Monthly Archives: October 2025

The Gospel Is

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Mike Riccardi writes:

The gospel is… There is a God in heaven who has created you and me, and He is the authority over both of us. He is perfectly holy. “In Him is Light, and there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). The problem is that if we want to have fellowship with God, we have to be light and no darkness at all. And yet here’s the problem: we are darkness. We are sinful. We’ve all broken His law. We’ve all lied, stolen, we’ve all looked with lust, we’ve all been angry with our brothers in our hearts. We’ve all fallen short of the glorious standard of perfection that God requires (Rom 3:23).

We are helpless in bringing about a remedy. No amount of works, no amount of contrition, no amount of bad feelings, no amount of church attendance, no amount of Bible reading, no amount of fasting and prayer can earn forgiveness of our sins and the righteousness which God requires (Titus 3:5).

And yet God is gracious, and He loves us, and as His creatures He wants to display His glory in us by rescuing us from that. And so He sent His Son—God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ—to be born as a helpless little baby (John 1:14; 3:16; Col 2:9). God of the universe, Sustainer of the universe, Himself being sustained in the womb of a teenage Hebrew girl, and upholding the world by the word of His power (Heb 1:3) while He is upheld by the nutrients from her own body! Unspeakable! And in great humility, He grows up with the growing pains of life in a fallen world, though He Himself never being with any sin—without sin entirely (2 Cor 5:21; 7:26).

And He lives a perfectly righteous life. The way that you and I have failed to live before God—the way that we have failed in thought, word, and deed, and fallen short of God’s glory—Christ never did. Not even a thought. He loved God, His Father, perfectly. He always walked in perfect righteousness. He lived the life that you were commanded to live, that I was commanded to live, that we failed to live. He lived that perfect life that God is worthy of.

And not only did He live for us, He died for us. He went to the cross. Our sin demanded death. Our sin demanded eternal punishment. Our sin demanded wrath—just wrath exercised on us for eternity (Rom 6:23).

But because of the infinite worth of Christ’s person, He was on that cross. And on that cross, God exercised upon Him the full fury of His own anger (Rom 3:24–26; 2 Cor 5:21; Gal 3:10–14), that was rightly due to me and rightly due to you, and that you will experience if you don’t turn from your sin and trust in this Messiah. Christ was born, lived, died, and was raised (1 Cor 15:3–4). And He rose from the grave after being dead, demonstrating His victory over sin and death.

And now God promises that if you turn from your sin, if you repudiate all that you are and all that you were and all that you love, and you turn away from a life of pursuing sin—and if you repudiate not only your bad works but your good works, if you turn from trying to earn your salvation by all the good deeds that you might want to do as a moral person—if you turn away from all of that (Acts 17:30–31), and you trust in Christ alone for righteousness (Phil 3:7–8; cf. Rom 3:28; 10:4), God promises that He will forgive you.

He will have treated Christ on the cross as if Christ lived your life. And He will then treat you, justly and legally and righteously, as if you lived Christ’s perfect life of righteousness (2 Cor 5:21). And you can be saved to know the God you were created to love and enjoy. You can have the fullness of joy, the eternal pleasures that are at the Father’s right hand in heaven (Ps 16:11), and begin even now, because eternal life is to know God (John 17:3).

Friend, would you repent? Would you turn from your sin and trust in this perfect Savior to avail for you before God, to pay for your sin and to provide your righteousness?

Death and Life are in the Power of the Tongue

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I want to write briefly about a verse we all know. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” (Proverbs 18:21).

One error of the word-of-faith movement is to interpret texts like this out of context or in a woodenly literal way.

I received an email this week warning people to “watch their confession,” claiming that harmless phrases such as “My head is killing me” can open the door to calamity, even a brain tumor or death. The idea is that death is in the power of your tongue, not God’s, and that He cannot do anything if you “speak death” over yourself. In this view, your words tie God’s hands, which is a jaw-dropping low view of God and a terribly shallow reading of Scripture. You are even told to avoid saying “that tickled me to death” for the same reason.

Breathe a sigh of relief. Idioms do not kill.
Like all pernicious teaching, it has severe consequences. If someone is not being taught the right thing in a church, they are being taught something else. That “something else” can harm far more than we might first realize. Many wounded, grieving families have been told that a child’s death must have come because a parent “spoke death” with the tongue, based on a misreading of this verse. That is both false and cruel.

Scripture never teaches that stray words open a legal door for Satan to kill. Jesus rejects the blame game in suffering, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed” (John 9:3). When a tragedy was reported to him, he did not tie it to the victims’ special sins (Luke 13:1–5). God himself says, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal” (Deuteronomy 32:39). Our days are written in his book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16). Even when Satan afflicts, he does so only within limits God sets (Job 1:12; 2:6). In Christ we have this comfort, that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38–39). So to every bereaved parent we say, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and your words did not cause your child’s death (Psalm 34:18).

Proverbs 18:21 is both precious and true, but it is not teaching that a casual phrase like “this is killing me” hands Satan permission to harm us. Scripture never says that idioms open spiritual doors to the devil. God alone numbers our days, and the evil one cannot take a single step apart from God’s sovereign allowance. “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” “Behold, he is in your hand, only spare his life” (Job 1:12; 2:6).

So what does the verse teach?
What this proverb, and others, teaches is both simpler and far weightier than the shallow word-of-faith interpretation. In context, the verse reveals that the tongue has real influence for ruin or for flourishing. “From the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach is satisfied; he is satisfied by the yield of his lips” (Proverbs 18:20). Our words can wound or heal, condemn or acquit, tear down or build up. “A fool’s lips walk into a fight, and his mouth invites a beating. A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul” (Proverbs 18:6–7). “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit” (Proverbs 12:18; 15:4).

Guard the unity of the church
Our tongues can destroy the unity of a local church. God calls us to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). Yet “a dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends” (Proverbs 16:28). “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases” (Proverbs 26:20).

Scripture warns that “where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:16). So we are told to “watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them,” and to deal firmly with divisiveness in the church, “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him” (Romans 16:17; Titus 3:10).

The goal is peace and maturity. “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment,” and “above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (1 Corinthians 1:10; Colossians 3:14). “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:15). When hurt arises, our Lord gives a better way. “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone” (Matthew 18:15). Quiet, direct, loving conversation preserves unity.

How the proverb works
In Proverbs 18:21 the expression behind “in the power of” is the Hebrew idiom “in the hand,” meaning control or influence. It is not about occult mechanics or verbal charms. Throughout the Bible the pair “life and death” functions as a moral, covenant summary. “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil” (Deuteronomy 30:15). James reminds us that the tongue can set a whole life ablaze, yet he never says our idioms summon demons. “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). Jesus teaches that our words reveal our hearts, which God will judge. “You brood of vipers. How can you speak good, when you are evil. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:34–37).

Providence and comfort
The Lord orders and governs all things. The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession says this plainly in Chapter 5, “Of Divine Providence,” paragraph 1, where God “upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all creatures and things, from the greatest even to the least.” He orders all things, and ordinarily uses means, which is why our words carry real moral weight. This frees tender consciences from superstition and calls all of us to holiness of speech.

A simple practice
So let us walk in wisdom together. Choose words that give grace. Before you speak, ask, ‘Will this edify?’ ‘Will this help?’ Drop needlessly cynical phrases if they nourish unhelpful attitudes, not from fear, but from love.

Pray with me, “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips,” and consider committing these verses to memory: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” and “Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (Psalm 141:3; Proverbs 18:21; James 1:19).

Parents, model this for your children. Small group leaders, set the tone in your gatherings. All of us, let us seek a church culture where speech is truthful, kind, timely, and zealous to preserve unity.

The gospel gives both power and pattern. Christ saves us by grace, renews our hearts, and then trains our tongues. As He forms us, our words will more and more become instruments of life and builders of peace.

There Are Many Ways To Get Justification Wrong

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The following article by Wes Bredenhof (original source here – https://bredenhof.ca/2025/09/29/eight-ways-of-getting-justification-wrong/) outlines eight erroneous views of justification.

Justification is the Bible’s teaching on how a sinner may be right before God.  It is God’s declaration as Judge that a sinner is righteous.  This declaration is made solely on the basis of what Christ has done for the sinner in his active and passive obedience.  The sinner receives the benefits of Christ for justification through faith alone apart from works. 

It has been said that justification is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls.  John Calvin called it the hinge on which all Christian doctrine turns.  However we state it, Reformed theologians have unanimously agreed about its vital place. 

It’s also important to know the key pathologies associated with justification.  There are various ways this doctrine can become infected with falsehood.  Below I briefly note eight ways in which this can happen.  Please note that this list isn’t exhaustive.         

John Wesley:  “We have taken it for a maxim, that ‘A man is to do nothing in order to attain justification.’  Nothing can be more false.  Whoever desires to find favour with God should ‘cease from evil, and learn to do well.’  Whoever repents should ‘do works meet for repentance.’  And if this is not in order to find favour, then why does he do them for?”  (quoted in A Heart Set Free: The Life of Charles Wesley, Arnold Dallimore, p.237).

Charles Finney:  Justification is a governmental pardon on the condition of full penitence and reformed behaviour – you lose your justification if you sin.    

Modernists:  We’re justified by following the example of Jesus, the true human being.  He was justified by living a sinless life.  We have to do the same.

Friedrich Schleiermacher:  “…justification is not a transcendent act of God, but only the removal of the consciousness of guilt, a change in the consciousness of one’s relation to God.”  (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, p.552) 

Albrecht Ritschl:  “Justification, contained in Jesus’ proclamation of the love of God, is a possession of the church as a whole, so that the individual receives it by joining the church.”  (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol.3, p.554)

N.T. Wright:  “Justification is not about how a person ‘enters’ into the true community of faith but about how a person continues to be identified with that community through faithfulness (faith plus good works.  When God ‘justifies’ a person, he is declaring that person to be one who is persevering as an ongoing part of the end-time covenant community.” (Covenant Theology, eds. Waters, Reid, Muether, p.495)

Rick Warren:  in justification, God gives you a mulligan (a do-over). 

Benne Holwerda:  “Does God speak one time, and I believe then one time, and is justification then completed?  Oh no!  We live in covenant with God and that is a living relationship; when I believe, then God comes again with his word of acquittal to the person who now believes and thus drives them to works of gratitude: justification by faith.  And when they do these, then God appears again and acquits them again, he justifies them also by works, says James.”  (De dingen die ons van God geschonken zijn, vol. 2, p. 162).