RC Spoul on Reformed Theology

“At the heart of Reformed Theology, at the heart of Luther and Calvin’s struggle, and in Knox and Jonathan Edwards, were men who were awakened to the greatness, to the majesty, to the holiness, and the sovereignty of God. By contemplating the holiness and sovereignty of God, they were driven to develop their doctrines of the grace of God. Because until you meet a God who is holy and is sovereign, you don’t know what grace means. I don’t think we are ever going to see a healthy evangelical church until the evangelical church is solidly Reformed, where it takes biblical Christianity seriously with a right concept of a sovereign God.

That’s because unreformed Christianity has failed in our culture. It has been pervasively antinomian (no law, no Lordship), and has been pervasively liberal in it’s trends and tendencies away from Scripture, because there’s been no real basis in the sovereignty of God.

Today’s evangelicals are never amazed by grace, because they don’t understand sovereignty. They don’t understand God. The evangelical church today is sick, more sick than it ever has been. We need a style and a variety of Christianity that is not a religion, but is a life and a worldview, where at the heart and foundational structure of it is a sound and deep biblical concept of the character of God.”
-Dr. R.C. Sproul, A Blueprint for Thinking

(HT: Reformed Voices)

Filed under: Calvinism, Church History, Doctrines of Grace, God's grace, God's holiness, Sovereignty of God, The Church

“fossilized” theology?

My thanks to Martin Downes for these excellent quotes:

A. A. Hodge once said to a Yale teacher who was making fun of the “fossilized” theology of Princeton:

“The trouble with you Yale theological professors is that you only teach your students to think…In Princeton we let God do the thinking and teach the students to believe.”

From David Calhoun’s wonderful book Princeton Seminary Volume 2: The Majestic Testimony, 1869-1929, p. 408-9

Filed under: Church History, Discernment, Discipleship, Doctrine, Faith, Truth

Preaching includes felt struggles for people

“I began to speak, as the Lord gave me utterance. At first, the people seemed unaffected, but in the midst of my discourse the power of the Lord Jesus came upon me, and I felt such a struggling within myself for the people as I scarce ever felt before. The hearers began to be melted down immediately and to cry much, and we had good reason to hope the Lord intended good for many.”

George Whitefield, quoted in Archibald Alexander, The Log College, page 19.

(HT: Christ is deeper still)

Filed under: Christian Ministry, Church, Church History, George Whitefield, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Preaching, The Bible, The Gospel

Amid The Dazzling Confusion

Can you believe Bonnar wrote this in 1883? He could be describing the 21st century Church. Why don’t we learn from Church history? My thanks to Darrin R. Brooker for this.

The religious atmosphere of the present time is much changed from what it was in my younger days; and I may be allowed to note the difference. The theological crisis through which we are passing is a peculiar one, such as the men of fifty years ago would have thought very unlikely; and I wish to mark some of its more important characteristics.

These are becoming more and more distinct in outline and pronounced in character every year. A quarter of a century ago, it was not quite evident what they meant or whither they were tending. Now there is less of reserve, and the repulsion between Revelation and much of modern thought is expressing itself in many ways, and through many channels. Man is now thinking out a Bible for himself; framing a religion in harmony with the development of liberal thought; constructing a worship on the principles of taste and culture; shaping a god to suit the expanding aspirations of the age. The process of evolution on all these points is so satisfactory and so well advanced that disguise is no longer needful. Faith and certainty, in things outside our senses, are, in the meantime at least, not to be taken into account.

Whether the human mind was really made for such uncertainty is a question which each one must settle for himself; and whether there may not be a way of escape from uncertainties, into a region of absolute truth, in things of religion as well as in those of science, is certainly worth the consideration of the age.

Amid all this dazzling confusion, it is well to keep in mind that the way leading to life is narrow, the way leading to death is broad. The danger arising from want of spiritual discrimination between light and darkness is more serious than many think. For one authentic light there are a thousand spurious ones. The false Christs are many, the true Christ is but one; and whilst glorying in the vitality of truth we must stand in awe of the marvelous fecundity of error. Discrimination is not censoriousness.

Still, all the strength that won the battles of the olden time is at our disposal still, undiminished and unwithdrawn. That strength is supernatural and Divine. The power of Pentecost is not yet exhausted.

-Taken from Our Ministry: How It Touches The Questions Of The Age, 1883.

Filed under: Attributes of God, Christian Ministry, Church, Church History, Culture, Discernment, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Liberal Theology, Reformed, The Gospel, The word of God, Theology

Give Me the Cross of Christ

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JC Ryle (cited by CH Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes, p259)

“The cross is the strength of a minister. I, for one, would not be without it for the world. I should feel like a soldier without weapons, like an artist without his pencil, like a pilot without his compass, like a labourer without his tools. Let others, if they will, preach the law and morality. Let others hold forth the terrors of hell and the joys of heaven. Let others drench their congregations with teachings about the sacraments and the church. Give me the cross of Christ. This is the only lever which has ever turned the world upside down hitherto, and made men forsake their sins. And if this will not do it, nothing will.

A man may begin preaching with a perfect knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew; but he will do little or no good among his hearers unless he knows something of the cross. Never was there a minister who did much for the conversion of souls who did not dwell much on Christ crucified. Luther, Rutherford, Whitefield, M’Cheyne, were all most eminent preachers of the cross. This the preaching that the Holy Ghost delights to bless. He loves to honour those who honour the cross.“

(HT: Symphony of Scripture)

Filed under: CH Spurgeon, Christian Ministry, Church History, Evangelical, JC Ryle, Jesus Christ, Preaching, Reformed, Substitutionary Atonement, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, The glory of Christ, The word of God

Goldsworthy: “The Reformation recovered the historical Christ-event as the basis of our salvation”

“Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone) was a rallying-cry of the Reformation. The right of interpretation was restored to every believer, but this did not mean that the principles of interpretation found within the bible could be overlooked and every Christian follow his own whim. The allegorical method became far less popular, because the historical meaning of the Old Testament was found to be significant on its own, within the unity of the Bible.

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“…The reformers maintained that salvation is a matter of grace alone, by Christ alone, through faith alone. ‘Grace alone’ meant that salvation is God’s work alone unconditioned by anything that man is or does. ‘Christ alone’ meant that the sinner is accepted by God on the basis of what Christ alone has done. ‘Faith alone’ meant that the only way for the sinner to receive salvation is by faith whereby the righteousness of Christ is imputed (credited) to the believer.

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“What had this got to do with the Old Testament? It meant that the reformers were establishing a method of biblical interpretation in which the natural historical sense of the Old Testament has significance for Christians because of its organic relationship to Christ. God’s grace seen in his dealings with Israel is part of a living process which comes to its climax in his work of grace, the gospel, that is in the historical events of the Christ who is Jesus of Nazareth. Just as it is important to assert that this Old Testament ‘sacred history’ or ‘salvation history’ must be interpreted by the Word, Jesus Christ, it is also important to recognize that the gospel is God acting in history more specifically, through the history of Jesus Christ.

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“Medieval theology had internalized and subjectivized the gospel to such an extent that the basis of acceptance with God, of justification, was no longer what God did once for all in Christ, but what God was continuing to do in the life of the Christian. This de-historicizing of what God had done once for all in the gospel went hand-in-hand with the allegorizing of the history of the Old Testament. The Reformation recovered the historical Christ-event (the gospel) as the basis of our salvation and, in turn, the objective importance of Old Testament history.

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“This is, of course, a very different thing from the modern approach of seeing the Old Testament as part of the historical development of man’s religious ideas, or as merely a background history to the New Testament age. Basically, the Old Testament is not the history of man’s developing thoughts about God, but the whole Bible presents itself as the unfolding process of God’s dealings with man and of his own self-disclosure to man.

– Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Kingdom, pp. 17-18.

(HT: The Vossed Word)

Filed under: Church History, Evangelical, Hermeneutics, Jesus Christ, Justification by faith, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, The Reformation, The word of God, Truth

A Quote from a 2nd Century Disciple

The quote (below) is from The Epistle to Diognetus 9, translated by Maxwell Staniforth. This text dates from the mid to late 2nd century AD. It is an early indication that the doctrines of substitutionary atonement and double imputation were not first the product of the Protestant Reformation, but were held dear by the earliest generations of Christians. The author is unknown – he refers to himself simply as a mathetes “disciple”.

“He showed how long-suffering He is. He bore with us, and in pity He took our sins upon Himself and gave His own Son as a ransom for us – the Holy for the wicked, the Sinless for sinners, the Just for the unjust, the Incorrupt for the corrupt, the Immortal for the mortal. For was there, indeed, anything except His righteousness that could have availed to cover our sins? In whom could we, in our lawlessness and ungodliness, have been made holy, but in the Son of God alone? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable working! O benefits unhoped for! – that the wickedness of multitudes should thus be hidden in the One holy, and the holiness of One should sanctify the countless wicked!”

(HT: Reformation Theology)

Filed under: Church History, Discipleship, Evangelical, God's mercy, Grace, Jesus Christ, Justification by faith, Salvation, Sanctification, Substitutionary Atonement, The Bible, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God, Union with Christ, Worship

1st, 2nd, and 3rd order doctrines

Theological Triage By R. Albert Mohler In every generation, the church is commanded to “contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” That is no easy task, and it is complicated by the multiple attacks upon Christian truth that mark our contemporary age. Assaults upon the Christian faith are no longer directed only at isolated doctrines. The entire structure of Christian truth is now under attack by those who would subvert Christianity’s theological integrity.Today’s Christian faces the daunting task of strategizing which Christian doctrines and theological issues are to be given highest priority in terms of our contemporary context. This applies both to the public defense of Christianity in face of the secular challenge and the internal responsibility of dealing with doctrinal disagreements. Neither is an easy task, but theological seriousness and maturity demand that we consider doctrinal issues in terms of their relative importance. God’s truth is to be defended at every point and in every detail, but responsible Christians must determine which issues deserve first-rank attention in a time of theological crisis.A trip to the local hospital Emergency Room some years ago alerted me to an intellectual tool that is most helpful in fulfilling our theological responsibility. In recent years, emergency medical personnel have practiced a discipline known as triage – a process that allows trained personnel to make a quick evaluation of relative medical urgency. Given the chaos of an Emergency Room reception area, someone must be armed with the medical expertise to make an immediate determination of medical priority. Which patients should be rushed into surgery? Which patients can wait for a less urgent examination? Medical personnel cannot flinch from asking these questions, and from taking responsibility to give the patients with the most critical needs top priority in terms of treatment. The same discipline that brings order to the hectic arena of the Emergency Room can also offer great assistance to Christians defending truth in the present age. A discipline of theological triage would require Christians to determine a scale of theological urgency that would correspond to the medical world’s framework for medical priority. With this in mind, I would suggest three different levels of theological urgency, each corresponding to a set of issues and theological priorities found in current doctrinal debates. First-level theological issues would include those doctrines most central and essential to the Christian faith. Included among these most crucial doctrines would be doctrines such as the Trinity, the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ, justification by faith, and the authority of Scripture. In the earliest centuries of the Christian movement, heretics directed their most dangerous attacks upon the church’s understanding of who Jesus is, and in what sense He is the very Son of God. Other crucial debates concerned the question of how the Son is related to the Father and the Holy Spirit. At historic turning-points such as the councils at Nicaea, Constantinople and Chalcedon, orthodoxy was vindicated and heresy was condemned – and these councils dealt with doctrines of unquestionable first-order importance. Christianity stands or falls on the affirmation that Jesus Christ is fully man and fully God. The church quickly moved to affirm that the full deity and full humanity of Jesus Christ are absolutely necessary to the Christian faith. Any denial of what has become known as Nicaean-Chalcedonian Christology is, by definition, condemned as a heresy. The essential truths of the incarnation include the death, burial, and bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who deny these revealed truths are, by definition, not Christians. The same is true with the doctrine of the Trinity. The early church clarified and codified its understanding of the one true and living God by affirming the full deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – while insisting that the Bible reveals one God in three persons. In addition to the Christological and Trinitarian doctrines, the doctrine of justification by faith must also be included among these first-order truths. Without this doctrine, we are left with a denial of the Gospel itself, and salvation is transformed into some structure of human righteousness. The truthfulness and authority of the Holy Scriptures must also rank as a first-order doctrine, for without an affirmation of the Bible as the very Word of God, we are left without any adequate authority for distinguishing truth from error. These first-order doctrines represent the most fundamental truths of the Christian faith, and a denial of these doctrines represents nothing less than an eventual denial of Christianity itself. The set of second-order doctrines is distinguished from the first-order set by the fact that believing Christians may disagree on the second-order issues, though this disagreement will create significant boundaries between believers. When Christians organize themselves into congregations and denominational forms, these boundaries become evident. Second-order issues would include the meaning and mode of baptism. Baptists and Presbyterians, for example, fervently disagree over the most basic understanding of Christian baptism. The practice of infant baptism is inconceivable to the Baptist mind, while Presbyterians trace infant baptism to their most basic understanding of the covenant. Standing together on the first-order doctrines, Baptists and Presbyterians eagerly recognize each other as believing Christians, but recognize that disagreement on issues of this importance will prevent fellowship within the same congregation or denomination. Christians across a vast denominational range can stand together on the first-order doctrines and recognize each other as authentic Christians, while understanding that the existence of second-order disagreements prevents the closeness of fellowship we would otherwise enjoy. A church either will recognize infant baptism, or it will not. That choice immediately creates a second-order conflict with those who take the other position by conviction. In recent years, the issue of women serving as pastors has emerged as another second-order issue. Again, a church or denomination either will ordain women to the pastorate, or it will not. Second-order issues resist easy settlement by those who would prefer an either/or approach. Many of the most heated disagreements among serious believers take place at the second-order level, for these issues frame our understanding of the church and its ordering by the Word of God. Third-order issues are doctrines over which Christians may disagree and remain in close fellowship, even within local congregations. I would put most of the debates over eschatology, for example, in this category. Christians who affirm the bodily, historical and victorious return of the Lord Jesus Christ may differ over timetable and sequence without rupturing the fellowship of the church. Christians may find themselves in disagreement over any number of issues related to the interpretation of difficult texts or the understanding of matters of common disagreement. Nevertheless, standing together on issues of more urgent importance, believers are able to accept one another without compromise when third-order issues are in question. A structure of theological triage does not imply that Christians may take any biblical truth with less than full seriousness. We are charged to embrace and to teach the comprehensive truthfulness of the Christian faith as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. There are no insignificant doctrines revealed in the Bible, but there is an essential foundation of truth that undergirds the entire system of biblical truth. This structure of theological triage may also help to explain how confusion can often occur in the midst of doctrinal debate. If the relative urgency of these truths is not taken into account, the debate can quickly become unhelpful. The error of theological liberalism is evident in a basic disrespect for biblical authority and the church’s treasury of truth. The mark of true liberalism is the refusal to admit that first-order theological issues even exist. Liberals treat first-order doctrines as if they were merely third-order in importance, and doctrinal ambiguity is the inevitable result. Fundamentalism, on the other hand, tends toward the opposite error. The misjudgment of true fundamentalism is the belief that all disagreements concern first-order doctrines. Thus, third-order issues are raised to a first-order importance, and Christians are wrongly and harmfully divided. Living in an age of widespread doctrinal denial and intense theological confusion, thinking Christians must rise to the challenge of Christian maturity, even in the midst of a theological emergency. We must sort the issues with a trained mind and a humble heart, in order to protect what the Apostle Paul called the “treasure” that has been entrusted to us. Given the urgency of this challenge, a lesson from the Emergency Room just might help. R. Albert Mohler Jr. is the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the author of Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth (Multnomah). This article originally appeared in the Summer 2006 Southern Seminary Magazine. (HT: 9Marks)

Filed under: Attributes of God, Church, Church History, Discernment, Evangelical, God the Father, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Justification by faith, Liberal Theology, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God, Truth

The Treasure, quite simply, is Christ

Sam Storms on 2Cor.6:8-9

On June 22, 1750, Jonathan Edwards was fired. After twenty-four years of ministry at the church in Northampton, Massachusetts, twenty-one of which as senior pastor, America’s greatest pastor-theologian was dismissed by an overwhelming vote of the male membership (women were not allowed to vote).

Edwards’ response? After enduring years of theological wrangling, bitter opposition, rancorous slander, and malicious gossip, one might have expected him either to wallow in self-pity or lash out in angry recriminations. Not Edwards. One observer described his reaction in these memorable words:

“That faithful witness received the shock, unshaken. I never saw the least symptoms of displeasure in his countenance the whole week, but he appeared like a man of God, whose happiness was out of the reach of his enemies and whose treasure was not only a future but a present good, overbalancing all imaginable ills of life, even to the astonishment of many who could not be at rest without his dismission [i.e., dismissal]” (quoted in Iain Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography, 327).

Edwards was a pastor, not an apostle, but he had obviously learned much from the experience of Paul. Something was at work in both men that elevated their happiness beyond the grasp of even the most vicious of their enemies. A treasure of inestimable value more than compensated for “all imaginable ills of life.”

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The paradox of Paul’s experience is nothing short of stunning: “through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything” (vv. 8-10).

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I want to briefly note the first six of these paradoxical pairs in vv. 8-9.

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We love it when others hold us in high regard (“honor”, v. 8). A good reputation is easy to live with. But “dishonor” is something else. When people hold opinions of us shaped by misinformation and unjustified criticism, we either respond in kind or retreat to a defensive posture. All too often our emotional equilibrium fluctuates with our public opinion poll. We’re high when the numbers are. When the polls go down, so do we.

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Paul was neither over-inflated by “praise” nor destroyed by “slander” (v. 8). He could enjoy public affirmation without becoming dependent upon it. He was largely unaffected by what others thought of him. This is stunning when one considers the customary defamation he endured at Corinth. Notwithstanding his most humble and self-sacrificial posture, he was often excoriated and denounced. They accused him of being fickle (2 Cor. 1:17), of being motivated by worldly ambition (10:2), and for falling short in regard to physical appearance and lacking verbal eloquence.

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“We are treated as impostors, and yet are true” (v. 8). Paul is in good company here, as Jesus himself was regarded as a deceiver by his enemies (cf. John 7:12; Mt. 27:63). Yet his calling was genuine (Gal. 1:1,15-16), his message was authentic (2 Cor. 4:2; 6:7), and he consistently spoke the truth (2 Cor. 11:31; Rom. 9:1; Gal. 1:20; 1 Tim. 2:7).

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What does he mean in saying he was “unknown, and yet well known” (v. 9)? Some say this refers to views of Paul held outside the church (he’s an unknown quantity, insignificant, uncelebrated, easily ignored) versus inside the church (respected and acknowledged). More likely a human perspective is being contrasted with a divine one. The false teachers in Corinth, together with some of the members there, refused to recognize him as an apostle. But God did (cf. 2 Cor. 1:1). And it’s the latter’s opinion that mattered to Paul.

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There may even be a more personal dimension to this contrast. Yes, he was largely unknown to the world, a “nobody”, if you will. Yet God knew him, loved him, and cherished him as a good and faithful son. “The Lord knows those who are his” (2 Tim. 2:19; cf. John 10:14), Paul wrote to young Timothy. And the apostle was no exception. Others may forget who I am, says Paul, but the Lord Jesus has written down my name in the Lamb’s book of life (Luke 10:20; Phil. 4:3)!

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Yes, we are constantly exposed to life-threatening circumstances (“as dying,” v. 9), yet “we live” (cf. 2 Cor. 1:8-9; 4:11ff.; 1 Cor. 15:30-31; Acts 14:19-20). We are “punished” but “not killed” (v. 9), knowing that “all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11).

What has to happen in the human heart to make such a life possible? How does one attain to this perspective? Is there a formula? A magical incantation? A prayer to pray? A task to perform? What accounts for the presence of joy rather than bitterness in Paul’s soul? How was he able to keep his happiness “out of the reach of his enemies”?

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For this, we must return to the words of that astute observer in 1750. His “treasure,” this man wrote of Edwards, “was not only a future but a present good, overbalancing all imaginable ills of life.” Something was of such immeasurable value that Edwards happily let go of all earthly goods and gain. There was something he prized above the praise of men. The root of his dependency on the accolades of others was severed by his delight in a far surpassing pleasure.

Edwards (like Paul) was captivated by a treasure so radiant that he was blinded to the light of fool’s gold. Its glorious sound rendered him deaf to the slander of his enemies. The sweetness of this “present good” turned sin sour in his soul. He had experienced a joy so satisfying and a pleasure so all-consuming that “all imaginable ills of life” dwindled in their capacity to embitter or enslave. The treasure, quite simply, was Christ.

Filed under: Attributes of God, Calvinism, Christian Ministry, Christian hedonism, Church, Church History, Discipleship, Evangelical, God's Glory, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Jonathan Edwards, Reformed, Sam Storms, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, The glory of Christ, The word of God, Union with Christ, Worship

Storms on Edwards’ Religious Affections

The Resurgence has a great interview (approx. 30 mins.) with Sam Storms on his book, ‘Signs of the Spirit’ – an accessible understanding of ‘The Religious Affections’ by Jonathan Edwards. Storms speaks knowledgeably and passionately about Edwards’ unique discernment concerning the workings of the Spirit. Or true Biblical spirituality. You can listen here.

Filed under: Attributes of God, Books, Calvinism, Charismatic, Christian hedonism, Church, Church History, Evangelical, God's Glory, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Jonathan Edwards, Puritan, Reformed, Revival, Salvation, Sam Storms, Sanctification, Sovereignty of God, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Gospel, The glory of Christ, The word of God, Union with Christ, Worship

Lloyd-Jones: A man of the Word & Spirit!

My thanks, once again, to Adrian Warnock for this:

“. . . the trouble has generally been . . . that people have emphasised either experience or doctrine at the expense of the other . . . This is something that has been happening in the church from almost the very beginning . . .

When the whole emphasis is placed upon one or the other, you either have a tendency to fanaticism and excess or a tendency toward a barren intellectualism and a mechanical and a dead kind of orthodoxy . . .

As you read the stories of Luther and Calvin and other reformation fathers you will find that they began to fight this war on two fronts. They were fighting a dead, mechanical intellectualism on one hand, and they had to fight these other people who were running to excess and riot on the other.

Then in the seventeenth century you find the same kind of thing in connection with the Puritan movement . . . There were three main sections . . . in the middle you had people like the great John Owen and Thomas Goodwin in London, who constantly emphasised what they regarded as the only true scriptural position . . . which emphasises Spirit and doctrine, experience and definition. You must not say it is either/or; it is both. These, too, had to wage a warfare constantly on the two fronts. They had to fight the dead, barren intellectualism of many in Anglicanism and in the ranks of Puritanism, and the wild excesses of the early Quakers and various others . . .

As Evangelicals we find ourselves fighting on two fronts. We are obviously critical of a pure intellectualism and of a dead mechanical church which lacks any life . . . the gospel of Jesus Christ is a life-giving gospel. That is one side; but on the other side we see certain tendencies and we see certain excesses and we say “believe not every spirit, but try the spirits to see whether they are of God.” And thus we seem to be opposing everything, and so we receive criticism from all sides . . .

For myself, as long as I am charged by certain people with being nothing but a Pentecostalist ,and on the other hand charged by others with being an intellectual, a man who is always preaching doctrine, as long as the two criticisms come, I am very happy. But if one or the other of the two criticisms should ever cease, then, I say, is the time to be careful and to begin to examine the very foundations.

The position of Scripture . . . is one which is facing two extremes. The Spirit is essential, and experience is vital. However, truth and definition and doctrine and dogma are equally vital and essential. And our whole position is one which proclaims that experience which is not based solidly upon truth and doctrine is dangerous.”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Life in Christ: Studies in 1 John, pp. 400-403.

Filed under: Charismatic, Church, Church History, Evangelical, God's Glory, Grace, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Pentecostal, Reformed, Revival, Salvation, Sanctification, Sovereignty of God, The Bible, The Christian Life

John Newton

(HT: Recover the Gospel)

Filed under: Church History, Conversion, Discipleship, Evangelical, Grace, Jesus Christ, Regeneration, Salvation, Sanctification, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, The glory of Christ, The word of God

RC Sproul on The Reformation & The Reformation Study Bible

Filed under: Church, Church History, ESV Bible, Evangelical, God's Glory, Martin Luther, Reformed, Salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Bible, The Gospel, The Reformation, The word of God

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Knowing Jesus Experientially

In this quote, says Adrian Warnock, taken once again from the Doctor on Ephesians, we see a strong emphasis on experience. The Christian must KNOW God. Oh, how little we emphasize that today! How poor our experience often is. How few people glow when they speak about their relationship with their precious Saviour. How this challenges me personally once again to seek God!

“There are, unfortunately, even many evangelical Christians who deny that God has any direct dealings with men today, and who hold feeling and emotion at a discount. They frequently substitute for true emotion a flabby sentimentalism. They are afraid of the power of the Holy Spirit, and so afraid of certain excesses which are sometimes found in mysticism and in certain people who claim to have unusual experiences of the Holy Spirit, that they ‘quench the Spirit’ and never have any personal knowledge of Christ. Indeed, they often go so far as to deny the possibility of such a knowledge.

This is obviously something with which we must deal, for if we hold this particular view we shall clearly never seek the knowledge of which the Apostle is speaking, and therefore shall never have it. How then do we answer this charge?

There is, of course, a false mysticism. This becomes quite clear in books on the subject and especially in the biographies of certain mystics. Beyond a doubt, there were aberrations in the lives of many of them, and much that was morbid and unhealthy. There is a morbid, introspective, selfish, impractical and useless type of mysticism. But because certain mystics have been guilty of such things we should not allow ourselves to be blinded to that which is a true and healthy mysticism, a mysticism which is taught in the Bible itself . . .

. . . we must remind ourselves that this teaching is found, perhaps supremely, in the words of our blessed Lord Himself. In the fourteenth chapter of John’s Gospel, having told them that He is about to leave them, our Lord says: ‘Let not your hearts be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me’. They were troubled when told that He was going to leave them. They had been with Him three years, they had looked into His face, they had seen His miracles, heard His sermons, and could always ask Him questions. But now He is going to leave them, and they feared that they could not possibly continue to live and be happy without Him. His answer was, ‘I will come unto you. I will manifest myself to you’ (vv. 18, 21, 22). But still more explicitly in the sixteenth chapter we find Him saying, ‘It is expedient for you that I go away’ (v. 7). It would be good for them that He was going to leave them and to go away from them in the form in which He was then with them, because (as He proceeded to explain) ‘if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go away I will send him unto you’. How can it be expedient for the disciples that He should leave them in the flesh and go away from them in the body? How can that be true if it is not possible for the Christian to know Him immediately and directly? Obviously the supreme blessing is to be with Him, in His presence and in His company. What He is really saying is that after He has gone and has baptized them with the Holy Ghost, He will be more real to them than He was at that moment. And this is what actually happened. They knew Him much better after Pentecost than they knew Him before. He was more real to them, more living to them, more vital to them afterwards than He was in the days of His flesh. His promise was literally fulfilled and verified . . .

Nothing stands out more prominently in the life of George Whitefield than his consciousness of the love of Christ. He knew it to an exceptional degree and you will find that it was always after he had had some exceptional experience of Christ that he was given unusual enlargement and liberty in his preaching, and that men and women were broken down and melted before his holy eloquence and his portrayal of the love of God in Christ Jesus. Charles Wesley knew it equally well, and so writes:

Enlarge, inflame, and fill my heart
With boundless charity divine!
So shall I all my strength exert,
And love them with a zeal like Thine.
This has been true of God’s greatest servants in all ages, in all centuries, in all places.

. . . The secret of the early Christians, the early Protestants, Puritans and Methodists was that they were taught about the love of Christ, and they became filled with a knowledge of it. Once a man has the love of Christ in his heart you need not train him to witness; he will do it. He will know the power, the constraint, the motive; everything is already there. It is a plain lie to suggest that people who regard this knowledge of the love of Christ as the supreme thing are useless, unhealthy mystics. The servants of God who have most adorned the life and the history of the Christian Church have always been men who have realized that this is the most important thing of all, and they have spent hours in prayer seeking His face and enjoying His love. The man who knows the love of Christ in his heart can do more in one hour than the busy type of man can do in a century. God forbid that we should ever make of activity an end in itself. Let us realize that the motive must come first, and that the motive must ever be the love of Christ.

I end with the question which I asked at the beginning: To which of the circles do you belong? Are you pressing your way right into the centre? You may have seen people in a crowd, when the Queen or some other notable person is passing, trying to push themselves forward in order to have a front-line view. The same thing occurs at various games. There are those who always want to be in the front to have the best view. Are we pressing into the innermost circle? Are we seeking the Lord’s face? Are we coveting the knowledge of His love? The Apostle prayed for every single member of the Church at Ephesus that he or she ‘might be able to comprehend with all saints what is the length and breadth and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.’ How tragic it is that any of us should be living as paupers, out on the cold street, while the banqueting chamber is open and the feast prepared. Let us search for the knowledge of the Lord in the Scriptures and read about it in the lives of the saints throughout the centuries. As we do so, we shall never be content until we are in the innermost circle and looking into His blessed face.”

Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. An Exposition of Ephesians 3: The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979, pp.247-253.

Filed under: Attributes of God, Calvinism, Church History, Discipleship, Evangelical, George Whitefield, God's Glory, Grace, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching, Reformed, Sanctification, Sovereignty of God, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, The glory of Christ, The word of God, Union with Christ, Worship

Scratching Itches!

R.C. Sproul and Al Mohler share their thoughts on the seeker-sensitive movement.

“…It’s a strategy of unbelief. The ‘minister’ wants to grow his church, the ‘minister’ wants to see success, and so he’s looking for all these programs and all these techniques to get people to come in… But he never goes over the bridge and gets to the Word. If you want a power in your Church, be an expository preacher; preach the Word because that’s where the Spirit is. Isn’t that God’s strategy? If we believe God’s strategy, we’re going to preach the Word.”
- R.C. Sproul

(HT: Symphony of Scripture)

Filed under: Church, Church History, Evangelical, Evangelism, God's Glory, Jesus Christ, Justification by faith, Martin Luther, News & Views, Preaching, Reformed, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, The Reformation, The glory of Christ, The word of God, Worship