Dr. Voddie Baucham, Jr.
Voddie Baucham wears many hats. He is a husband, father, pastor, author, professor, conference speaker and church planter. He currently serves as Pastor of Preaching at Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring, TX. He has served as an adjunct professor at the College of Biblical Studies in Houston, TX, and Union University in Jackson, TN.
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“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” – Winston Churchill
“Don’t give up what you want most for what you want now.” – Anonymous
“It ought to be the primary goal of every Christian to put aside confidence in works and grow stronger in the belief that we are saved by faith alone. Through this faith the Christian should increase in knowledge not of works but of Christ Jesus and the benefits of his death and resurrection.” – Martin Luther, The Freedom of the Christian (Minneapolis, 2008), page 55.
“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.” – D.A. Carson
“If we felt at liberty to leave out something, we should naturally omit that which is offensive, and away would go the tooth and edge of the gospel. That which is offensive in the gospel is just that which is effective. What men oppose is what God uses.” C. H. Spurgeon
“In the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is contained the whole salvation of men.” – Herman Bavinck, The Divine Trinity
“If Christ’s death fully paid the penalty for everyone’s sins – irrespective of faith or unbelief – it is impossible that these sins could be punished again in the court of a just God. That the Bible so clearly promises God’s vengeful judgment on the sins of unbelievers proves that Christ did not die for their sins.” – Richard D. Phillips
“Doctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites; but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ’s sheep. The preacher’s job is to proclaim the faith, not to provide entertainment for unbelievers—in other words, to feed the sheep rather than amuse the goats” – J.I. Packer
“We believe in the five great points commonly known as Calvinistic; but we do not regard these five points as being barbed shafts which we are to thrust between the ribs of our fellow Christians. We look upon them as being five great lamps which help to irradiate the cross; or, rather, five bright emanatations springing from the glorious covenant of our Triune God.” – C. H. Spurgeon
“Divisions and separations are most objectionable in religion. They weaken the cause of true Christianity…But before we blame people for them, we must be careful that we lay the blame where it is deserved. False doctrine and heresy are even worse than schism. If people separate themselves from teaching that is positively false and unscriptural, they ought to be praised rather than reproved. In such cases separation is a virtue and not a sin.” – JC Ryle, Warnings To The Churches
“Bad theology will eventually hurt people and dishonor God in proportion to its badness.” – John Piper (A Godward Life Volume Two, pg. 377)
“Compare Scripture with Scripture. False doctrines, like false witnesses, agree not among themselves.” -William Gurnall
“Christianity is no more a bondage to men than wings are to birds.” – O. Palmer Robertson
“Walker Percy, the novelist, has described humanity as ‘waiting for news.’ Christianity says that the news has come. It brings to the human situation the news that what we most need has been supplied: perfect atonement for guilt. It declares that what we know to be true about ourselves has been responded to decisively and eternally from outside ourselves. This confidence that there is good news for humanity in the place of our solitude is summed up in the words ‘Christ died for our sins.’” – Paul F. M. Zahl, Who Will Deliver Us? (Eugene, 2008), pages 37-38.
“It is not hard to deceive ministers, relatives, and friends. But it is impossible to deceive Christ.” – J.C. Ryle
“In the name of God, brethren, labor to awaken your own hearts, before you go to the pulpit, that you may be fit to awaken the hearts of sinners. Remember they must be awakened or damned, and . . . a sleepy preacher will hardly awaken drowsy sinners. Though you give the holy things of God the highest praise in words, yet, if you do it coldly, you will seem by your manner to unsay what you said in the matter… Speak to your people as to men that must be awakened, either here or in hell. Look around upon them with the eye of faith, and with compassion, and think in what a state of joy or torment they must all be for ever; and then, methinks, it will make you earnest, and melt your heart to a sense of their condition.” – Richard Baxter, quoted in J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness (Wheaton, 1990), 279.
“God warned Lot’s wife of the impending disaster. He tried to rescue her from His judgment. He even set her on the way to salvation, shepherding her to safety. But the bent of her heart was even more powerful than the grasp of the angels leading her by the hand. She gave proof that she had never taken God seriously when she would not sever her heart-ties with Sodom. She came as close to deliverance without receiving it as was possible. Looking to the past she destroyed her future. Having received the grace of God in vain, she passed the point of no return. Not even the fire and brimstone falling around her could heal her divided heart… We might feel inclined to ask why Lot’s wife paid such a price for her error. Oh, but she sinned grievously against the Lord. Not only did she lack the pioneering pilgrim spirit required of those who leave their former lives for a better city, but she was in love with the sinful world… What she left behind and still held in her heart obviously was very dear to her, dearer than the treasures of God.” – Cheryl Ford, Treasures from the Heart
“Every time you hear the Word of God preached, you come away from that exposure to his truth either a little closer to God or a little further way from God, either more softened toward God or more hardened toward God. But you are never just the same. And if you think you can hold… the gospel at arm’s length in critical detachment, that very posture reveals that you are already deadened. The same truth enlivening someone else is hardening you. And don’t tell yourself that if only God would perform a miracle in your life, you would believe and open up. Jesus performed miracles, and the people who saw them only became further hardened (John 12:37–41). And if God’s Word isn’t saving you, what will? “Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).” – Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr and R. Kent Hughes, Isaiah : God Saves Sinners, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2005). 81.
“The work of redemption which the gospel makes known, above all things, affords motives to love. For that work was the most glorious and wonderful exhibition of love that ever was seen or heard of. Love is the principal thing that the gospel dwells on when speaking of God and of Christ. It brings to light the love eternally existing between the Father and the Son, and declares how that same love has been manifested in many things. The gospel manifests how Christ is God’s well-beloved Son, in whom He is ever well pleased and how He so loved Him, that He has raised Him to the throne of the mediatorial kingdom, and appointed Him to be the judge of the world, and ordained that all mankind should stand before Him in judgment. In the gospel, too, is revealed the love that Christ has to the Father, and the wonderful fruits of that love, particularly in His doing such great things, and suffering such great things in obedience to the Father’s will, and for the honour of His justice, and law, and authority, as the great moral governor. In the gospel there is revealed how the Father and Son are one in love, that we might be induced, in the like spirit, to be one with them, and with one another, agreeably to Christ’s prayer (John 17:21-23). The gospel also declares to us that the love of God was from everlasting, and reminds us that He loved those that are redeemed by Christ, before the foundation of the world and that He gave them to the Son and that the Son loved them as His own. The gospel reveals, too, the wonderful love of both the Father and the Son to the saints now in glory– that Christ not only loved them while in the world, but that He loved them to the end. And all this love is spoken of as bestowed on us while we were wanderers, outcasts, worthless, guilty, and even enemies. This is love, such as was never elsewhere known or conceived.” – Jonathan Edwards
“Predestination should be taught… Because Christ and the Apostles frequently taught it… Nor otherwise do Peter, James and John express themselves, who speak repeatedly of this mystery whenever occasion offered. Now if it was proper for them to teach, why is it not for us to learn? Why should God teach what would have been better to be unspoken? Why did he wish to proclaim those things which it would be better not to know? Do we wish to be more prudent than God, or to prescribe rules to Him?” – Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology
“Christ declares that the doctrine of the Gospel, though it is preached to all without exception, cannot be embraced by all, but that a new understanding and a new perception are requisite; and, therefore, that faith does not depend on the will of men, but that it is God who gives it.” – John Calvin, Commentary on John
“…faith is not bare or cold knowledge, since no man can believe who has not been renewed by the Spirit of God…faith itself is a work of the Holy Spirit, who dwells in none but the children of God. So then, in various respects, faith is a part of our regeneration, and an entrance into the kingdom of God, that he may reckon us among his children. The illumination of our minds by the Holy Spirit belongs to our renewal, and thus faith flows from regeneration as from its source; but since it is by the same faith that we receive Christ, who sanctifies us by his Spirit, on that account it is said to be the beginning of our adoption.” – John Calvin, Commentary on John
“The first thing to remember is that we must never separate the benefits (regeneration, justification, sanctification) from the Benefactor (Jesus Christ). The Christians who are most focused on their own spirituality may give the impression of being the most spiritual but from the New Testament’s point of view, those who have almost forgotten about their own spirituality because their focus is so e…xclusively on their union with Jesus Christ and what He has accomplished are those who are growing and exhibiting fruitfulness. Historically speaking, whenever the piety of a particular group is focused on OUR spirituality, that piety will eventually exhaust itself on its own resources. Only where our piety forgets about us and focuses on Jesus Christ will our piety be nourished by the ongoing resources the Spirit brings to us from the source of all true piety, our Lord Jesus Christ.” – Sinclair Ferguson
“Election can only be known by its fruits. The Elect of God can only be discerned from those who are not Elect by their faith and life. We cannot climb up into the secret of God’s eternal counsels. We cannot read the book of life. The fruits of the Spirit, seen and manifested in a man’s conversation, are the only grounds on which we can ascertain that he is one of God’s Elect. Where the marks of God’s Elect can be seen, there, and there only, have we any warrant for saying “this is one of the Elect.” How do I know that yon distant ship on the horizon of the sea has any pilot or steersman on board? I cannot with the best telescope discern anything but her masts and sails. Yet I see her steadily moving in one direction. That is enough for me.” – J.C. Ryle
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Arthur is 90 years old. He’s played golf every day since his retirement 25 years ago. One day he arrives home looking downcast. “That’s it,” he tells his wife. “I’m giving up golf. My eyesight has become so bad that once I hit the ball I couldn’t see where it went.”
His wife sympathizes and makes him a cup of tea. As they sit down she says, “Why don’t you take my brother with you and give it one more try.”
“That’s no good” sighs Arthur, “your brother’s a hundred and three. He can’t help.”
“He may be a hundred and three”, says the wife, “but his eyesight is perfect.”
So the next day Arthur heads off to the golf course with his brother-in-law. He tees up, takes a mighty swing and squints down the fairway. He turns to the brother-in-law and says, “Did you see the ball?”
“Of course I did!” replied the brother-in-law. “I have perfect eyesight.”
“Where did it go?” says Arthur.
“I don’t remember.”
There is always a danger of squeezing the Bible into a mold we bring to it rather than letting the Bible mold us. And, there could hardly be more diversity within the Protestant canon–diverse genres, historical settings, authors, literary levels, ages of history.
But while the Bible is not uniform, it is unified. The many books of the one Bible are not like the many pennies in the one jar. The pennies in the jar look the same, yet are disconnected; the books of the Bible (like the organs of a body) look different, yet are interconnected. As the past two generations’ recovery of biblical theology has shown time and again, certain motifs course through the Scripture from start to end, tying the whole thing together into a coherent tapestry–kingdom, temple, people of God, creation/new creation, and so on.
Yet underneath and undergirding all of these, it seems to me, is the motif of God’s grace, his favor and love to the undeserving. Don’t we see the grace of God in every book of the Bible? (NT books include the single verse that best crystallizes the point.)
Genesis shows God’s grace to a universally wicked world as he enters into relationship with a sinful family line (Abraham) and promises to bless the world through him.
Exodus shows God’s grace to his enslaved people in bringing them out of Egyptian bondage.
Leviticus shows God’s grace in providing his people with a sacrificial system to atone for their sins.
Numbers shows God’s grace in patiently sustaining his grumbling people in the wilderness and bringing them to the border of the promised land not because of them but in spite of them.
Deuteronomy shows God’s grace in giving the people the new land ‘not because of your righteousness’ (ch. 9).
Joshua shows God’s grace in giving Israel victory after victory in their conquest of the land with neither superior numbers nor superior obedience on Israel’s part.
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Some Quotes from Martin Luther:
“Justification by faith alone is the article of the standing or falling Church.”
“This doctrine [justification by faith alone] is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour. For no one who does not hold this article or, to use Paul’s expression, this ‘sound doctrine’ (Titus 2:1) is able to teach aright in the church or successfully to resist any adversary… this is the heel of the Seed that opposes the old serpent and crushes its head. That is why Satan, in turn, cannot but persecute it.”
“Whoever departs from the article of justification does not know God and is an idolater . . . For when this article has been taken away, nothing remains but error, hypocrisy, godlessness, and idolatry, although it may seem to be the height of truth, worship of God, holiness, etc… If the article of justification is lost, all Christian doctrine is lost at the same time.”
“When the article of justification has fallen, everything has fallen. Therefore it is necessary constantly to inculcate and impress it, as Moses says of his Law (Deut. 6:7); for it cannot be inculcated and urged enough or too much. Indeed, even though we learn it well and hold to it, yet there is no one who apprehends it perfectly or believes it with a full affection and heart. So very trickish is our flesh, fighting as it does against the obedience of the spirit.”
The youtube videos below are taken from a seminar given on Saturday & Sunday, February 7, 8, 2009, at the Sola Conference at Countryside Bible Church in the Dallas area.
The first video is an overview of the historic and present day attacks against the doctrine of Sola Fide (justification by faith alone).
Lasting approx. 72 minutes, this presentation made by a man I am proud to call my friend, Dr. James White, is excellent for both its clarity and insight concerning the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is highly recommended.
The second video (below) lasts approx. 55 minutes and is entitled Living Out Sola Fide.
“As soon as Zion was in labor she brought forth her children.” Isaiah 66:8
“If any minister can be satisfied without conversions, he shall have no conversions. God will not force usefulness on any man. It is only when our heart breaks to see men saved, that we shall be likely to see sinners’ hearts broken. The secret of success lies in all-consuming zeal, all-subduing travail for souls. Read the sermons of Wesley and of Whitfield, and what is there in them? It is no severe criticism to say that they are scarcely worthy to have survived. And yet those sermons wrought marvels…
In order to understand such preaching, you need to see and hear the man, you want his tearful eye, his glowing countenance, his pleading tone, his bursting heart. I have heard of a great preacher who objected to having his sermons printed, ‘Because,’ said he, ‘you cannot print me.’ That observation is very much to the point. A soul-winner throws himself into what he says. As I have sometimes said, we must ram ourselves into our cannons, we must fire ourselves at our hearers, and when we do this, then, by God’s grace, their hearts are often carried by storm.”
C. H. Spurgeon, “Travailing for Souls,” 3 September 1871. Italics original.
Bullinger (1504-1575) left an account of how the Reformation ministers in Zurich studied the Old Testament together in Zwingli’s time:
They began with prayer, asking God for clarity and transformation, that in no way would they displease him.
Then one of the young ministers, who had prepared in advance, read and commented on the passage for that day from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate version.
Next, a Hebrew scholar went back over the passage in the Hebrew text, commenting, explaining, citing commentaries along the way.
Then, a Greek reader led them through the passage in the Septuagint and other Greek versions.
Finally, Zwingli himself pulled it all together, surveying the Patristic commentators, the medieval rabbis and the Catholic scholars. He connected the text with the whole of the Bible. He funneled it all down to the force and message of the passage, its uplifting power, the real meaning and profit and use of it.
God was powerfully at work, to produce such an intelligent and sincere passion for his Word.
Cited in G. H. Box, “Hebrew Studies in the Reformation Period and After: their place and influence,” in The Legacy of Israel (Oxford, 1927), edited by E. R. Bevan and C. Singer, pages 345-346.
HT: Ray Ortlund
Excerpt from the foreword to my new book it depends completely on the disposition of the heart. Apart from a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, the Bible says our disposition is, by nature, hostile to God and we cannot understand spiritual truth (Rom 8:7 & 1 Cor 2:14). But thanks be to God, the new birth or regeneration, is where God, the Holy Spirit applies the redemptive blessings of Christ, which give us the spiritual life that empowers us to do what we must do (repent and believe the gospel), but cannot do (while in the flesh), because of our bondage to sin (John 6:63, 65).
Clear and plain as the words of Christ regarding His identity may now seem to be, it is important to consider that there was a time when even Jesus’ disciples (who spent 3 years with him) did not understand them. Seeing they did not see, and hearing they did not hear (Matt 13:13). They could not comprehend that the Messiah was to be “cut off” (Isaiah 53:8). They refused to receive the teaching that their own Rabbi must die. Therefore, when He was finally crucified … when the Shepherd was finally struck down … they were confounded and His sheep were scattered each to his own way. Although Jesus had often told them of it, they had never internalized it as a fact. They were blinded to it.
Let us watch and pray to God against such prejudice in our own heart. Let us beware of allowing traditions, preconceived notions and unaided logic to take root in our hearts and blind us to Jesus. There is only one test of truth: what the Scripture says. Before this all the prejudices in our hearts must fall.
But even the disciples who read the Scripture still did not understand. And when they finally did, what was it that made the difference? How did they finally see Jesus for who He was? In Matthew chapter 16:13-17 Jesus asked His disciples the most important question they were ever asked. Jesus asked, “…who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”
Notice that the first thing Jesus wants to make certain Peter understands when making his declaration is that this mystery cannot be truly known by human reason, but only by God’s revelation through the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3; Matt 11:25-27). “Flesh and blood” simply refers to the natural resources of man without the Holy Spirit.
Left to himself with his natural depravity blinding him, Peter would never have understood the truth, beauty and excellence of Christ and His true identity. Left to himself, Simon wouldn’t have marveled at Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior of the world. But God Himself had revealed this truth to him by giving him a new heart (Ezek 36:26) in which the Spirit cries ABBA FATHER (Rom 8:14-17), and so his eyes were opened for the first time to recognize who Jesus really is. Apart from the Spirit of God there is no understanding of Spiritual truth (1 Cor 2:10-14) even when it is staring you in the face. You may intellectually understand what the words mean, but the heart is so naturally prejudiced against Christ, that the Spirit must disarm those hostilities if we are to see the truth in them.
Apart from a new heart, the problem in our natural state is that we are all spiritually blind (not merely short-sighted). 2 Cor 4:3-4 says: “If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.” So if God does not open our spiritual eyes, we will never be able to recognize Jesus. Unless God intervenes to replace our eyes, we are, like the disciples, incapable of recognizing Christ as He really is.
In the flesh we can go listen to a preacher, we can read the Bible, yet unless God reveals Himself directly to us, we are dead to spiritual truth (Eph 2:1). While reading the text we will actually fail to recognize Him, just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus, until Jesus opened their eyes. And that is why we need God to intervene, to take away our spiritual blindness, so that we can see clearly what otherwise is beyond our natural resources to comprehend.
It seems that Jesus believes it is critical to remind Peter of this truth as of first importance in Peter’s “follow-up”. Many in this day and age are reluctant to speak to a new Christian about God’s sovereign grace in salvation for fear it is a hard truth. Yet when Peter makes his first confession of Christ, Jesus puts it first before all other truths.
The entire eBook is available for $4 at this link.
My partner and I have promised to follow biblical principles of marriage. Why should we participate in a public wedding ceremony? Why is it that our promise to each other is not acceptable?
R. C. Sproul – Because there are not any witnesses. You do not have private covenants in the Bible. Marriage is a covenant and a covenant relationship involves making promises and not making them in the back seat of a car. They are made with public witnesses.
In the traditional wedding ceremony, most start off, “Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today in the Presence of God and of these witnesses, to unite this man and this woman in the sacred bond of matrimony” and so on.
What happens on that occasion (which is public, that makes it more than just a piece of paper) is that I have made a commitment to that woman, out loud, in front of every authority structure of my life – in front of my family, in front of her family, in front of the Church, in front of the civil magistrate, and in front of my friends. And if I break that vow, its possible that my friends won’t take it seriously, and its possible that my family won’t take it seriously, its possible that the Church won’t take it seriously, and its even possible nowadays that the State won’t take it seriously; but you’d better believe that God is going to take it seriously.
But this idea of a private covenant – just is not done in Scripture. There always has to be some kind of witness to the covenant and some kind of document or treaty.
Why was the Ten Commandments written in stone and placed in the ark of the covenant?
Because they are the stipulations of the covenant that God makes with Israel, when He unites in marriage to His people.
This is part of the absolute fall out of the radical secularization of marriage in our culture. You are kidding yourself if you think you have a marriage that is private promises.
A transcript from a Question and Answer Session at the Ligonier Ministries National Conference, Bought with a Price, Orlando, 2006
A transcript from a Question and Answer Session at the Ligonier Ministries National Conference, Bought with a Price, tadalafil Orlando, 2006
Question: If we understand marriage correctly, what are the biblical grounds for divorce?
R.C. Sproul – One of the things that I think is very destructive in the Church are those Churches (and those people within the Church) who prohibit divorce on any grounds whatsoever because that just completely denies the clear and unambiguous exceptive clause that Jesus gave in the Gospel of Matthew when he dealt with the traditonal issue among the Rabbis (the Hillel School and the Shimei School) developing the controversy over the divorce laws of Deuteronomy.
Jesus made it very, very clear that Moses, because of the hardness of their heart, gave them the right for divorce on the basis of the “unclean thing,” which is not specifically adultery but its “unclean” and so the whole debate amongst the Jewish Rabbis was, “What constitutes the unclean thing?”
The Liberal (interpretation) says, “If she breaks a dish that he likes, that’s justification for divorce.”
No, Jesus said, unless its for porneia, which is sexual immorality, there is no basis. And now we have all kinds of examples where a husband or wife gets invovled in an immoral sexual relationship and then the Church says to the partner, “That’s not grounds for divorce. You can’t get out of that relationship.” That’s devastating. That’s not what the Bible teaches.
Also, the second grounds are given by the Apostle Paul – “separation from the non-believer” – if the non-believer chooses to leave the marriage, the believer’s free at that point.
Then, of course, where it really gets sticky is “What are the boundaries of sexual immorality?’ There I think the Church has to be very wise in dealing with those questions.
Ken Jones – Yes and in those cases, the person is not commanded to get a divorce.
R.C. – Right!
Ken Jones – That option is available to them but they are not commanded to get a divorce. In fact, Paul says, as it relates to those who are married to an unbeliever who has abandoned them, he admonishes them to, if at all possible, seek reconciliation. And if that person agrees to live with you in their state of unbelief, then by all means, do not pursue the divorce. But I agree with R C that I think sometimes we have seen in the Church, things that I believe are very clear by Christ, we have made those areas more grey than they actually are…
R C – What you hear all the time though is (people say), “Well yes, you may have biblical grounds but the “higher road” is to stay married – and you tell this poor woman who has been violated that now she is supposed to go back in there and be naked and unashamed? ITS NOT SAFE! You know, her soul’s been absolutely devastated, and God in His grace has given her the right to leave that situation.
Someone says, “but what if the guy repents?” You hear that all the time.. this can happen the other way of course, women and men – but most of the time its the man.. so I say, “Well suppose a guy really repents. What is the woman’s obligation now?
Her obligation is to forgive him and to regard him as a brother but she does not have to stay married to him.
(If a guy embezzles $50,000 from Ligonier Ministries in our accounting office and repents of it and even gives the $50,000 back, I don’t have to keep him on staff as our accounting guy. He can still be forgiven, but the context of that has changed, mightily, by that action.)
The covenant of marriage has been so radically violated that Jesus gives people that option.”
Ken Jones – “I want to throw in there something that combine those two reasons that are given in Scripture that has become more of an issue in our day and that is physical violence. I think that is a grounds for a Church, a pastor, an elder, to allow a woman in the Church (if she is under physical abuse from her husband) to be removed from that situation…
R.C. – I think that is an application of the “immorality” principle and the violation of the covenant. I agree with you. But again, that becomes an issue of prudence. It should be done with great care and never in a flippant manner.
