Monthly Archives: July 2011

Justification

Posted on by
1

From: A Faith to Confess: The Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 – Rewritten in Modern English

CHAPTER 11 – JUSTIFICATION

1. GOD freely justifies the persons whom He effectually calls. He does this, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and by accounting them, and accepting them, as righteous. This He does for Christ’s sake alone, and not for anything wrought in them or done by them. The righteousness which is imputed to them, that is, reckoned to their account, is neither their faith nor the act of believing nor any other obedience to the gospel which they have rendered, but Christ’s obedience alone. Christ’s one obedience is twofold – His active obedience rendered to the entire divine law, and His passive obedience rendered in His death. Those thus justified receive and rest by faith upon Christ’s righteousness; and this faith they have, not of themselves, but as the gift of God.

John 1:12; Rom. 3:24; 4:5-8; 5:17-19; 8:30; 1Cor. 1:30-31; Eph. 1:7; 2:8-10; Phil. 3:8,9.

2. The faith which receives and rests on Christ and His righteousness is the sole means of justification. Yet it is never alone in the person justified, but is invariably accompanied by all other saving graces. Nor is it a dead faith, for it works by love.

Rom. 3:28; Gal. 5:6; Jas. 2:17,22,26.

3. By His obedience and death Christ paid in full the debt of all those who are justified. By the sacrifice of Himself in His blood-shedding on Calvary, and His suffering on their behalf of the penalty they had incurred, He fully and absolutely satisfied all the claims which God’s justice had upon them. Yet their justification is altogether of free grace, firstly because Christ was the free gift of the Father to act on their behalf; secondly because Christ’s obedience and His satisfying the demands of the law was freely accepted on their behalf; and thirdly because nothing in them merited these mercies. Hence God’s exact justice and His rich grace are alike rendered glorious in the justification of sinners.

Isa. 53:5,6; Rom. 3:26; 8:32; 2 Cor. 5:21; Eph. 1:6,7; 2:7; Heb. 10:14; 1 Pet.1:18,19.

4. From all eternity God decreed to justify all the elect, and in the fullness of time Christ died for their sins and rose again for their justification. Nevertheless they are not justified personally until, in due time, the Holy Spirit actually applies to them the benefits of Christ’s Person and work.

Rom. 4:25; Gal. 3:8; Col. 1:21,22; 1 Tim. 2:6; Titus 3:4-7; 1 Pet. 1:2.

5. God continues to forgive the sins of all the justified. They can never lose their justification; but they may, by reason of sin, fall under God’s fatherly displeasure; in which case, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg God’s pardon, and renew their faith and repentance, God will not usually restore to them ‘the light of His countenance’.

Ps. 32:5; Ps. 51; Ps. 89:31-33; Matt. 6:12; 26:75; John 10:28; 1 John 1:7,9.

6. Believers in Old Testament times were justified in precisely the same way as New Testament believers.

Rom. 4:22-24; Gal. 3:9.

Things I Think

Posted on by
Reply

I think the Lord convicted me of how prayerless my ministry can be. I mean, if I believed that ministry were God’s work and not mine, wouldn’t I be asking for him to engage in that work a whole lot more than I do? Why is it that I’m so much more disciplined and diligent to do the work myself rather than rely on the one whose work it is in the first place? Answer: I am self-reliant. I have a deficiency of dependence.

Whenever I am prayerless it betrays an underlying belief that I can do life and ministry on my own, which according to Scripture, is certifiably insane. Jesus says, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:7). I deny reality and live like a lunatic whenever I act as if I can do the work of my life and ministry on my own. And prayerlessness is the tell-tale sign that I’ve gone nuts.

So as I’ve come back to work – to God’s work – I’m committing myself to reality: to remember the reality of my own neediness, my own helplessness, by focusing intensely on the cross of Christ. There it is that I see my desperation, my profound neediness, my own inability to do life on my own; for if this is what it cost to rescue me from my sin and self-righteousness, then I must be truly needy, truly helpless, truly powerless to accomplish anything myself. And with this renewed focus on Jesus’ cross, I am resolved to take my neediness in hand and bring it earnestly and regularly to the throne of grace to receive (as the writer to the Hebrews has said) mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb 4:16).

Hebrews is one of my favorite books of the entire Bible and Dr. Sinclair Ferguson’s reasons for studying it echo my own thoughts very well:

? Hebrews reveals Christ as the key to understanding the Old Testament. He calls Hebrews a “master interpreter” of the Old Testament. It reveals promise and fulfillment, type and antitype, shadow and reality.
? It displays the greatness of Jesus Christ. He is better than anges, Moses, Joshua, Aaron, the priesthood, the tabernacle and the sacrifices.
? It emphasizes the theological and practical importance of the humanity of Christ. Ferguson says: “assurance, peace, access to God, knowledge that He is our father, and strength to overcome demptation all depend on this – that the Son of God took our flesh andbore our sins in such a way that further sacrifice for sin is both unnecessary and unintelligible.”
? Hebrews emphasizes the nature of true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The true nature is perseverence. Though the recipients were being persecuted to go back to their old religion, the writer is convinced that those who remain faithful will receive the promises.

Talking of Dr. Ferguson, I recently re-read the notes of a lecture he did entitled “The Puritans: Can They Teach Us Anything Today?”

The short answer to the question is “a whole lot!”

Puritans were individuals who wanted to see the church purified according to the teaching of Scripture, and also wanted to see their lives, in great detail, purified by the Word of God.

Dr. Ferguson presents the big picture overview concerning why the Puritans and their writings can be so useful to us in our own day. I was particularly struck by how the Puritans sought to practically apply the Bible in the home life of each family in the local church and how all the doctrine expoused was so very Trinitarian. It is excellent material. I hope it will stir in us a desire to read more of their writings. You will find part one of his talk here and part two here.

Last, but by no means least, my heart goes out to Christian baseball player Josh Hamilton who was recently involved in a terrible tragedy, along with the Stone family.

The Sea in the Ship is all Wrong

Posted on by
Reply

“Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good, acceptable and perfect.” – Romans 12:2

The Spanish ship, Monte Galineiro, taking on water off the coast of Newfoundland on Sunday, February 22, 2009. The Canadian Coast Guard managed to rescue all 22 people on board the vessel before it sunk into the sea.

There’s an old saying: “The ship in the sea is alright. The sea in the ship is all wrong. The Church in the world is alright. The world in the church is all wrong.”

Everything you and I believe as Christians flies in the face of our post-modern culture. We believe in a God who has made His existence known to everyone (Romans 1:18-22) despite the strong denials of man. We believe in a God who has communicated to us in clear terms in a book called the Bible (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). We believe in absolutes, for we believe in a God who is Truth Himself, and who tells us what is right and what is wrong. We believe in the one true Gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:16, 17) who said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by Me.” John 14:6. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the way to God and the only way to God, and we deny that He is merely a way, a truth and a life, and one of the ways to God. Understand that we do not say this because we believe our opinion is greater than someone else’s, but because Christ Himself said this about Himself, and we believe His claims are valid, trustworthy and true… We believe too that if Christ is not THE way to God, then He is a liar, and not even one of the ways to God. Jesus Christ is either who He claimed to be, or else He is a fraud, or perhaps a lunatic. But what He could never be is merely one of the ways to God. If we take His words with any seriousness at all, then we have to admit that His own claims deny this very possibility.

The claim of exclusivity is repulsive to the modern world. However, every religion claims exclusivity – even the ones who claim that all religions lead to God. Why? Because even this claim is a claim to be exclusively and absolutely true. The claim is a fundamental denial that there is only one way to God. That is the very definition of exclusivity. It certainly denies the possibility that the exclusive claims of Christ are true.

Dr. Tim Keller is correct when he writes, “Christianity is disbelieved in one culture for totally opposite reasons it is disbelieved in another. So for example, in the West… it is widely assumed that Christianity can’t be true because of the cultural belief there can’t be just one “true” religion. But in the Middle East, people have absolutely no problem with the idea that there is just one true religion. That doesn’t seem implausible at all. Rather there it is widely assumed that Christianity can’t be true because of the cultural belief that American culture, based on Christianity, is unjust and corrupt. (Skeptics ought to realize, then, that the objections they have to the Christian faith are culturally relative!) So each culture has its own set of culturally-based doubt-generators which people call ‘objections’ or ‘problems’ with Christianity. When a culture develops a combination of many, widely held defeater beliefs it becomes a cultural ‘implausibility-structure.’ In these societies, most people don’t feel they have to give Christianity a good hearing – they don’t feel that kind of energy is warranted. They know it just can’t be true. That is what makes evangelism in hostile cultures so much more difficult and complex than it was under ‘Christendom.’ In our Western culture (and in places like Japan, India, and Muslim countries) the reigning implausibility-structure against Christianity is very strong. Christianity simply looks ludicrous. In places like Africa, Latin America, and China, however, the implausibility structures are eroding fast. The widely held assumptions in the culture make Christianity look credible there.”

The claim “there are no absolutes” is also a ridiculous non-sensical statement, for it is an absolute statement in and of itself. It claims that there are absolutely no absolutes but in doing so affirms that there is at least one absolute, namely that there are no absolutes!

Romans 12:2 teaches us that our mandate as Christians is not to allow the world to squeeze us into its mould, but to be different – transformed, even metamorphosized, by renewing our minds to the will of God. To avoid the world’s mould, we must first recognize what it is, and see the pitfalls ahead of us. If we do not, we might find ourselves caught up in the thinking of the culture around us without even realizing it. We must understand what the world thinks, how it thinks and how it wants us to think. Then we need to take deliberate steps to walk not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; but delight in the law of the LORD, meditating on it day and night.

Unlike those who swim with the tide of post-modernity, this type of 21st Century Christian will be “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” (Psalm 1)