Here’s an interesting article entitled “Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus” by Rick Appleton – original source Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, means, “Outside the Church there is no ?salvation”. It refers to the Christian belief that the Church is essential to God’s plan of ?salvation. It sounds Roman Catholic. It is catholic (i.e. universal), but not Roman Catholic. In ?fact, this doctrine preceded, survived, and continued after the papal captivity of the Church, ?making it a truly universal doctrine.
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Consider the following examples.
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Cyprian (d. 258) the bishop of Carthage and early church father said it this way, “There is no ?salvation out of the Church”.[1]? ? Cyprian also said, “He can no longer have God for his Father, ?who has not the Church for his mother”.[2]? ? He found an analogy for the Church in Noah’s ark, ?saying, “If anyone could escape who was outside the ark of Noah; then he also may escape ?who shall be outside of the Church”.[3]
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Martin Luther (1483-1546) taught that the Church was, “the company of believing people,” ?who, “have Christ in their midst”. For Luther the connection between Christ and the Church ?was so close that he was able to say, “Outside of the Christian Church there is no truth, no ?Christ, no salvation”. [4] ?
John Calvin (1509-1564) wrote, “Beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no ?salvation, can be hoped for”.[5] Like Cyprian, and Luther, Calvin saw a necessary connection ?between Christians and the Church. He built upon Cyprian’s concept of Christians as children ?with the Church as their mother, saying, “What God has thus joined, let not man put ?asunder: to those to whom he is a Father, the Church must also be a mother”.[6]? ?
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The Belgic Confession (1561)?[7] ?agrees with Cyprian, Luther, and Calvin. Speaking of the ?Church, it says, “Out of it there is no salvation” (28).
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The Second Helvetic Confession (1566)[8] ? likewise asserts, “None can live before God, which do ?not communicate with the true Church of God” (17.11). It too finds an analogy in Noah’s ark,
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As there was no salvation outside Noah’s ark when the world perished in flood; so we ?believe that there is no certain salvation outside Christ, who offers himself to be ?enjoyed by the elect in the Church; and hence we teach that those who wish to live ?ought not to be separated from the true Church of Christ (17.11).
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The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), in agreement with centuries of Christian ?teaching, says, ?
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The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined ?to ?one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that ?profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus ?Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of ? salvation (25.2).
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Note that the Westminster Confession adds two important clarifications. First, the Christian ?Church is not restricted to a particular location or denomination. It is universal, consisting of ?all Christians throughout the world. Second, by adding the modifier, “ordinary”, the ?Confession allows for the exceptional possibility of salvation outside the Church. Salvation is ?ultimately the work of God almighty, and He is free, if He so chooses, to save apart from the ?Church. Yet, such would be an exception to the rule, a truly extraordinary occurrence. ?Though we admit that God can save apart from the Church, we have no confidence to assert ?that He will save apart from the Church. ?
The preceding quotes summarize a universal, historic, Christian belief. The Church is ?essential to God’s plan of salvation. The Church is not the savior of mankind, but it is the ?society in which God saves men. So much so, that we do not expect the salvation of those ?outside of it. But why do Christians believe this? The answer is: the means of grace. We ?know that salvation is by grace. And we know that grace is communicated by means. But we ?also know that the means of grace are given to the Church. And that outside the Church ?there is no access to the means of grace. We understand that without access to the means of ?grace, there is no access to grace. And without access to grace, there is no hope of salvation. ?Therefore, we conclude that outside the church there is no ordinary hope for salvation. In ?principle, it is the recognition of God’s practice of using means to accomplish His ends and ?entrusting those means to His people. While we recognize that God is free to work apart ?from the Church and without means, we also recognize that He has most often chosen to ?work in the Church and through means.
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The following examples illustrate God’s work in the Church through means.
Even before the fall, God gave man a covenant, promising him life on the condition of ?obedience (Gen. 2:17). It was a gracious provision from the Creator to the creature, to be ?sure. But notice that the promise, eternal life, was not granted to Adam immediately, that ?is, apart from means. It was mediated to Adam by the tree of life (Gen. 3:22-23). ?
God saved Noah from his wicked generation, and from the cleansing waters of the flood. But ?God did not save Noah apart from means. The LORD provided Noah’s salvation through ?means of the ark (Genesis 6-8). After rescuing Noah from the flood, God established His ?covenant with Noah, and even provided Noah with a visible sign to seal His promise (Genesis ??9:8-17). Noah and his family were saved in the ark. The rest of the world, outside of the ark, ?perished. God does not need a rainbow to remember His promise. But we do. And He tells ?us that when He sees it, He will remember His promise. ?
When God made His covenant with Abraham, He also gave Abraham the sign of circumcision ?as a seal of His promise (Genesis 17:10-11; c.f. Romans 4:11). God mediated the grace of His ?promise to Abraham, and generation after generation of Abraham’s descendants through ?the means of circumcision. The rest of the world did not receive that promise. ?
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When Abimelech inadvertently threatened God’s promise to Abraham (Genesis 20), the ?judgment of God fell upon him. God graciously decided to spare Abimelech, but only by ?means of Abraham’s prayer for Abimelech. God did not tell Abimelech to pray for himself. ?He told Abimelech that Abraham, a prophet (20:7), would pray for him. ?
When Israel raised their voices against God, He sent serpents which bit and killed many of ?them. Coming to their senses, they asked Moses to pray to the LORD for them. Moses prayed ?and God provided a means of salvation, the bronze serpent, telling them to look upon it and ?live (Numbers 21:5-9). There was no healing power in the bronze serpent, except God’s ?promise, “anyone who is bitten and looks upon it shall live” (21:8). ?
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God chose David to be His king over Israel, and sent His prophet, Samuel to anoint David (1 ?Samuel 16:1-23). When Samuel anointed David with oil, the Spirit of the LORD came upon ?him (16:13). The Holy Spirit does not live in a horn of oil, nor did He need Samuel to carry ?Him from Ramah to Bethlehem, but He did manifest His work by means of Samuel’s ?ministering. ?
In the New Testament, God’s Church expanded from a single nation to a worldwide ?kingdom, but His practice of mediating His grace through means and administering those ?means in His Church continued. We see the pattern continue in the book of Acts. God adds ?to the Church those who are being saved (Acts 2:47), because the Church is essential to ?God’s plan of salvation. It is the society in which He saves people. It is the earthly mother to ?His heavenly children. As the Westminster Confession says, “Unto this catholic visible Church ?Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and ?perfecting of the saints…” (25.3). Christ has given His Church two very important tasks: ?gathering and perfecting His saints. He has also equipped His Church with the means to ?complete those tasks, namely the means of grace. Next time, God willing, we will define and ?discuss the Church’s means of grace. ?
Before we close, let us consider some implications that follow from what has been said so ?far.
First, since the Church is the only institution in the world to which Christ has given the ?means by which men are saved; it follows that the Church bears a tremendous responsibility ?in the administration of those means. The apostle’s question is fitting here, “How shall they ?believe in him of whom they have not heard?”(Romans 10:14). On the other hand, since the ?Church is the only institution to which Christ has given the means by which men are saved; it ?follows that the Church can offer men something that no other institution in the world can ?offer them. ?
Second, since the Church is God’s appointed sphere of salvation; it follows that Christians ?have the responsibility to join themselves to the Church, and to make “diligent use of all the ?outward means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption”.[9] Jesus ?taught us that if a brother will not listen to the Church, he is to be regarded as a heathen ??(Matthew 18:17). How much more is this true of a stranger who refuses the fellowship of the ?Church? ?
Endnotes:
1.Cyprian, Epistle 72,21 [?]
2.Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church,6 [?]
1.Ibid. [?]
2.Martin Luther, Sermon for the Early Christmas Service; Luke 2:15-20, Wartburg Church, 1522 [?]
3.John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.1.4 [?]
4.Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.1 [?]
5.The Belgic Confession was written by Guido de Bres (1522-1567), a student of Calvin. The Confession, along with the Canons of Dort, and the Heidelberg Catechism, is part of the Three Forms of Unity, the subordinate standards of Continental Reformed churches. [?]
6.The Second Helvetic Confession was written by Heinrich Bullinger (1504 -1575) successor to Ulrich Zwingli. It was adopted by the Swiss churches and several others throughout Europe. [?]
7.The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 85 [?]
(Rick Appleton is a deacon, and a candidate for ministry in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). He is ?currently pursuing a Master of Divinity at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and holds a ?Bachelor of Christian Ministry from Crown College. He lives in Georgia with his wife and two children.)
“…the weakest faith gets the same strong Christ as does the strongest faith.” – Sinclair Ferguson
“If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, He would have sent an economist.
If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist.
If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician.
If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor.
But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death, and he sent us a Savior.” – D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 109.
“There is mercy for a sinner, but there is no mercy for the man who will not own himself a sinner.” – C.H. Spurgeon
“The plan of redemption was an eternal plan of God, and which plan and which design was perfectly conceived and perfectly executed.” – R.C. Sproul
“Jesus is both Lord (Master) and Savior you cannot separate the two. That would be like me showing up at your house and you saying Steve can come in, but keep Lawson outside.” – Steve Lawson
“Magicians claim to bring us something from nothing. Darwinists claim to bring us everything from nothing.” – Dr. R. C. Sproul, Jr.
“The only thing of our very own which we contribute to our salvation is the sin which makes it necessary.” – William Temple
“If his first coming does not give you eternal life, his second coming will not. If you do not hide in his wounds when he comes as your Savior, there will be no hiding place for you when he comes as your Judge.” C. H. Spurgeon
“When the devil accuses us and says, ‘You are a sinner and therefore damned,’ we should answer, ‘Because you say I am a sinner, I will be righteous and saved.’ ‘No,’ says the devil, ‘you will be damned.’ And I reply, ‘No, for I fly to Christ, who gave himself for my sins. Satan, you will not prevail against me when you try to terrify me by setting forth the greatness of my sins and try to bring me into heaviness, distrust, despair, hatred, contempt and blasphemy against God. On the contrary, when you say I am a sinner, you give me armor and weapons against yourself, so that with your own sword I may cut your throat and tread you under my feet, for Christ died for sinners. . . . As often as you object that I am a sinner, so often you remind me of the benefit of Christ my Redeemer, on whose shoulders, and not on mine, lie all my sins. So when you say I am a sinner, you do not terrify me but comfort me immeasurably.’” – Martin Luther, commenting on Galatians 1:4, “. . . the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins.”
What is compatibilism?
they believe, they disobey, they respond, and there is moral significance in their choices; but human responsibility never functions in Scripture to diminish God’s sovereignty or to make God absolutely contingent.
Carson right argues that “We tend to use one to diminish the other; we tend to emphasize one at the expense of the other. But responsible reading of the Scripture prohibits such reductionism.”
“Hundreds of passages,” he suggests, “could be explored to demonstrate that the Bible assumes both that God is sovereign and that people are responsible for their actions. As hard as it is for many people in the Western world to come to terms with both truths at the same time, it takes a great deal of interpretative ingenuity to argue that the Bible does not support them.”
Carson briefly works through a number of representative passages: Genesis 50:19-20; Leviticus 20:7-8; 1 Kings 11:11-13, 29-39; 12:1-15 (cf. 2 Kings 10:15; 11:4) 2 Samuel 24; Isaiah 10:5-19; John 6:37-40; Philippians 2:12-13; Acts 18:9-10; and Acts 4:23-30. I’d encourage readers to study each passage in context and see if they comport with Carson’s two statements above.
After looking at Acts 4:23-30, Carson makes this telling comment:
Christians who may deny compatibilism on front after front become compatibilists (knowing or otherwise) when they think about the cross. There is no alternative, except to deny the faith. And if we are prepared to be compatibilists when we think about the cross—that is, to accept both of the propositions I set out at the head of this chapter as true, as they are applied to the cross—it is only a very small step to understanding that compatibilism is taught or presupposed everywhere in the Bible.
Elsewhere he writes, “At Calvary, all Christians have to concede the truth of these two statements [above], or they give up their claim to be Christians.”
I especially appreciate Carson’s conclusion as he locates the deepest foundation of compatibilism:
So I am driven to see not only that compatibilism is itself taught in the Bible, but that it is tied to the very nature of God; and on the other hand, I am driven to see that my ignorance about many aspects of God’s nature is precisely that same ignorance that instructs me not to follow the whims of many contemporary philosophers and deny that compatibilism is possible. The mystery of providence is in the first instance not located in debates about decrees, free will, the place of Satan, and the like. It is located in the doctrine of God.
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Carson’s popular-level writings on compatibilism can be found in chapter 9 (“A Sovereign and Personal God”) of A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 145-66; and chapter 11 “(The Mystery of Providence”) of How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 199-228. For a more technical treatment (based on his doctoral dissertation), see Carson’s Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspective in Tension.
For more technical discussions on the philosophical nature of freedom and responsibility, see the chapters in John Feinberg’s No One Like Him. Among the best things I’ve read—accessible but philosophically informed—are the relevant chapters in John Frame’s The Doctrine of God.
For a brief overview of passages on God’s absolute sovereignty, see this post.
In this article, Kevin DeYoung addresses question of whether sanctification is a monergistic or synergistic work – original source in a leadership training class at our church, a spirited discussion broke out on whether sanctification is monergistic or synergisitic. No, this is not what every class is like at University Reformed Church. But this one was. I wasn’t there, but I was told the discussion was energetic, intelligent, and respectful. I’m glad to serve at a church where people know and care about this level of theological precision.
The terms monergism and synergism refer to the working of God in regeneration. Monergism teaches that we are born again by only one working (mono is Greek for “one,” erg is from the Greek word for “work”). Synergism teaches that we are born again by human cooperation with the grace of God (the syn prefix means “with” in Greek). The Protestant Reformers strongly opposed all synergistic understandings of the new birth. They believed that given the spiritual deadness and moral inability of man, our regeneration is owing entirely to the sovereign work of God. We do not cooperate and we do not contribute to our being born again. Three cheers for monergism.
But what should we say about sanctification? On the one hand, Reformed Christians are loathe to use the word synergistic. We certainly don’t want to suggest that God’s grace is somehow negligible in sanctification. Nor do we want to suggest that the hard work of growing in godliness is not a supernatural gift from God. On the other hand, we are on dangerous ground if we imply that we are passive in sanctification in the same way we are passive in regeneration. We don’t want to suggest God is the only active agent in our progressive sanctification. So which is it: is sanctification monergistic or synergistic?
I think it’s best to stay away from both terms. The distinction is very helpful (and very important) when talking about regeneration, but these particular theological terms muddy the waters when talking about sanctification. Synergism sounds like a swear word to Reformed folks, so no one wants to say it. And yet, monergism is not the right word either. To make it the right word we have to provide a different definition than we give it when discussing the new birth. What does it mean to say regeneration and sanctification are both monergistic if we are entirely passive in one and active in the other?
Those who say sanctification is monergistic want to protect the gracious, supernatural character of sanctification. Those who say sanctification is synergistic want to emphasize that we must actively cooperated with the grace in sanctification. These emphases are both correct. And yet, I believe it is better to defend both of these points with careful explanation rather than with terms that have normally been employed in a different theological controversy. Sanctification is both a gracious gift of God and it requires our active cooperation. I’ve tried to show in previous posts that these two truths are biblical. In this post I want to show these two truths are also eminently Reformed.
Let me give a few brief examples.
John Calvin (1509-64)
Commenting on 2 Peter 1:5 (“make every effort to add to your faith…”), Calvin says:
As it is an arduous work and of immense labour, to put off the corruption which is in us, he bids us to strive and make every effort for this purpose. He intimates that no place is to be given in this case to sloth, and that we ought to obey God calling us, not slowly or carelessly, but that there is need of alacrity; as though he had said, “Put forth every effort, and make your exertions manifest to all.” Continue reading
In this excerpt from R.C. Sproul reminds us of the privilege we have to address God as “Father.”
Transcript
Go with a group of Christians and listen to them pray in a home prayer meeting or Bible study, and invariably as Christians pray out loud one after another will address God how? They’ll start their prayer by saying, “Father,” or “our heavenly Father.” It’s the most common expression that we as Christians use to address God. And why not, when our Lord taught us to pray, He said, “When you pray” say what? “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name.” What could be more basic to Christianity than to address God as Father? Joachim Jeremias, the German New Testament scholar has done research on the prayers of the ancient Israelite people, and it is his conclusion that there is not a single example anywhere in extant Jewish literature, including the Old Testament, the Talmud, the Targums, and so on until the tenth century AD where a Jewish person addresses God directly as ‘Father.’ That is, it simply wasn’t done. People would speak of the fatherhood of God among the Jewish people, but no one would address Him directly as, ‘Father.’ Jeremias says you don’t find it until the tenth century AD in Italy. Yet in the New Testament we have the record of a Jew, a Jewish Rabbi, who has many many prayers recorded for posterity, and that in every prayer that he prayed, save one, He directly addressed God as ‘Father.’ And that is Jesus of Nazareth.
And what Jeremias demonstrates is that Jesus’ use of the term Father for God was a radical innovation; completely unheard of in Jewish liturgy. And what he did in his radical departure from convention He invited his followers to be involved with. Because what Jesus teaches about the human race is that by nature we are not the children of God. This was the dispute our Lord had with the Pharisees who thought that just because they were born Jewish that they were children of Abraham, that they were therefore the children of God. Jesus said ‘you are of your father the devil. God can raise up children of Abraham from these stones.’ Because what Jesus does is define sonship in terms of obedience to God. And because we are not by nature obedient to God, we are by nature children of wrath, the New Testament teaches us, and not universally children of the Father.
The only way we ever have the right to call God “Father,” to cry “Abba” in his presence is because we have been adopted. And the biblical message of sonship and daughterhood in the body of Christ is rooted and grounded in this concept of adoption—that only Christ is the natural son of God. And only if you are in Christ do you become a member of the household of God. It is the church in the New Testament that is called the family of God. It is the church in the New Testament that is called the household of God. And that unique concept of redemption through adoption is completely obscured when we talk about the universal fatherhood of God. Do you see that?
“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.” – Horace Greeley
“Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don’t know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.” – Sir William Haley
“The modern-day gospel says, ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Therefore, follow these steps, and you can be saved.’ Meanwhile, the biblical gospel says, ‘You are an enemy of God, dead in your sin, & in your present state of rebellion, you are not even able to see that you need life, much less to cause yourself to come to life. Therefore, you are radically dependent on God to do something in your life that you could never do.” – David Platt
“The Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true.” – Os Guinness
“I have taken all my good deeds, and all my bad deeds, and have cast them together in a heap before the Lord, and have fled from both to Jesus Christ, and in him I have sweet peace.” – David Dickson, on his deathbed, 1663
“Adversity hath slain her thousand, but prosperity her ten thousand.” – Thomas Brooks
“Giving is the only antidote to materialism. Giving is a joyful surrender to a greater person and a greater agenda. It dethrones me and exalts Him. “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share…so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life” (1 Tim. 6:18-19).” – Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle
“Satan watches for those vessels that sail without a convoy.” – George Swinnock
“Material prosperity and physical health do not invariably accompany faithfulness to God. But spiritual health and prosperity do.” – William Greathouse
“All God’s giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them.” – W. Wiersbe
“A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.” – Martin Luther
“The object of the gospel is both to pacify the sinner’s conscience and to purify his heart; and it is of importance to observe, that what mars the one of these objects mars the other also. The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one; and by the love of what is good to expel the love of what is evil. Thus it is, that the freer gospel, the more sanctifying is the gospel; and the more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more will it be felt as a doctrine according to godliness. This is one of the secrets of the Christian life, that the more a man holds of God as a pensioner, the greater is the payment of service that He renders back again. On the venture of ““Do this and live,”” a spirit of fearfulness is sure to enter; and the jealousies of a legal bargain chase away all confidence from the intercourse between God and man; and the creature striving to be square and even with his creator is, in fact, pursuing all t…he while his own selfishness instead of God’s glory; and with all the conformities which he labors to accomplish, the soul of obedience is not there, the mind is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed under such an economy ever can be. It is only when, as in the gospel, acceptance is bestowed as a present, without money and without price, that the security which man feels in God is placed beyond the reach of disturbance, or that he can repose in Him as one friend reposes in another; or that any liberal and generous understanding can be established betwixt them, the one party rejoicing over the other to do him good, the other finding that the truest gladness of his heart lies in the impulse of a gratitude by which it is awakened to the charms of a new moral existence. Salvation by grace——salvation by free grace——salvation not of works, but according to the mercy of God, salvation on such a footing is not more indispensable to the deliverance of our persons from the hand of justice than it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill and the weight of ungodliness. Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with the gospel, and you raise a topic of distrust between man and God. You take away from the power of the gospel to melt and to conciliate. For this purpose the freer it is the better it is. That very peculiarity which so many dread as the germ of Antinomianism, is, in fact, the germ of a new spirit and a new inclination against it. Along with the lights of a free gospel does there enter the love of the gospel, which, in proportion as you impair the freeness, you are sure to chase away. And never does the sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation as when, under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing, and to deny ungodliness.” – Thomas Chalmers, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection”
Steve Camp writes: Ministry isn’t something you join, it’s someone you are. If you know the Lord you ARE in ministry – 24/7, 365. This isn’t for a few paid professionals, but for the entire body of Christ. (Eph 4:16, 1 Peter 4:10-11). Here are 12 ways you can serve, pray, and honor the Lord this week in using your spiritual gifts for Him in serving others. LETS GO!
Every Christian Is In Full-time Ministry
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. – Acts 2:42-47
The following represents some key pillars of what should define ministry for any true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. I certainly haven’t arrived at these things in my own life and ministry. But they are there as key signposts to remind us all of what is important vs. what is urgent. May they be an encouragement to you and be used by God to strengthen you as you serve Him in the sphere of influence He has sovereignly placed you today.
Take Heaven By Storm,
Steve
12 Essentials of Christian Ministry for All Believers in Jesus Christ
pray fervently:
praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, -Eph. 6:18
study carefully:
Now these Bereans were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. -Acts 17:11
embrace fidelity:
And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. -1 Thess. 2:13
contend earnestly:
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. -Jude 3
live missionally:
and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, -Romans 15:20
serve sacrificially:
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. -Phil. 2:1-4
teach faithfully:
But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. -Titus 2:1-8
love unconditionally:
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. -1 Cor. 13:4-8a
walk obediently:
Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. -Titus 3:1-2
repent daily:
Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” -Luke 17:3-4
worship continually:
Through Him [Jesus] then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. -Hebrews 13:15
and watch expectantly:
Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. -2 Tim. 4:8
the Priest stepped onto the track. Sure enough, he blessed one of the horses.The punter made a beeline for a betting window and placed a small bet on the horse. Again, even though it was another long shot, the horse won the race.
He collected his winnings, and anxiously waited to see which horse the Priest would bless next. He bet big on it, and it won. As the races continued the Priest kept blessing long shots, and each one ended up winning.
The punter was elated. He made a quick dash to the ATM, withdrew all his savings, and awaited for the Priest’s blessing that would tell him which horse to bet on.
True to his pattern, the Priest stepped onto the track for the last race and blessed the forehead of an old nag that was the longest shot of the day.
This time the priest blessed the eyes, ears, and hooves of the old nag. The punter knew he had a winner and bet every cent he owned on the old nag.
He watched dumbfounded as the old nag came in last. In a state of shock, he went to the track area where the Priest was. Confronting Him, he demanded, “Father! What happened? All day long you blessed horses and they all won. Then in the last race, the horse you blessed lost by a mile. Now, thanks to you I’ve lost every cent of my savings!”
The Priest nodded wisely and said…
“My Son, that’s the problem with you Protestants, you can’t tell the difference between a simple blessing and last rites!”