship of Faith and Works from God’s Perspective and Ours
- Nov 11, 2025 — Faith vs. Magic: A Biblical Theology of Science, Culture, and Discipleship in a Disenchanted World
- Nov 1, 2025 — Pentecost, the Sins of Jeroboam, and the Words of Jesus at the Well
- Oct 19, 2025 — When the Word Comes and Speaks: Elijah’s Cave and the Voice of the Living God
- Oct 18, 2025 — When Prophets Cheer for Kings (or Presidents)
- Sep 15, 2025 — “I Do Not Count My Psyche as Precious”
- Sep 9, 2025 — Grazie Mille! Our Final Update from Italy and Croatia
- Aug 29, 2025 — David, Consecration, and the Greater King
- Aug 27, 2025 — From God’s Gospel to My Gospel: The Preached Word and the Revealed Mystery
- Aug 15, 2025 — The Three Priorities of the Church: Guarding the Gospel and Walking in the Obedience of Faith
- Aug 8, 2025 — Real People, Real Grace — The Four Common Features of a Fruitful and Effective Ministry
- Jul 29, 2025 — Recovering the Gospel We Left Behind: Evangelism, Discipleship, and the Harmony of Life in Christ
- Jul 7, 2025 — Returning to God in Truth: Pretense, Half-Heartedness, and the Call to Whole-Hearted Repentance Unto Life
- Jun 24, 2025 — “Let Go and Let God?” When Surrender Isn’t Surrender
- Jun 17, 2025 — The Covenant of Words: How the Gospel Changes Our Speech
- Jun 5, 2025 — The Presumptive Position: How Justification by Faith Alone Topples the Powers We Build to Avoid Christ
- May 26, 2025 — A Hard Decision
- May 22, 2025 — Reformation in Context: Political Power, Ecclesial Authority, and the Gospel
- May 17, 2025 — Popes, Presidents, and the Kingdom of God: Why Christ Still Wears the Only Crown
- May 5, 2025 — When Empathy Becomes a Stumbling Block: How a Modern Virtue Collides with the Cross
- Apr 21, 2025 — Is “Natural Theology” Fallen Theology? Recovering God’s “Natural” in Light of the Resurrection
- Apr 8, 2025 — Why I’m Sharing Jack Miller’s Story Again (and Why I Hope You’ll Share It Too)
- Apr 4, 2025 — Why People Don’t Want Justification (And Why We Preach It Anyway)
- Mar 30, 2025 — “Beware of Me When I’m Right”—Presumption (Self-Confidence) or Faith (Christ-Confidence)
- Mar 11, 2025 — Entering God’s Community of Love: The Gospel That Frees Us from Ourselves
- Mar 6, 2025 — God’s “Faithful Presence” in “The Negative World”
- Feb 27, 2025 — The Unveiling and the Unmasking: Apocalypse and Elenctics in Biblical Theology
- Feb 25, 2025 — “Take Care Then How You Hear”: Hearing, Faith, and the Holy Spirit
- Feb 21, 2025 — Pulling on the Biblical Theology Thread of Levi’s Scattering, the Priesthood of All Believers, and the Gathered & Scattered Church
- Feb 15, 2025 — A Call to Courage: When Reporting Abuse Is an Act of Heroic Love
- Feb 14, 2025 — One Holy Spirit, Three Reformed Voices—David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Donald Macleod, and C. John “Jack” Miller
- Feb 11, 2025 — The Legal Promise and the Gospel Promise: Understanding Their Relationship
- Feb 6, 2025 — A New Life Course Schedule (Spring 2025) at New Life Vicenza
- Feb 5, 2025 — The Case of the Gospel and the Murder of the Chocolate Lips
- Jan 31, 2025 — The Gospel No One Wants (And Everyone Needs): A Personal Story
- Jan 23, 2025 — The Greatness and Glory of the Legal Promise
- Jan 11, 2025 — Covenant Theology is Not Mono-Covenantalism: Recovering the Biblical, Reformed and Confessional Two-Covenant Framework
2024
- Dec 23, 2024 — 100 Years of Grace and Courage: Happy Birthday, Rose Marie Miller!
- Dec 19, 2024 — Cheer Up! Honoring Jack Miller on His 96th Birthday (Sorry for being a day late!)
- Dec 11, 2024 — The Gospel of “Costly Grace”: Bonhoeffer, Shepherd, and Jack Miller
- Nov 27, 2024 — “Zoe” Life in a “Bios” World: Jack Miller and the Pivotal Debates of Middle Westminster
- Nov 7, 2024 — Christ-Oriented Giving
- Sep 25, 2024 — “Correcting Yourself Before Others” by Jack Miller
- Aug 3, 2024 — “The Law and the Gospel” by Jack Miller
- Jul 23, 2024 — Martin Luther to George Spalatin, 21 August 1544
- Jul 16, 2024 — Does the Holy Spirit Seem to You to Be a Kind of Luxury?
- Apr 24, 2024 — Continuance in Justification by C. John Miller, 11 April 1979
- Apr 7, 2024 — By the Pool of Bethesda (John 5) with Alfred Edersheim
- Mar 27, 2024 — “Who Is Really on Trial?” Jack Miller
- Mar 17, 2024 — “The Word of God in the Life of the Church” by Jack Miller
- Mar 13, 2024 — Garbage Truck Evangelism
- Mar 9, 2024 — Beauty: A Letter from Jack Miller to World Harvest Mission Leadership Team just after the Collapse of the New Era Foundation
- Mar 6, 2024 — “Those Who Truly Stand in the Tradition of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin” by Jack Miller
- Feb 29, 2024 — Jack Miller on “The Primacy of Faith in Carrying the Gospel to Others”
- Jan 13, 2024 — What Jack Miller means by “Preaching the Gospel to Ourselves”
2023
- Dec 21, 2023 — New Life “Distinctives”—Reflections on the Early Days of New Life Church
- Dec 18, 2023 — Merry Christmas to You and Happy Birthday to the late Dr. C. John “Jack” Miller
- May 6, 2023 — “[I]f we don’t reach the cities of our land for Christ, we won’t reach the nation”—To New Life-Glenside on Leaving the OPC
- Apr 19, 2023 — “Denominations, Unless Revived by Repentance, Usually Fade After 50 to 70 Years” Letter from Jack Miller to Elders at New Life Church
- Feb 13, 2023 — “Authority for the Conflict” by Jack Miller
- Jan 11, 2023 — Grace and the Pastor’s Work
2022
- Dec 19, 2022 — Praying Together Effectively by Jack Miller
- Oct 31, 2022 — Abandoning the Idea of a Calvinist Remnant
- Oct 4, 2022 — The Lord is My Chosen Portion
- Jul 29, 2022 — Keeping Your Mental Health in a Violent Society by C. John “Jack” Miller
- Jul 6, 2022 — “Justification by Faith in the 20th Century” by C. John “Jack” Miller
- Jun 27, 2022 — Arrived in Vicenza
- May 30, 2022 — Preach Faith Until You Believe and When You Believe Preach Faith
- May 28, 2022 — An Interview with My Father—Dayton Graham (1936–2004)
- May 4, 2022 — A Skeptic Witnessing to Skeptics
- Apr 27, 2022 — A New Life Conference at Faith OPC in Long Beach
- Mar 26, 2022 — A New Life Seminar: Evangelism & The Foundations of Discipleship
- Mar 16, 2022 — Witnessing to the Virtuous
2021
- Sep 13, 2021 — The Primacy of Faith—A Sermon with My Personal Testimony
- Aug 28, 2021 — Jack Miller on The Relation Between Man’s Faith and the Holy Spirit
- Aug 17, 2021 — A Search For New Life … “Childhood Not Pleasant, I Hated Being Black”—The Story of Charles Brown
- Jul 5, 2021 — Next Steps in Ministry—Ministry Data Forms, Curriculum Vitae and Resume
- Jun 19, 2021 — Letter from John Berridge to Lady Huntingdon at the death of her daughter
- Jun 15, 2021 — “Listening is Another Way of Saying, ‘I Love You.’”
- Apr 30, 2021 — “Preach the Gospel to Yourself”—Jerry Bridges & Jack Miller
- Apr 9, 2021 — “Finished Work” — April 7, 2021 Sermon for Ann Marie (Myer) Graham
- Mar 27, 2021 — How Jack Miller Became a Trinitarian
- Mar 22, 2021 — Absolutely Convinced Jesus is Coming Back—Easter Sermon by Jack Miller
- Feb 15, 2021 — A “Dear John” Letter for Pastors by Jack Miller
- Feb 11, 2021 — Launch Forth Into the Deep — Another Modern Day Parable by Jack Miller
- Feb 8, 2021 — A Modern Parable by Jack Miller
- Jan 26, 2021 — Jack Miller on “How is the Holy Spirit Unleashed?”
- Jan 9, 2021 — Bott Radio Two-Part Interview for “Cheer Up!”
2019
- Nov 7, 2019 — “A New Life” Booklet and Sonship: Evangelism as the Foundations of Discipleship
- Oct 20, 2019 — The Jack Horner Approach to Claiming God’s Promises
- Oct 8, 2019 — “This is As Important As Anything I’ve Ever Said to You.” Jack Miller
- Oct 3, 2019 — The True Charismatic Movement
- Sep 28, 2019 — The End of the Struggle
- Sep 21, 2019 — Brokenness: The Way of Grace
- Sep 14, 2019 — Christ Crucified for “My Shameful Sins” and “My Everyday Respectable Sins”
- Aug 27, 2019 — Do You Have The Fruit Of The Spirit?
- Aug 8, 2019 — How Will We Define Faith?
- Jul 31, 2019 — Healing Aloneness
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Moses as Guest Preacher
Moses tells his own story from the Bible, and he tells it about Jesus Christ and God’s gospel promise.
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Incentives, Presuppositions, and “Digital Life”
Tristan Harris explains the AI race in the language of incentives. Underneath his word is what Van Til called presuppositions and what Jack Miller called a bad master. And “digital life,” measured against zoe, psyche, and bios, turns out to be an image.
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What Do You Mean, Everyone Dies?
Two AI interviews this month said everyone may die. Jack Miller would have asked what they mean by die. The Bible has three words for life, and the death these men fear is the smaller one.
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Make of Him What You Will
Jack Miller wrote in 1964 that American schools had adopted John Dewey’s doctrine of man: man is what can be made of him. The fear of artificial intelligence and the hope for it rest on that same doctrine. This essay follows Jack’s argument to the Christian doctrine of man, to Romans 1, and to the…
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The Question Nobody Would Answer
In 1964 Jack Miller wrote that American education had no doctrine of man and had adopted a rule against asking for one. The refusal to define the word woman at a 2022 confirmation hearing is that rule at work. What Jack said about it, and how he argued, from an unpublished three-volume manuscript.
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“I tend to go around and help God pick out the elect.”
Jack Miller wrote a man off as non-elect and pushed him as far away as he could. “I was really a preparationist with a vengeance.” The man’s name was Charles Brown, and he was converted anyway.
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Handing It On
The Gospel Coalition published its AI policy this week. I do not write for TGC, and I am writing this down to find out what I think. How I work, what Jack Miller did with new means, and why this is finally a question about justification.
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Read Your Bible
On the road to Emmaus the risen Christ opens the Scriptures to two grieving men and shows them the whole book is about Him — and their hearts burn before they know who He is. An essay on Luke 24:13–43, the second of four on how we continue in the new life.
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Pray Constantly
Jesus teaches us to ask, seek, and knock — and then trades bread for something greater. At the last, the Father gives his own Holy Spirit to everyone who asks: the gift turns out to be the Giver himself. An essay on Luke 11:1–13, the first of four on how we continue in the new…
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Aseity — the Gift of Dependence and the Wound of Dependence
God has life in himself. Everyone else drinks. What I am learning about aseity — and about the two wounds of dependence: asking a person to be my fountain, and playing the fountain myself.
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How We Receive New Life — Handed Over to the King
Should politics and religion mix? Mark 1:14–15 answers with one word that keeps returning — handed over. The Son went into the hands of sinners to bring us into the hands of God, and receiving the new life means resting in his hands, by repentance and faith.
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God’s Solution — Perfect Record, New Heart, Good Master
Isaiah 52:13–53:12, the servant God shows us, and the life he calls prosperous — the fourth of the Five Facts. We strayed our own way and were left with a bad record, a bad heart, and a bad master. Pierced in our place, the servant clears the record, gives the new heart, and lives to…