The Most-Read Crossway Articles from 2025

The Top Ten Most Read Articles This Year

Below are the year’s most popular Crossway articles that cover a number of challenging topics, common questions, and helpful tools for Christian living from a range of authors, including John Piper, Sam Allberry, Rebecca McLaughlin, and more.

10. One of the Best Defenses Against Depression That Never Gets Mentioned
Rebecca McLaughlin

Studies have shown that there is something you can do that will reduce your chances of developing depression by one-third. But a Google search won’t uncover it, and your doctor almost certainly won’t prescribe it.

9. 9 Powers of Satan That Are Not Ultimate
John Piper

The goal here is not to minimize the power and pervasive activity of Satan. Just the opposite. This strategy is to take seriously Satan’s power in different spheres and show how this power is not final and not decisive. Here are nine exposures of Satan’s ultimate powerlessness under God’s providence.

8. How to Pray and Hear Back from God
Daniel Brendsel

“Hear, O my people, and I will speak” (Ps. 50:7). It’s possible for us to “hear back” from God, and we may miss God’s answers to prayer if we are paying attention to the wrong things.

7. Can Women Serve as Deacons? (Arguments for and Against)
Matt Smethurst

That this question arrests our attention isn’t just understandable; it’s unavoidable. Every single church with deacons must, in one way or another, come to a conclusion on whether Christ calls women to the office. Smethurst’s aim is to offer the strongest arguments for both views, leaving you to decide which is most compelling.

6. 5 Hymns to Sing at the End of Life
Laura Story

When asked about her most memorable event that she has ever performed at, recognized artist Laura Story offers a surprising answer: Arbor Trace Assisted Living Community in May 2023. These are the carefully picked hymns she led on that evening and explanations as to why she chose them as songs for the end of life.

5. 5 Signs of Dead Faith
Robert Plummer

James repeatedly warns his readers that verbal claims or religious self-assessments do not necessarily indicate one’s true spiritual condition. To properly understand the category of living faith, one must also acknowledge the category of dead faith. One category necessitates the other.

4. 4 Ways to Avoid Sexual Sin
Sam Allberry

Proverbs 5 is all about how committing sexual sin goes against the grain of how we’re made. This passage helps all of us. As it unfolds, it presents to us four steps we need to take to avoid sexual sin.

3. Who Were the Nephilim and the Sons of God and Daughters of Man? (Genesis 6)
Iain Duguid

“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them.” Who are the Nephilim that are mentioned in Genesis 6:4? Who are the “sons of God” and the “daughters of man”? And why is their intermarriage sinful?

2. 7 Signs You’re Sowing to the Flesh—and What to Do About it
Portia Collins

Just a few verses before he describes the fruit of the Spirit, Paul gives us a different kind of list—the works of the flesh. What does sowing to the flesh really look like in everyday life? Here are seven signs you’re sowing to the flesh and what to do about it.

1. 10 Uncomfortable Truths About Christian Sexual Ethics
Brett McCracken

A biblical sexual ethic goes far beyond forbidding homosexual practice. That’s a truth many Christians conveniently forget. The biblical witness on sexuality is all encompassing and can be costly for all. The following are just some of the uncomfortable truths about sexuality that we must reckon with in a faithful pursuit of Christ.

Honorable Mentions

6 Habits for Successful Bible Study
Jon Nielson

Why We Worship Idols Instead of God
Tim Chester

What Would Jesus Do for Exercise?
David Mathis

An Open Letter to the Spouse of an Unbeliever
Emily Van Dixhoorn

8 Questions About Predestination
Joel Beeke, Paul Smalley

How to Fight Your Phone Idolatry
Brett McCracken

7 Secular Sermons You Might Have Heard This Week
Joe Carter

An Open Letter to Anyone Who’s Hit Rock Bottom
Ray Ortlund

3 Patterns That False Teachers Follow
Matthew Harmon

Tim Keller on Pleasing God, Self-Salvation, and Two Lost Sons
Matt Smethurst