Author Archives: John Samson

We Must Remember

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“No doubt the church in the west has many new things to learn. But for the most part, everything we need to learn is what we’ve already forgotten. The chief theological task now facing the Western church is not to reinvent or to be relevant but to remember. We must remember the old, old story. We must remember the faith once delivered to the saints. We must remember the truths that spark reformation, revival, and regeneration. And because we want to remember all this, we must also remember-if we are fortunate to have ever heard of them in the first place-our creeds, confessions, and catechisms.” – Kevin DeYoung, The Good News We Almost Forgot- 13.

The Love of Ease

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“For another thing, it will cost a man his love of ease. He must take pains and trouble, if he means to run a successful race towards heaven. He must daily watch and stand on his guard, like a soldier on enemy’s ground. He must take heed to his behaviour every hour of the day, in every company, and in every place, in public as well as in private, among strangers as well as at home. He must be careful over his time, his tongue, his temper, his thoughts, his imagination, his motives, his conduct in every relation of life. He must be diligent about his prayers, his Bible reading, and his use of Sundays, with all their means of grace. In attending to these things he may come far short of perfection; but there is none of them that he can safely neglect. ‘The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat’ (Prov. 13:4).

“This also sounds hard. There is nothing we naturally dislike so much as ‘trouble’ about our religion. We hate trouble. We secretly wish we could have a ‘vicarious’ Christianity, and could be good by proxy, and have everything done for us. Anything that requires exertion and labour is entirely against the grain of our hearts. But the soul can have ‘no gains without pains.’ Let us set down that item third in our account. To be a Christian it will cost a man his love of ease.”

J.C. Ryle

The Reformed Tradition

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“Calvin, right out of the gate in his Institutes (1559) has an address to the King of France telling him, ‘I hope your Majesty will see from this brief summary of the Christian faith, not the Reformed faith, the Christian faith, that this is simply the catholic faith believed throughout all ages.’ That gives an example of how our tradition, at its best has always seen itself as first of all catholic, not Roman Catholic, but catholic in the sense that, and Calvin pointed this out, ‘Roman Catholic’ is a contradiction of terms. Catholic means ‘universal’ – so that’s like saying, ‘I’m a California Nationalist.’ No, to be catholic is to say, ‘no one locale – no one particular bishop – has sovereignty over the whole church.’”

– Dr. Michael Horton