If we are morally upright, and especially if we are believers who seek to live morally upright lives, it is only because the grace of God has prevailed in us. No one is naturally morally upright. Rather, we all have to say with David, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5, Nly). Rather than feeling morally superior to those who practice the flagrant sins we condemn, we ought to feel deeply grateful that God by His grace has kept us from, or perhaps rescued us from, such a lifestyle.
Archive for September, 2009
Moral Self-Righteousness
Posted in Humility on September 30, 2009 by HarrySpurgeon on the Substitutionary Atonement
Posted in Atonement, Salvation, Sin with tags God's Justice, Justification on September 25, 2009 by Harry
JUST AND THE JUSTIFIER OF THE ONE WHO HAS FAITH IN JESUS. – ROMANS 3:26
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Conscience no longer accuses. Judgment now decides for the sinner instead of against him. Memory looks back upon past sins with deep sorrow for the sin, but yet without dreading any penalty to come; for Christ has paid the debt of His people to the last jot and tittle and received the divine receipt. Unless God can be so unjust as to demand double payment for one debt, no soul for whom Jesus died as a substitute can ever be cast into hell. It seems to be one of the principles of our enlightened nature to believe that God is just; we feel that it must be so, and this terrifies us at first. But is it not marvelous that this very same belief that God is just later becomes the pillar of our confidence and peace! If God is just, I, a sinner, alone and without a substitute, must be punished. But Jesus stands in my place and is punished for me; and now, if God is just, I, a sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished. God must change His nature before one soul for whom Jesus was a substitute can ever by any possibility suffer the punishment of the law. Therefore, Jesus having taken the place of the believer—having rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that His people ought to have suffered as the result of sin—the believer can shout with glorious triumph, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?”‘ Not God, for He has justified; not Christ, for He has died, yes, has risen again. My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, He is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am or shall be or feel or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing for me. Hallelujah!
Will Man Rob God?
Posted in Giving with tags Tithe on September 22, 2009 by Harry
. . . it is possible for human creatures to be guilty of theft against God. He (God) answers his question, “Will man rob God?” saying, “Yet you are robbing me.” The Israelite response is: “How have we robbed you?” To which God replies, “In your tithes and contributions” (3:8). God announces that to withhold the full measure of the tithe that He requires from His people is to be guilty of robbing God Himself. Because of this, He pronounces a curse upon the whole nation and commands them afresh to bring to Him all of the tithe.
Ministry
Posted in Ministry on September 16, 2009 by Harry
Things to pray for when ministering to others by Alistair Begg:
- Conviction for what I believe.
- Clarity in what I say.
- Compassion for those who I speak.
A Jealous God
Posted in Dependence, Trials and Suffering, Trust on September 12, 2009 by HarryTHE LORD IS A JEALOUS AND AVENGING GOD. – NAHUM 1:2
Believer, your Lord is very jealous of your love. Did He choose you? He cannot bear that you should choose another. Did He buy you with His own blood? He cannot endure that you should think you are your own or that you belong to this world. He loved you with such a love that He would not remain in heaven without you; He would sooner die than have you perish, and He cannot endure that anything should stand between your heart’s love and Himself. He is very jealous of your trust. He will not permit you to trust in yourself. He cannot stand the thought of you hewing out broken cisterns and neglecting the overflowing fountain that is always free to you. When we lean upon Him, He is glad; but when we transfer our dependence to another, when we rely upon our own wisdom or the wisdom of a friend—worst of all, when we trust in any works of our own—He is displeased and will chasten us, that He may bring us to Himself. He is also very jealous of our company. There should be no one with whom we converse so much as with Jesus. To remain in Him alone, this is true love; but to commune with the world, to find sufficient satisfaction in our earthly comforts, to even prefer the company of our fellow Christians to secret fellowship with Him, this grieves our jealous Lord. He longs to have us abide in Him and enjoy constant fellowship with Himself; and many of the trials that He sends us are for the purpose of weaning our hearts from created things and fixing them more closely on Him who created everything. Let this jealousy that would keep us near to Christ also be a comfort to us, for if He loves us so much as to care about our love, we may be sure that He will allow nothing to harm us and will protect us from all our enemies. May we have grace today to keep our hearts in holy purity for Christ alone, with sacred jealousy closing our eyes to all the fascinations of the world!
Does irresistible grace mean that human response is forced and artificial?
Posted in Reformed on September 11, 2009 by Harry
The common objection to the doctrine of irresistible grace, that it makes human response forced and artificial, as if they were robots and not real people making real choices, misunderstands what irresistible grace actually means. It certainly does not mean that God will bring people to Christ against their wills, kicking and screaming. Irresistibleness, in other words, does not imply coercion. On the contrary, it means that God will not just save his people apart from or in opposition to their wills, but he will give them the very will to come. He will give them new hearts of faith, that delight to come to him and walk in his ways. When Christ called to Lazarus from his grave, he irresistibly arose and came forth – but it was not as if the still-dead corpse were miraculously moving like a robot, nor yet as if he desperately wanted to stay in his grave, but Jesus dragged him out anyway. No, he was given new life, and the living will he received delighted to come forth from his stinking grave and embrace the Master (John 11:43-44). In the same way, when God irresistibly draws us to Christ, he does not makes us come mechanically, even though our hearts are still spiritually dead, nor does he force us to come unwillingly. He gives us new, living hearts of faith that delight to come to him, that could not do anything else, in fact, because our re-created wills naturally delight in him and want nothing else but to belong to him (for scriptural support, see the previous question, “What does the term ‘irresistible grace’ mean, and does the bible teach it?”).
To insist that, if God’s grace is irresistible then our response must therefore be coerced and artificial, is really to diminish God’s power. Why is it that you have a will at all, so that you might volitionally choose anything? Is it not because God created you as a volitional creature and not a robot? God created your will in the first place, a will that is able to choose the things it desires; so can he not create a new heart and will that still chooses what it desires, but that naturally desires what is good and right? To say that our response is forced or constrained, just because God gives us the desire to come to Christ freely and joyfully, is to minimize his power both as Creator and Redeemer.
- from monergism.com
“The Undignified Vices”
Posted in Sin with tags Lust on September 6, 2009 by Harry
“Milton was right,” said my teacher. “The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’ There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy – that is, to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper that say it was sorry and be friends. Ye call it the Sulks. But in adult life it has a hundred fine names – Achilles wrath and Coriolanus’ grandeur, Revenge and Injured Merit and Self Respect and Tragic Greatness, and Proper Pride.”
“Then there is no one lost through the undignified vices, Sir? Through mere sensuality?”
“Some are no doubt. The sensualist, I’ll allow ye, begins by pursuing a real pleasure, though a small one. His sin is less. But the time comes on when, though the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come that way, yet he prefers to joy the mere fondling of unappeasable lust and would not have it taken from him. He’d fight to the death to keep it. He’d like well to be able to scratch: but even when he can scratch no more he’d rather itch than not.”
- excerpt from the The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
Living in an Ungodly World
Posted in * Favorites, Discipleship, Perseverance, Trials and Suffering on September 5, 2009 by HarryWOE TO ME, THAT I SOJOURN IN MESHECH, THAT I DWELL AMONG THE TENTS OF KEDAR. – PS. 120:5
As a Christian you have to live in the middle of an ungodly world, and it is of little use for you to cry, “Woe to me.” Jesus did not pray that you should be taken out of the world, and what He did not pray for, you need not desire. It is far better to meet the difficulty in the Lord’s strength and by doing so to glorify Him. The enemy is always watching for inconsistency in your conduct; therefore be very holy. Remember that the eyes of all are on you, and that more is expected from you than from other men. Strive to give no occasion for blame. Let your goodness be the only fault they can discover in you. Like Daniel, compel them to say of you, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.”‘ Seek to be useful as well as consistent. Perhaps you think, “If I were in a more favorable position I could serve the Lord’s cause, but I cannot do any good where I am.” The worse the people are among whom you live, the more they need your exertions; if they are crooked, all the more need for you to set them straight; and if they are perverse, they need you to turn their proud hearts to the truth. Where should the doctor spend his time if not among the sick? Where is honor to be won by the soldier but in the center of the battle? And when you are weary of the strife and sin that meets you on every hand, consider that all the saints have endured the same trial. They were not carried on couches to heaven, and you should not expect to travel more easily than they. They had to risk their lives on the battlefield, and you will not be crowned until you also have endured hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Therefore, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong!
- Charles Spurgeon from Morning and Evening, September 5th a.m. entry
Learn to Live With a Little Less
Posted in Giving with tags Steward, Stewardship on September 4, 2009 by HarryIs It Just a Money Issue? by Burk Parsons
Several years after my father’s death in 1992 I found an old shoebox among my father’s belongings. Among the various items in the shoebox, I came across a stack of letters that my father had written just prior to his death. As I began to read the first letter I quickly realized he had written them to me but that he never had the opportunity to give them to me because his cancer consumed his body more quickly than the oncologist had expected. In one of the letters, my father wrote, “Learn to live with a little less.”
I have never forgotten that admonition, and having often wondered what made my father’s generation different from my own, I have come to the following conclusions: My father’s generation knew what it was to live with a little less. My generation always seems to “need” just a little more. My father’s generation asked this question of God, family, neighbor, and country: “How can I serve you with my time, money, and resources?” My generation asks, “How can you serve me with your time, money, and resources?” My father’s generation was a generation of honorable, principled, and hard-working men and women who felt truly blessed by God to be alive, to have the health to give of themselves to others, and to be fortunate enough to give of their time, money, and resources so that future generations could prosper. My generation is consumed with consumption. It is the generation of entitlement, instant gratification, and expediency. My generation has no understanding of what our fathers and forefathers fought for, what they sacrificed, and how much they gave of their time, money, and resources.
This is not just an issue about money but about how we worship God as stewards of all that He has entrusted to us as we live before His face each and every day. Nevertheless, we must never forget that it is the love of money that is “a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Tim. 6:10). In his book Respectable Sins, Jerry Bridges, one from among my father’s generation, writes, “If money wins out in our lives, it is not God but we who lose. Ultimately, God does not need our money. If we spend it on ourselves, it is we who become spiritual paupers” (p. 169).
- Burk Parsons is editor of Tabletalk magazine and associate minister at Saint Andrew’s in Sanford, Florida, and is editor of the book John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, & Doxology.
Joshua 22:5
Posted in Joshua, Old Testament, Worldly Pursuits with tags commandments on September 2, 2009 by Harry
5 Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments and to cling to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.”
God is Love
Posted in * Favorites, Love, Sovereignty - God's, Trials and Suffering on September 1, 2009 by Harry
“God is love” is the complete truth about God so far as the Christian is concerned. To say “God is light” is to imply that God’s holiness finds expression in everything that he says and does. Similarly, the statement “God is love” means that his love finds expression in everything that he says and does.
The knowledge that this is so for us personally is the supreme comfort for Christians. As believers, we find in the cross of Christ assurance that we, as individuals, are beloved of God; “the Son of God … loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). Knowing this, we are able to apply to ourselves the promise that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28). Not just some things, note, but all things! Every single thing that happens to us expresses God’s love to us, and comes to us for the furthering of God’s purpose for us.
Thus, so far as we are concerned, God is love to us—holy, omnipotent love—at every moment and in every event of every day’s life. Even when we cannot see the why and the wherefore of God’s dealings, we know that there is love in and behind them, and so we can rejoice always, even when, humanly speaking, things are going wrong. We know that the true story of our life, when known, will prove to be, as the hymn says, “mercy from first to last”—and we are content.
- J.I. Packer from Knowing God
