When I say “Good Morning” I’m not stating that the person to which I am speaking has had thus far, or will have following, a good morning. In fact, maybe they’ve had – or will have – a terrible morning. But it’s certainly my wish for them.

“Rest in peace” (Latin: Requiescat in pace) is a short epitaph or idiomatic expression wishing eternal rest and peace to someone who has died.

And lest anyone want to nit-pick that God has already decided where they’re headed and so I might be wishing against God’s will, just chill. I pray and wish for healing he doesn’t always give to folks, and pray and wish some living folks will get saved when technically one can argue God already knows and/or predestined them, so the difference is negligible. If my wish doesn’t correspond with God’s will, so be it. Happens all the time.

Conclusion? I can say “Rest in Peace” with a clear conscience. I’m stating my implicit wish for their destination and usually have no idea what their final days or relationship was with God. My desire is that they ultimately bent their knee to God before their final breath and are present in His rest.

Now if I’m preaching a funeral and am asked to speak to the person’s destination with any kind of certainty, that’s a whole other conversation.

To be even more clear, there ARE some phrases I would avoid: I wouldn’t say of someone (particularly a celebrity and thus, honestly, a stranger) “they are now resting in peace”. That would be a declarative statement and not a wish or desire. So watching my words IS important, but the above seems fine to me.

– James Harleman

By Sinclair Ferguson

Reformed theology owes a special debt to the principles of biblical exposition recovered for the church at the time of the Reformation. It is particularly associated with the work of John Calvin, but was later developed by such seventeenth-century Puritans as John Owen and Thomas Goodwin (in England), and Thomas Hooker and John Cotton (in New England). Many later Christians have owed a special debt to the Reformed theological tradition. They include preachers like George Whitefield, C. H. Spurgeon and D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones; and theologians such as Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, Abraham Kuyper and B. B. Warfield; as well as such influential twentieth-century Christian leaders as J Gresham Machen and Francis Schaeffer. From one point of view, most evangelical theology in the English-speaking world can be see as an exposition of, deviation from or reaction to Reformed theology.[1]

A cursory glance at the biographies or writings of these men under lines the fact that Reformed theology has always placed special emphasis on the subject of sanctification. Few axioms are more central to Reformed teaching than that theology and practice, doctrine and lifestyle are partners joined together by God. They ought never to be separated. Nor is this relationship merely a “marriage of convenience.”

It is one which Reformed theology sees as being “made in heaven,” or more exactly, made in Scripture. A necessary connection between biblical doctrine and holy living is fundamental to the biblical and apostolic way of thinking. That is why Scripture is so full of moral imperatives logically derived from doctrinal indicatives: since these things are true, this is how you should live (compare Mt 6:32-34; Rom 12:1-2; Eph 4:20-25). The title of one of Francis A. Schaeffer’s best-known books grows directly out of this Reformed appreciation of the shape of basic biblical teaching: How Should We Then Live? The “then” is pregnant with significance. It means “in light of the biblical teaching we know to be true…?” Indeed, in Schaeffer’s case, it meant specifically “in the light of Reformed theology.” Continue reading →