Yearly Archives: 2011

Sola Scriptura (4)

Posted on by
Reply

Continued from part 3 27 in the New, over a period of about 1,500 years. So how is it that all these 66 books ever got together in the Bible?

LUTHER AND JAMES

Early on in his ministry, Martin Luther had a problem with the Epistle of James. Luther, standing against the known world with the revelation of sola fide or justification by faith alone, encountered many in the Roman Catholic Church quoting the book of James to dismiss him. Luther, for some time could not reconcile James’ words in chapter 2 of his epistle, with Paul’s clear words in Romans and Galatians. He concluded that James was merely “an Epistle of straw.”

This has led some to argue that Luther did not believe that the Bible was inspired by God, for, they say, how could he believe the Bible is the Word of God and then say that the book of James was a “strawy Epistle?”

Yet these folk confuse a couple of issues that need to be distinguished carefully.

If anyone believed in the inspiration and authority of Scripture, is was Luther (remember Worms!!). He said, “The Scriptures never err!”

But there was a period in his life (though he changed his mind later) when he had real questions about James. But this is the point we need to see Luther’s question was not about whether the Bible was inspired, but whether the Epistle of James is supposed to be included in the Bible.

Can you see the important difference? Continue reading →

A Simple Prayer Plan

Posted on by
1

There are two ditches on the side of the road of Christian life. One ditch is lawlessness (antinomianism), and on the other side, the ditch of a harsh and hostile legalism that binds spiritual chains around us. Both of these extremes should be avoided always. Yet there is a road to walk if progress in sanctification is to be made, and as the saying goes, to fail to plan is to plan to fail.

Prayer Plan: No one wishes for something introduced only with good intentions, to then become a yoke of slavery on the neck. We must always remember that a failure to hold to a plan strictly does not mean our relationship with God is severed our soured in some way. Our performance is not the basis of our standing before God. The gospel of Christ is. Justification is by grace alone through faith alone in the Person and work of Christ alone.

Having said stressed that and made that very clear, it has to be said that it is very much a good thing to have a plan for prayer.

I read the following article by Mike Riccardi at the Cripplegate website and thought some excellent points were made:

In his classic, Desiring God, John Piper diagnoses that a main hindrance to prayer is our lack of planning. He tells us,

Unless I’m badly mistaken, one of the main reasons so many of God’s children don’t have a significant life of prayer is not so much that we don’t want to, but that we don’t plan to. If you want to take a four-week vacation, you don’t just get up one summer morning and say, “Hey, let’s go today!” You won’t have anything ready. You won’t know where to go. Nothing has been planned.

But that is how many of us treat prayer. We get up day after day and realize that significant times of prayer should be a part of our life, but nothing’s ever ready. We don’t know where to go. Nothing has been planned. No time. No place. No procedure.

And we all know that the opposite of planning is not a wonderful flow of deep, spontaneous experiences in prayer. The opposite of planning is the rut. If you don’t plan a vacation, you will probably stay home and watch TV. The natural, unplanned flow of spiritual life sinks to the lowest ebb of vitality. There is a race to be run and a fight to be fought. If you want renewal in your life of prayer, you must plan to see it.

Continue reading →

Miscellaneous Quotes (26)

Posted on by
Reply

The Greatest News in One Sentence: “That the greatest good (God) offers the greatest action (love) to the greatest need (wrath-owed sinners) by sending the greatest treasure (Jesus) in the greatest invitation (to everyone) into the greatest life (everlasting).” – Jared Wilson

“Paul ran from Christ; Christ pursued and overtook him. Paul resisted Christ; Christ disarmed him. Paul persecuted Christ; Christ converted him. Paul was an alien; Christ made him a member of the family. Paul was an enemy; Christ made him a friend. Paul was ‘in the flesh’; Christ set him ‘in the Spirit.’ Paul was under the law; Christ set him in grace. Paul was dead; Christ made him alive to God. How does one give reasons for this? He does not give reasons; he sings, Union With Christ (Grand Rapids, 1983), pages 86-87.

“A humble and prayerful spirit will find a thousand things in the Bible, which the proud, self-conceited student will utterly fail to discern.” – J.C. Ryle

“At the cross, God stormed the last bastion of the self, the last presumption that you were going to do something for him.” – Gerhard Forde

Robert Cunningham, professor of church history at Edinburgh 150 years ago, on the doctrines of grace:

“There is not a converted and believing man on earth, in whose conscience there does not exist at least the germ, or embryo, of a testimony in favour of the substance of the Calvinistic doctrine of election.

This testimony may be misunderstood, or perverted, or suppressed; but it exists in the ineradicable sense which every converted man has, that if God had not chosen him, he never would have chosen God, and that if God, by His Spirit, had not exerted a decisive and determining influence in the matter, he never would have turned from darkness to light, and been led to embrace Christ as his Saviour.

This is really the sum and substance of Calvinism. It is just the intelligent and hearty ascription of the entire, undivided glory of their salvation, by all who are saved, to the sovereign purpose, the infinite merit, and the almighty agency of God–the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” – Robert Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (T&T Clark, 1862), 209

“Man’s will is free to follow his inclinations, but fallen man’s inclinations are always and invariably away from God.” – R.C. Sproul

“Jesus is no longer visible upon earth; but he has promised his spiritual presence to abide with his word, ordinances and people, to the end of time. Weary and heavy laden souls have now no need to take a long journey to seek him, but he is always near them, and in a spiritual manner, where his Gospel is preached… Therefore, come unto him. That is, raise your hearts, and breathe forth your complaints to him… He is just such a Savior as your circumstances require, as you yourself could wish for.” – John Newton, Works (Edinburgh, 1988), II:462.

“How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! Luke 11:13

In a sermon preached in 1740, Jonathan Edwards pointed out that we ask God for basically two kinds of things. We ask him for temporal blessings like health and jobs and family needs. We also ask him for spiritual blessings. But Edwards noted how much more frequently and fervently we ask for temporal blessings:

“They don’t need any preaching to stir them up to take thorough care to obtain those outward things… And if they begin to suffer for want of those things, how much do they make of their sufferings!… Had God nothing better to bestow upon you, when he had made you his children, than a little money or land, that you seem so much to behave yourselves as if you thought this was your chief good?… I am bold to say that God is now offering the blessing of his Holy Spirit to this town, and I am bold to say we may have it only for the asking.”

“You will not be able to extemporize good thinking unless you have been in the habit of thinking and feeding your mind with abundant and nourishing food. Work hard at every available moment. Store your minds very richly, and then, like merchants with crowded warehouses, you will have goods ready for your customers, and having arranged your good things upon the shelves of your mind, you will be able to hand them down at any time without the laborious process of going to market, sorting, folding, and preparing… Take it as a rule without exception, that to be able to overflow spontaneously you must be full.” – C. H. Spurgeon
Continue reading →