(1) A comprehensive teaching series is now available to listen to called “Theological Foundations of the Reformation” by Derek W.H. Thomas. It is well worth checking out Ligonier has some excellent 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. Dr. James White started a review of James McCarthy’s recent sermon on “Calvinism” on a special pre-Christmas Radio Free Geneva. He will continue his examination in future webcasts! Here’s the program.

(1) Thank you for all the messages sent to me expressing interest in my forthcoming book (mentioned yesterday here on the blog). Content wise, the book is finished, although it is being proof read to try to eliminate any glaring errors of spelling and such like before it is published in an e-book form. I feel like I have poured my very heart and soul into it. I now understand those who say writing a book is a lot like giving birth to a baby. It is hard to explain but there are many parallels.

I pray that the book may be a tool in the hands of the Lord to bless many in the Body of Christ. I dont know of any other material out there that fulfills the same purpose for which I wrote it and I hope it can be a practical guide for people. I also hope it could be a valuable resource for pastors and churches seeking to help those working through the most common objections to the biblical doctrine of election. There’s no pre-publication sign up to get the book but I will certainly keep you posted regarding its availability. Thanks once again.

(2) Ligonier has some items well worth checking out in their $5 Friday sale. Its worth checking out the selection this week to see if anything is of interest. Check out the $5 Ligonier sale here while supplies last.

(3) This morning I read Mike Riccardi’s article “The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News.” Mike builds on the insights of John Piper and gives us a wonderful reminder of what the Gospel does for us and where it is intended to take us. Mike writes:

In 2 Corinthians 4:4 Paul defines spiritual death as blindness to glory. Last Friday we looked into God’s prescription for that blindness. In the sovereign exercise of His will, God shines in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. He overcomes our resistance to the Gospel—caused by our blindness to glory—by giving us the light needed to see things as they actually are. This is the miracle of regeneration.

The Deepest Level of God’s Redemptive Work

Along with understanding this sovereign prescription, we observed that in 2 Cor 4:4 and 4:6 Paul outlines three levels of God’s redemptive work, and that as we progress through each level we come to greater depth and greater ultimacy in God’s work of salvation. God has shone in our hearts to give the Light (that’s level 1) of the knowledge, or of the gospel (that’s level 2), of the glory of God in the face of Christ (that’s level 3). This is the deepest level of the redemptive work of God. This is what our eyes are opened to see. This is what salvation is about!

Can you see that in the text? Paul calls the gospel “the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” And Scripture frequently speaks of salvation in these terms. Hebrews 2:10 describes Jesus’ ministry of salvation as “bringing many sons to glory.” 1 Peter 3:18 says that Christ suffered once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that He might bring us to God. And 2 Thessalonians 2:13–14 says it in a shockingly clear way: God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Did you catch that? The gospel is the means by which you will gain the glory of Christ. Our gospel is the gospel of the glory. This means that what the Good News consists in—what the gospel is about—is the glory of God in Christ. Seeing and enjoying the glory of God in the face of Christ is what makes the Good News good news.

I’m very thankful for the heavy emphasis that is being placed on gospel-centrality in contemporary conservative evangelism. It’s not uncommon to hear the glory of the gospel celebrated from many pulpits. But I hope that those who most readily identify themselves as gospel-centered realize that the gospel is glory-centered. We can (and must!) love the glory of the gospel. But we need to recognize that that gospel is the gospel of the glory. And therefore, when we preach the gospel, we must do so in a way consistent with the reality that what makes the Good News good news is that we can finally see and enjoy the glory of God revealed in the face of Christ.

The Scriptures Don’t Stop at Level Two

Unfortunately, many of the gospel presentations I hear stop at level two. So many Christians preach the gospel as if man was the ultimate goal in salvation. They tell people that Jesus died for them, and then they stop there. As if the Good News is that God just loved (wuvved?) us so much that He couldn’t live without us and so He died to be with us. But can you hear how much of us that makes? The problem is that that is not what God’s love does. God’s love expressed in His shining the Light of life into our dead hearts was not so that we would look at the Cross and see our worth, but so that we could finally see and enjoy His worth. We are not God’s ultimate goal in salvation. The gospel is the gospel of the glory. Ultimately, the reason that God saves any sinner is to manifest His own glory.

Listen to what Scripture says about God’s motivation, His goal, in saving sinners:

•Isaiah 43:25 – “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake.”
•Ezekiel 36:22 – “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.”
•Titus 2:14 – Christ “gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession.”
•And in the opening section in Ephesians 1, Paul says three times that salvation is designed for the praise of God’s glory (Eph 1:6, 12, 14).

A God-Centeredness that is Really Man-Centeredness

Of course, few Christians are going to deny that; a lot of people are happy to confess that we should be God-centered. The problem is that they may be happy about being God-centered because they really believe that God is man-centered. Then their God-centeredness is really man-centeredness. They say their joy is in God, but really their joy is in themselves. They’re happy to worship God, just as long as God worships them.

But the love of God displayed in the Gospel is not that He makes much of us! The love of God displayed in the Gospel is He shines Light that cures our blindness to glory, and thus liberates us from our suicidal love affair with sin so that—rather than only being able to be satisfied by being made much of—we can be entirely satisfied in the depths of our souls by making much of Him forever. We are freed to find our joy in the exaltation of Another.

Yes, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. But finish the sentence! He did that for a purpose: so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. And what is eternal life? John 17:3: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, Father, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” God’s goal in sending Christ was not to show humanity how valuable we were; His goal was to give us the eyes to see how valuable He is. He shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

God’s Love to Us is not First to Us, but to Himself

But because so many people have imbibed our culture’s distorted definition of love as being made much of, many people—maybe some of you reading this—have a hard time feeling loved when they hear that God loves them for His own sake. But loving someone is not making them feel good about themselves. Loving someone is doing what is best for them. And what is best for me, and best for you—what will most satisfy our souls and give us true and abiding joy—is to see the glory of God for which we were made. God’s own self-exaltation isn’t arrogance, but love.

And there is a wealth of satisfaction in feeling loved that way. I feel so safe, so protected, so loved by the fact that I am not uppermost in God’s affections, but that He is. Because I am not the basis of my security; He is. In fact, we will never understand the sweet fullness of what it means to be loved by God—we will never know the breadth and length and height and depth of this love that surpasses knowledge (Eph 3:18–19)—until we understand that God’s love to us is not first to us, but to Himself.

John Piper nails it: “God loves His glory more than He loves us and…this is the foundation of His love for us” (Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, 7). Because it is in loving Himself, in magnifying Himself, in displaying Himself, that you and I are able to see and enjoy the only thing that can truly satisfy our heart: the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Conclusion

The Good News is not merely that Jesus died for us. The Good News is that Jesus died for us in order to bring us to God (1Pet 3:18). The Good News is not merely that God gave His beloved Son for us. The Good News is that God gave His beloved Son for us to bring us to an eternity of seeing and knowing and loving and worshiping Him. The loving, atoning work of Christ in the gospel is a means to a greater end: that the people God has created would finally glorify Him by enjoying and being satisfied by His glory—the glory for which they were created (Isa 43:7).

Let us never forget that the gospel we proclaim is the gospel of the glory.

Thanks to all of you who have indicated you are praying for me as I wrestle with finishing the book. Here’s the current overview of content (understanding it may be subject to change at anytime).

CONTENTS

FOREWARD BY JOHN HENDRYX
WHY THIS BOOK?
WHAT ‘S THE POINT?
WHO IS THIS BOOK WRITTEN FOR?
THE PLACE TO START: AMAZED BY COMMON GRACE
A SURPRISING JOURNEY
TESTING TRADITIONS
WHAT ABOUT THE LOVE OF GOD?
WHAT ABOUT FREE WILL?
WHAT ABOUT GOD’S FOREKNOWLEDGE?
WHAT ABOUT JOHN 3:16?
WHAT ABOUT 2 PETER 3:9?
WHAT ABOUT 1 TIMOTHY 2:4?
WHAT ABOUT MATTHEW 23:37?
WHAT ABOUT 1 TIMOTHY 4:10?
WHAT ABOUT JOHN 12:32?
WHAT ABOUT REPROBATION?
WHAT ABOUT LOST LOVED ONES?
WHAT ABOUT PRAYER AND EVANGELISM?
NOW WHAT ABOUT YOU?
RECOMMENDED READING

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

The Greatest News in One Sentence: “That the greatest good (God) offers the greatest action (love) to the greatest need (wrath-owed sinners) by sending the greatest treasure (Jesus) in the greatest invitation (to everyone) into the greatest life (everlasting).” – Jared Wilson

“Paul ran from Christ; Christ pursued and overtook him. Paul resisted Christ; Christ disarmed him. Paul persecuted Christ; Christ converted him. Paul was an alien; Christ made him a member of the family. Paul was an enemy; Christ made him a friend. Paul was ‘in the flesh’; Christ set him ‘in the Spirit.’ Paul was under the law; Christ set him in grace. Paul was dead; Christ made him alive to God. How does one give reasons for this? He does not give reasons; he sings, Union With Christ (Grand Rapids, 1983), pages 86-87.

“A humble and prayerful spirit will find a thousand things in the Bible, which the proud, self-conceited student will utterly fail to discern.” – J.C. Ryle

“At the cross, God stormed the last bastion of the self, the last presumption that you were going to do something for him.” – Gerhard Forde

Robert Cunningham, professor of church history at Edinburgh 150 years ago, on the doctrines of grace:

“There is not a converted and believing man on earth, in whose conscience there does not exist at least the germ, or embryo, of a testimony in favour of the substance of the Calvinistic doctrine of election.

This testimony may be misunderstood, or perverted, or suppressed; but it exists in the ineradicable sense which every converted man has, that if God had not chosen him, he never would have chosen God, and that if God, by His Spirit, had not exerted a decisive and determining influence in the matter, he never would have turned from darkness to light, and been led to embrace Christ as his Saviour.

This is really the sum and substance of Calvinism. It is just the intelligent and hearty ascription of the entire, undivided glory of their salvation, by all who are saved, to the sovereign purpose, the infinite merit, and the almighty agency of God–the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” – Robert Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (T&T Clark, 1862), 209

“Man’s will is free to follow his inclinations, but fallen man’s inclinations are always and invariably away from God.” – R.C. Sproul

“Jesus is no longer visible upon earth; but he has promised his spiritual presence to abide with his word, ordinances and people, to the end of time. Weary and heavy laden souls have now no need to take a long journey to seek him, but he is always near them, and in a spiritual manner, where his Gospel is preached… Therefore, come unto him. That is, raise your hearts, and breathe forth your complaints to him… He is just such a Savior as your circumstances require, as you yourself could wish for.” – John Newton, Works (Edinburgh, 1988), II:462.

“How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! Luke 11:13

In a sermon preached in 1740, Jonathan Edwards pointed out that we ask God for basically two kinds of things. We ask him for temporal blessings like health and jobs and family needs. We also ask him for spiritual blessings. But Edwards noted how much more frequently and fervently we ask for temporal blessings:

“They don’t need any preaching to stir them up to take thorough care to obtain those outward things… And if they begin to suffer for want of those things, how much do they make of their sufferings!… Had God nothing better to bestow upon you, when he had made you his children, than a little money or land, that you seem so much to behave yourselves as if you thought this was your chief good?… I am bold to say that God is now offering the blessing of his Holy Spirit to this town, and I am bold to say we may have it only for the asking.”

“You will not be able to extemporize good thinking unless you have been in the habit of thinking and feeding your mind with abundant and nourishing food. Work hard at every available moment. Store your minds very richly, and then, like merchants with crowded warehouses, you will have goods ready for your customers, and having arranged your good things upon the shelves of your mind, you will be able to hand them down at any time without the laborious process of going to market, sorting, folding, and preparing… Take it as a rule without exception, that to be able to overflow spontaneously you must be full.” – C. H. Spurgeon
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