Category Archives: The Gospel

I admit it. I am just not good enough!

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I fail the test of being good. I have failed it every day I have lived. Oh, on a vertical level, I am a little nearer to God’s standard of goodness than some. I have not killed anyone (outwardly at least). Compared to mass murderers like Hitler or Stalin, I guess I am doing quite well, but I am still so far short of God’s standard that I am not even close to measuring up! That’s right, not even close!

You see, Jesus never taught that my fellow man was the standard. He never said, “do better than Hitler and you will be fine.” The standard is the perfection of God’s character, His absolute holiness and majestic glory. The standard is a life lived in full devotion to God, loving Him with all the heart, soul, mind and strength and loving others as I love myself.

You see, not only have I failed in terms of bad words, thoughts and deeds each day, I have failed by even attempting to gain right standing with God by the things I do. Even the “good” things I have done have been tainted by motivations that were never 100% pure. I never did anything motivated entirely by the glory of God alone – not 100% anyway. My good works are filthy before God, not just my sins. Continue reading →

The Power is not in Joseph’s Pants

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Near to the end of his life, milk from the breasts of the virgin Mary as well as Joseph’s old pants… Wittenburg itself had an amazing assortment of these religious relics which were sanctioned by the Church to convey days, weeks, months, years, centuries and even millennia of time off in the place of purging, just by viewing them, the time being measured by the value and importance placed upon the relic. Continue reading →

Rome v. The Gospel

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At the Council of Trent in the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church placed its eternal and irrevocable curse on the Gospel, announcing it as actually heretical. I am certain that in the hearts and minds of the delegates at the Council, this was never intended – not even for a moment – but that is in fact what happened.

The most relevant Canons are the following:

Canon 9. If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone…, let him be anathema.

Canon 11. If anyone says that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ or by the sole remission of sins,… let him be anathema.

Canon 12. If anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in divine mercy (supra, chapter 9), which remits sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is this confidence alone that justifies us, let him be anathema.

Canon 24. If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of the increase, let him be anathema.

Canon 30. If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.

Canon 32. If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God that they are not also the good merits of him justified; or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ…does not truly merit an increase of grace and eternal life… let him be anathema.

As Dr. Michael Horton rightly noted, “It was, therefore, not the evangelicals who were condemned in 1564, but the evangel itself. The ‘good news,’ which alone is ‘the power of God unto salvation’ was judged by Rome to be so erroneous that anyone who embraced it was to be regarded as condemned.” Continue reading →