This effectual grace blog celebrates its 1st birthday today. That’s right, somewhere in cyber space, this little blog appeared for the first time on November 2, 2010.

I feel I have grown a great deal through the process of putting together the more than 750 posts on more than a 140 different categories. I must say that I have both valued and learned from the many comments I have received, even from those who have had strong disagreements with me. I hope you feel you have benefitted by your visits here and desire to continue the journey, learning and growing together in grace and knowledge of God.

Its hard to fathom this, but last month alone, people from all 50 states of the USA and 99 different countries stopped by for a visit here. Knowing this causes two definite reactions in me. Firstly, it humbles me profoundly to know that many look to this blog for sound biblical teaching, and secondly, it fills me with holy awe concerning the tremendous responsibility just such an audience places in my hands.

Though I try not to take myself too seriously, I must take His truth seriously. It would be the height of presumption to steer even one of God’s precious sheep in the wrong direction. As Jesus made clear, to whom much is given, much is required.

My prayer is that this blog will always be a place for God’s truth to shine forth like a beacon in this dark world, and a place where His gospel is clear in its declaration and wide in its reach. May our great tri-une God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit receive all the praise, honor and glory.

If you have something positive to share in the way of feedback, it would be great to hear from you. Please feel free to write a comment below. If you don’t feel you have anything positive to share, well thanks for stopping by anyway.

May God bless you richly!

John

What the unregenerate sinner needs is not free will but a will made free.

Until God grants a new heart with new affections, man will never desire the thing (the Gospel) or the Person (Jesus Christ) he so desperately needs. That is because the will always chooses according to the desire of the heart. And that is just it – the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. Outside of God’s intervention, the sinner is not just morally neutral towards God, but totally hostile and impenetratably so. The heart is a heart of stone. It is stony only in one sense. For although it is capable of loving many things in this world it is incapable of even the slightest measure of love towards the one true God. That is the nature of spiritual death – the radical corruption of the heart inherent in all the sons and daughters of Adam since the Fall.

The will chooses that which is the greatest desire of the heart at the moment of choice. While the will makes choices every day, the one thing it will never choose is that which the heart hates above all else, namely, God as He really is. For such a choice to be made – for a man to actually enter the kingdom of God – he must first delight in what he hates. This of course is impossible. And this is why something very radical has to happen. Man needs to become a brand new creature all together with brand new desires.

The new desire has to emerge before the choice can be made. He desperately needs a new heart – a heart of flesh, one that beats to know God and until given one, he detests the very idea of it. Jesus made it abundantly clear that if this is ever to happen, he must first have a brand new nature, he needs much more than a spiritual make-over. He needs a spiritual re-birth. The old has to go, the new must come. Unless a man is born again he cannot enter the kingdom God. To fail to see this will not only undermine the biblical concept of the will, it results in a failure to fully comprehend the Gospel.

(1) I encourage you to check out the Reformation apparel by clicking on the Missionalwear logo to the right. There are some very cool items that have now become available for both men and women.

(2) Something to bookmark: Monergism Q&A – 22 Common Objections to Christianity from Skeptics by Steve Hays there are more than 700 posts on this blog covering a very wide range of topics. There is a listing of categories on the right hand side of this, the main page, and there is now also (at the top right) a search engine feature which allows you to search this blog for specific articles. I hope you enjoy this new feature.

(4) Ouch!!:

(5) A Reminder: Ligonier has some SUPER deals today in this week’s $5 Friday sale. The online sale starts at 8 a.m. EST and goes on for 24 hours or until items are sold out. Check out the $5 Ligonier sale here.

By the way, remember that for any purchase at Ligonier, click on the green Ligonier Ministries image to the right and when placing an order, use the code “EGRACE10” and it will give you a 10% discount as a reader of this blog.

(6) Some quotes I came across:

Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then they said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.” – Psalm 126:2

“Should we not see that lines of laughter about the eyes are just as much marks of faith as are the lines of care and seriousness? Is it only earnestness that is baptized? Is laughter pagan? We have already allowed too much that is good to be lost to the church and cast many pearls before swine. A church is in a bad way when it banishes laughter from the sanctuary and leaves it to the cabaret, the nightclub, and the toastmasters.” – Helmut Thielicke, Encounter with Spurgeon (Fortress, 1963), 26

“The church’s greatest troublemakers (now as then) are not those outside who oppose, ridicule and persecute it, but those inside who try to change the gospel.” – John Stott

“This distinction [between law and gospel] must be observed all the more when the Law wants to force me to abandon Christ and His Gospel boon. In that emergency I must abandon the Law and say: Dear Law, if I have not done the works I should have done, do them yourself. I will not, for your sake, allow myself to be plagued to death, taken captive, and kept under your thraldom and thus forget the Gospel. Whether I have sinned, done wrong, or failed in any duty, let that be your concern, O Law. Away with you and let my heart alone; I have no room for you in my heart. But if you require me to lead a godly life here on earth, that I shall gladly do. If, however, like a housebreaker, you want to climb in where you do not belong, causing me to lose what has been given me, I would rather not know you at all than abandon my gift.” – Martin Luther, quoted in C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel (St. Louis, 1928), pages 46-47.

“If you are not a loyal servant of the King, a sheep who follows the Shepherd, a disciple who has forsaken everything, or a believer who has turned his back on a lifestyle of sin, then you are neither a servant, a sheep, a disciple, or a believer – at least not yet. Repent and believe the Gospel, lest you die in your sins and face the eternal wrath of God as many professing christians before you.” – Justin Edwards

“I know I am nothing,” say you. Yes, but you would not even have had grace enough to know you were nothing if God had not given it to you. To be nothing is ours by nature: but to know that we are nothing and to confess that we are nothing is a gift of his grace.” – C. H. Spurgeon.

“Grace does not run in the blood, but corruption does. A sinner begets a sinner, but a saint does not beget a saint.” – Matthew Henry

“Of course any contemporary observer who saw Christ die would have listened with astonished credulity to the claim that the Crucified was a Conquerer. Had he not been rejected by his own nation, betrayed, denied and deserted by his own disciples, and executed by authority of the Roman procurator? Look at him there, spread-eagled and skewered on a cross, robbed of all freedom of movement, strung up with nails or ropes or both, pinned there and powerless. It appears to be total defeat. If there is victory, it is the victory of pride, prejudice, jealousy, hatred, cowardice and brutality. Yet the Christian claim is that the reality is the opposite of the appearance. What looks like (and indeed was) the defeat of goodness by evil is also, and more certainly, the defeat of evil by goodness. Overcome there, he was himself overcoming. Crushed by the ruthless power of Rome, he was himself crushing the serpent’s head (Gen 3:15). The victim was the victor, and the cross is still the throne from which he rules the world.” – John Stott, The Cross of Christ

“He turns the Roman gibbet of the cross into a triumphant chariot on which He rides in triumph over all His enemies.” – John Calvin