John Murray Answers The New "Grace" Movements

I know the title is somewhat anachronistic but you get the the point (I hope):

 The relation of the fear of God to the keeping the commandments of God is indicated by the 'Preacher' when he says, 'Let us hear the the conclusion of the whole matter: fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.' (Ecclesiastes 12:13). The most practical mundane duties derive their inspiration and impetus from the fear of God (cf. II Samuel 23:3; Colossians 3:22). The highest reaches of sanctification are realized in the fear of God (cf. II Corinthians 7:1).

This emphasis which Scripture places upon the fear of God evinces the bond that exists between religion and ethics. The fear of God is essentially a religious concept; it refers to the conception we entertain of God and the attitude of the heart and mind that is ours by reason of that conception. Since biblical ethic is grounded  in and is the fruit of the fear of the Lord, we are apprised again that ethics has its source in religion and as our religion is so will be our ethic. This is to say also that what our whom we worship determines behaviour. What then is the fear of God?

...We have therefore the awe and adoration which the majesty of God must elicit from all rational creatures and we also have the complexion which the fact of our sinfulness must impart to that reverence and adoration.

It is this fear of God that Scripture has in view when it reiterates throughout, 'Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God.' The controlling sense of the majesty and holiness of God and the profound reverence which this apprehension elicits constitute the essence of the fear of God.*

*John Murray, Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), pp. 231,237   

Weekly Dose Of Lloyd-Jones

Let me attempt to expound these words with fear and trembling. Who am I to speak on such words? As we approach them it is good for us to remember the words spoken to Moses at the burning bush: ‘Take off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground’ (Exodus 3:5). ‘The Father of glory!’ There can be no doubt but that this means, partly, that God is the source and embodiment in and of Himself of all glory. There are many such phrases in Scripture. We read of God in the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews as ‘the Father of spirits’ (v. 9). We read of Him in the Epistle of James as ‘the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning (1:17). In the Book of the prophet Isaiah God is described as ‘The eternal Father’ or ‘Father of eternity’ (9:6). So ‘the Father of glory’ means the source, the fount of all glory. As to ‘glory’ what can we say? Words fail us utterly. Glory is God. Glory is the summation of all the excellences and perfections and attributes of the Lord God Almighty Himself. That is why He is referred to at times in the Scriptures as ‘the glory’. The ultimate characteristic of God is glory. He is that in and of Himself. His essence is glorious. It is unutterable, absolute perfection. So we can but stand in amazement before this expression, ‘the Father of glory’.

When Stephen was on trial and addressing the Sanhedrin, we are told in the report of his speech, in the seventh chapter of Acts, that he reminded them of the history of the children of Israel, and said, ‘The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham’ (v. 2). ‘The God of glory! The glorious God! He was reminding them that God’s glory is ineffable and indescribable. He ‘dwelleth in the light which is unapproachable’, ‘Whom no man hath seen, nor can see’. And this is the One whom you and I approach in prayer.

Moreover, everything God does is a manifestation of His glory. We recall how Paul ended his description of the plan of salvation in the words ‘unto the praise of his glory’, in verse 14. Everything God does is a manifestation of His glory. Paul says in the Epistle to the Romans that Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father’ (6:4). His every act is a manifestation of His glory. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’ (Psalm 19:1). Do you see the glory of God in the sun and moon and the stars, in the firmament, in flowers, in the whole of creation? They all declare the glory of God. Everything He does is glorious, perfect in its beauty and in every other respect. I speak with reverence when I say that the greatest thing the Lord Jesus Christ did was to manifest the glory of God. In His high priestly prayer as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel. He says so Himself in various ways. And when He describes His second coming the words He uses are, ‘For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels’ (Matthew 16:27). Everything He did was designed to glorify His Father. God, and the glory of God, are the end, the terminus of salvation.

But Paul’s expression can also be read legitimately as ‘the glorious Father’. It is a Hebraism, a form of expression frequently found in the Hebrew language. Take as an example of this Paul’s statement that he has been given the privilege of preaching the ‘glorious gospel of the blessed God’ (1 Timothy 1:11). I am quoting the phrase as it appears in the Authorized Version. But a better translation would be, ‘The gospel of the glory of the blessed God’—not ‘the glorious gospel’, but ‘the gospel of the glory’. So in the case of ‘the Father of glory’ we can read, ‘the glorious Father’. In that case it means that God the Father is not only glorious, and the source of all glory, and the summation of all glory in Himself, He is also prepared to manifest and to impart that glory. He is a Father, and as a Father He gives, He generates, He passes on glory. God does not keep His glory to Himself if I may so express it; He manifests it, He imparts it. He did so with the Son, and so we find our Lord saying in the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel: Father, I pray that thou wouldest give me the glory I had with thee before the foundation of the world (17:5). He had laid aside that glory for the purpose of the Incarnation, and now He asks that He may have it again. And the Father gave it to Him. There is also His prayer recorded in the twelfth chapter of John’s Gospel, ‘Father, glorify thy Name’ (John 12:28).

The Apostle Peter writes, ‘Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God’ (1 Peter 1:21). The Father glorified the Son while He was here on earth. He gave Him power to perform miracles, He gave Him words to speak, He enabled Him to raise the dead; He glorified Him in His death, He glorified Him in the resurrection. He is the glorious Father, the Father who gives His glory to the Son. This is a thought which staggers us because of its immensity, but it is true to say that, because He gives His glory to the Son, He is ready to give it also to us. We are in the Son because He is our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Head, as Paul says at the end of our chapter, and we are members of His body, So the glory that is in Him becomes ours; and we go to the Father who is giving us this glory. We wait upon Him, we desire to know more of His glory. Paul is about to pray that these Ephesians may have ‘the spirit of wisdom and of revelation’ in the knowledge of this glory, So that, the eyes of their understanding being opened, they may see this glory and receive it fully. God is our Father, and He will manifest His glory to us.

I end by quoting again from what our Lord is reported as saying in the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel: ‘Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory’ (v. 24). When we go in prayer into the presence of God we should do so expecting some revelation of this glory. ‘We all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image, from glory to glory’ (2 Corinthians 3:18). The process of our glorification has already started; it will eventually be perfected, and we shall be glorified even in our bodies as well as in our spirits. We shall stand in the presence of the Father of glory and see Him.

Let us never again attempt prayer without reminding ourselves that we are going to speak to ‘the Father of glory’. We need not be terrified; we must go with reverence and godly fear because of His glorious character; but at the same time we can go with confidence and assurance, because He is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in Him and through Him our Father. So we pray, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name’. And if we start in the way we cannot go wrong.*

*Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (1978). God's Ultimate Purpose : An Exposition of Ephesians 1, 1 to 23 (334–337). Edinburgh; Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust.

Will The Defenders Of Michael Servetus Please Stand Up

Some words of Michael Servetus provoking John Calvin:

"The title makes me marvel at the impudence of the man who boasts of being a Catholic, although he is a disciple of Simon the magician, as I have evidently shown in my Apology. Who will say that a prosecutor* and a homicide is a true minister of the Church?" 

“You do not know what you say—you are a wretch, if you persist in condemning what you do not understand. Did you think to stun the ears of the judges by your barking? You have a confused intellect, so that you cannot understand the truth. Wretch! perverted by Simon Magus, you are ignorant of the first principles of things—you make men only blocks of wood and stone by establishing the slavery of the will.”

“If I have said that—not merely said it, but publicly written it—to infect the world, I would condemn myself to death. Wherefore, my Lords, I demand that my false accuser be punished, pœnâ talionis, and that he be detained a prisoner like me, till the cause be decided for his death or mine, or other punishment. And to accomplish that, I now lodge an accusation against him for the said pœnâ talionis. And I am content to die if he be not convicted of these things, as well as of others which I shall bring forward” (emphasis mine).

“Wherefore, like a magician, as he is, he ought not merely to be condemned, but to be exterminated and hunted from your city; and his goods ought to be confiscated to me in return for mine, which he has caused me to lose; which things, my Lords, I request from you” (emphasis mine).

William Tweedie writes:

As to the right to inflict punishment for the excess of religious opinion, and to chastise impiety, that was never a question in the mind of the magistrate. In condemning Servetus and his doctrines, the Council of Geneva did not think that it was doing aught more strange than in declaring Berthelier capable of receiving the communion.* In principle, if not in fact, both decisions ought to be distinctly placed in the same rank; and they are both sufficiently explained by the confusion which existed in the constitution of the Republic, between the temporal and ecclesiastical domains. Besides, the Codes of Theodosius and Justinian, appealed to by the Attorney-General, the Imperial Constitutions which had helped to form the usages in criminal jurisprudence,† and the claims to all power on the part of the body-politic, would have helped to remove scruples regarding the competency of the civil magistrate, had any existed. These scruples did not arise in any country, except in some rare exceptions, till long after this epoch; and Montesquieu, in some degree justifies the Council of Geneva, when he writes, two ages thereafter: “I have not said that it is not necessary to punish heresy; I have only said that it is necessary to be very circumspect in punishing it.” We have seen Servetus himself acknowledging that principles subversive of religion should necessitate the death of their author. In the eyes of Genevese justice, his own opinions were of that nature. Hence he had in some degree, by anticipation subscribed his own condemnation.

...Scarcely had the sentence been passed when Calvin was informed of it, and in his turn he announced it to Farel, to whom he had written some days before, beseeching him to come to Geneva, when the sentence of Servetus was pronounced. As Farel had not arrived, Calvin wrote to him again, and the pastor of Neufchatel crossed the letter of Calvin by the way. In it the Genevese Reformer told his brother, that his colleagues and himself had put forth all their efforts to change the nature of the punishment of Servetus, and substitute the sword for the fire. The motive of this attempt was, no doubt, to avoid the use of these means which the Roman Inquisition employed against heretics and Protestants, and not to recur to instruments of punishment already become odious. Calvin wished to leave to Romanists the monopoly of the auto-da-fe, but the magistrates did not enter into his views. The canon law condemned to the flames persons convicted of heresy; without disturbing themselves as to the origin of the punishment, the Little Council conformed to the practice; and the judicial usage, already followed by the judges of Vienne, triumphed over the request of Calvin. It is to him, notwithstanding, that men have always imputed the guilt of that funeral pile, which he wished had never been reared!

Farel having arrived at Geneva on the previous evening, he was with Servetus when he learned the fatal sentence.* After the first explosion, the criminal, addressing himself to the venerable old man, who tried to convince him of his guilty error, asked him to quote a single place of Scripture where Christ was called Son of God before he was clothed with humanity. Farel pointed out the passages suited to satisfy him, but in vain. Servetus did not abandon his system; and even when imploring pardon, and praying to God and Jesus Christ, whom he called his Saviour, he would not consent that Christ was the Son of God, otherwise than by his humanity. In the eyes of Farel, of Bullinger, of Haller, of Melancthon, of Calvin, of almost all the Reformers, the dissemination of such an idea was a crime. The Council of Geneva appeared to have judged like them.

...In the meantime, before the sentence recorded by it had been solemnly pronounced, Farel was anxious that an interview should take place between Calvin and Servetus. The latter showed himself quite disposed to it; and Calvin requested, through one of his colleagues, the Council’s warrant to that effect. It was granted without delay, and the Councillors Corna and Bonna were appointed to accompany him to the condemned. Being asked by one of them what he had to say to Calvin, Servetus answered, that he wished to ask his pardon. To this the Reformer replied: “I protest that I have never pursued against you any private quarrel. You must remember that it is now more than sixteen years since, at Paris, I spared no pains to gain you to our Lord, and if you had yielded to reason, I would have endeavoured to reconcile to you all the good servants of God. You then shunned the light, and I did not cease, notwithstanding, to exhort you by letters; but all has been in vain—you have cast against me I know not how much fury rather than anger. But as to the rest, I pass by what concerns myself. Think rather of crying for mercy to God whom you have blasphemed, in wishing to efface the three persons who are in his essence; ask pardon of the Son of God, whom you have degraded, and, as it were, denied for your Saviour.” This address of Calvin had no greater success than the exhortations of Farel, and the Reformer withdrew, as St Paul (said he) orders us to withdraw from a heretic.* Taught by adversity, Servetus now appeared as mild and humble towards his adversary as he had hitherto been arrogant and bold; but though he controlled his feelings, he did not sacrifice his convictions (emphasis mine)*

 The reader should note how Servetus' hatred and vitriol towards Calvin was returned with kindness. To be sure Calvin did use harsh words towards Servetus but in line with biblical principles. Furthermore, Calvin met with Servetus after the latter was told of his death sentence and urged the man to repent of his heresy and place his faith in Christ, the Son of God, the second Person in the Godhead. He also reminds Servetus that it was not a matter of personal quarrel, as Servetus made it, but of truth concerning the Triune God but more specifically the divinity of Christ.


* Sevetus quotes quoted from, Tweedie, W. (2009). Calvin and Servetus : The reformer's share in the trial of Michael Servetus (190). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

*Tweedie, W. (2009). Calvin and Servetus : The reformer's share in the trial of Michael Servetus (205–212). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Public Worship Before Private Worship?

It seems a strange thing, these days, to propose that corporate, public worship is to be preferred before private worship. With the rise of individual rights and relativism that has long infected the Church of Christ it seems a very strange and silly thing for John Owen's co-pastor and successor- David Clarkson- to assert such a notion.

He does make such a bold claim (for this day and age) and he does a very fine job of substantiating it biblically.  Here is a portion of his sermon Public Worship To Be Before Private (Ps. 87:2):

But before I proceed to confirm the observation, let me briefly explain what worship is public. Three things are requisite that worship may be public, ordinances, an assembly, and an officer.

1. There must be such ordinances as do require or will admit of public use; such are prayer, praises, the word read, expounded, or preached, and the administration of the sacraments. The word must be read, and prayer is necessary both in secret and private, but they both admit of public use, and the use of them in public is required and enjoined. These must be used both publicly and privately; the other cannot be used duly but in public.

2. There must be an assembly, a congregation joined in the use of these ordinances. The worship of one or two cannot be public worship. Of what numbers it must consist we need not determine; but since what is done in a family is but private, there should be a concurrence of more than constitute an ordinary family.

3. There must be an officer. The administrator of the ordinances must be one of public quality, one in office, one set apart by the Lord, and called to the employment by the church. If a private person in ordinary cases undertake to preach the word or administer the sacraments, if it be allowed as worship, which is not according to ordinary rule, yet there is no reason to expect the blessing, the advantage, the privilege of public worship.

This for explication; now for confirmation. Observe these arguments.

1. The Lord is more glorified by public worship than private. God is then glorified by us when we acknowledge that he is glorious. And he is most glorified when this acknowledgment is most public. This is obvious. A public acknowledgment of the worth and excellency of any one tends more to his honour than that which is private or secret. It was more for David’s honour that the multitude did celebrate his victory, 1 Sam. 18:7, than if a particular person had acknowledged it only in private. Hence the psalmist, when he would have the glory of God most amply declared, contents not himself with a private acknowledgment, but summons all the earth to praise him, Ps. 96:1–3. Then is the Lord most glorified, when his glory is most declared, and then it is most declared when it is declared by most, by a multitude. David shews the way whereby God may be most glorified, Ps. 22:22, 23, 25. Then he appears all glorious when publicly magnified, when he is praised in the great congregation. Then he is most glorified when a multitude speaks of and to his glory: Ps. 29:9, ‘In his temple does every one speak of his glory.’ The Lord complains as if he had no honour from his people, when his public worship is despised, neglected: Mal. 1:6, ‘If I be a father, where is mine honour? If I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord God of hosts unto you, O priests that despise my name.’ By name of God here is meant his worship and ordinances, as plainly appears by what follows, ver. 7, 8, 11. And he here expostulates with them as tendering him no honour, because they despised his worship and ordinances. Then shall Christ be most glorified, when he shall be admired in all them that believe, in that great assembly at the last day, 2 Thess. 1:10. And it holds in proportion now; the more there are who join together in praising, admiring, and worshipping him, the more he is glorified: and therefore more in public than in private.

2. There is more of the Lord’s presence in public worship than in private. He is present with his people in the use of public ordinances in a more especial manner, more effectually, constantly, intimately.

For the first, see Exod. 20:24. After he had given instructions for his public worship, he adds, ‘In all places where I record my name, I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.’ Where I am publicly worshipped, for the name of God is frequently put for the worship of God, I will come; and not empty-handed, I will bless thee: a comprehensive word, including all that is desirable, all that tends to the happiness of those that worship him. Here is the efficacy.

For the constancy of his presence, see Mat. 28: ‘I am with you always to the end of the world.’ Where, after he had given order for the administration of public ordinances, he concludes with that sweet encouragement to the use of them, πὰσας τὰς ἡμέρας, I am with you always, every day, and that to the end of the world. Here is the constancy.

See the intimacy of his presence: Mat. 18:20, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.’ He says not, I am near them, or with them, or about them, but in the midst of them; as much intimacy as can be expressed. And so he is described, Rev. 1:13, to be in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, in the midst of the church; there he walks and there he dwells; not only with them, but in them. For so the apostle, 2 Cor. 6:16, renders that of Lev. 26:12, which promise he made, upon presupposal of his tabernacle, his public worship amongst them, ver. 11. Hence it is, that when the public worship of God is taken from a people, then God is departed, his presence is gone; as she, when the ark was taken from the Israelites, cried out, ‘The glory is departed.’ And why, but because the Lord, who is the glory of his people, is then departed? Public ordinances are the sign, the pledge of God’s presence; and in the use of them, he does in a special manner manifest himself present.

But you will say, Is not the Lord present with his servants when they worship him in private? It is true; but so much of his presence is not vouchsafed, nor ordinarily enjoyed, in private as in public. If the experience of any find it otherwise, they have cause to fear the Lord is angry, they have given him some distaste, some offence; if they find him not most, where ordinarily he is most to be found, and this is in public ordinances, for the Lord is most there where he is most engaged to be, but he has engaged himself to be most there where most of his people are. The Lord has engaged to be with every particular saint, but when the particulars are joined in public worship, there are all the engagements united together. The Lord engages himself to let forth as it were, a stream of his comfortable, quickening presence to every particular person that fears him, but when many of these particulars join together to worship God, then these several streams are united and meet in one. So that the presence of God, which, enjoyed in private, is but a stream, in public becomes a river, a river that makes glad the city of God. The Lord has a dish for every particular soul that truly serves him; but when many particulars meet together, there is a variety, a confluence, a multitude of dishes. The presence of the Lord in public worship makes it a spiritual feast, and so it is expressed, Isa. 25:6. There is, you see, more of God’s presence in public worship, ergo public worship is to be preferred before private.*

I wish to draw your attention to the last paragraph. His point is simple- if people have found that private worship has been better from an experiential standpoint than in public then perhaps God has been offended and withheld His blessing. My take is this- perhaps the modern church needs to re-evaluate what is calls "worship" in local church gatherings. Could it be that we are approaching the Most High in an improper and offensive manner thereby offending Him? Could it be that that instead of worshiping the thrice holy God the way He has prescribed and commanded in His Word, the contemporary church has done what it so often does when it becomes uncomfortable with certain issues- ignore or re-define them (usually based on what suits our fancy)?

Maybe there are people objecting that they have been to liturgical Reformed church services and still think they're "boring" or "dull"? I do admit there is a great danger in getting caught up in form so as to attempt worship in truth to the neglect of spirit (Jn. 4:24). There is also the possibility that people making such claims that biblical worship is "boring" are really un-regenerates who think they are regenerate (non- Christians thinking they are Christians). It would be sheer madness to allow un-regenerates to drive the direction of the church! It is a very strange thing to have people say that they love Christ but find they way to worship the triune God, in the manner He commanded, as "boring." It is similar to saying I love America but hate the constitution and freedom and its terrain.

When God promises to do something He does it. If He has promised to bless His covenant people, gathered in the name of Christ, with His presence during corporate worship and His presence seems lacking, it is from no fault of God's but instead is the fault of people that have taken it upon themselves to approach Him in a way He has not commanded.


*Clarkson, D. (1864). The Works of David Clarkson, Volume III (189–191). Edinburgh: James Nichol.

Epistemology is Everything

Please do not let this title fool you. I am not literally asserting that the discipline of epistemology is literally everything. Relax, my friends, it’s just a title. Or is it? (Pun intended). I was engaging in a miniature exchange with a bare theist (God exists but we don’t know who He is) and when I asked the question “How is knowledge possible?” He (as they usually do) asked me if the question was a trick question or a joke. As a philosopher in training, I do not ask those kinds of questions in that particular light. I do not make a small issue of epistemology nor should anyone. The absurd notion that we are living in a post-epistemological age - that we can simply shove that subset of human inquiry under the rug and take the nature of knowledge for granted is an implicit yet forcefully guarded epistemological statement in and of itself. The person I was speaking to remarked, “Philosophy cannot be applied to science.” My mental jaw dropped. To assert that a well-respected discipline such as the philosophy of science has no place in “exact-science” is in itself a statement pertaining to the philosophy of science which is a type of discipline of philosophy! How could a person be so metaphysically stunted?! That is the straw-man that many students of “exact-science” (exact according to whom?) make of my discipline, whether or not they are Christians.


Even more spellbinding is the notion that philosophy is not compatible with the Bible. That would also be a philosophical statement. Amateur thinkers and modern sophists will often think that the whole arch-discipline of Philosophy is to be equated with Greek speculation alone and nothing else. They will try to (rightfully) guard the Bible from that lofty ghost of Aristotle who obscured the reality of sola scriptura for centuries under the guise of Roman Catholic Scholasticism. To affirm sola scriptura / tota scriptura is itself a Philosophy, and my epistemological axiom “The Bible is the word of God written” employed by Gordon Clark and a host of others since then is part of the fruit of the great Reformation. I will admit, however, that the hot issues of the early 20^th century differed from those of the Reformation, but nobody can state with any intellectual integrity that “justification by faith alone” is only an issue of the past – an epoch that is no longer relevant today. The infallibility and inerrancy of the Scriptures along with justification will always be real and present issues because they lie at the heart of Christianity. But we have deviated from my original topic. Or have we? For those who are not quite clear what epistemology is, it is a discipline within philosophy that asks: “Is knowledge possible? If so (or since so) what makes it possible and for whom? What are the limitations of knowing anything at all (any fact) and what is the warrant or justification for a particular belief? The gentleman with whom I spoke stated that epistemology has been widely regarded to be an “unsolved issue.” How does he know? Why is it an unsolved issue? What does the word “unsolved” mean? (The philosophy of language also has to answer to epistemology. Everything answers to it). He would not discuss this. Instead, he randomly began to spout some facts about this and that without a system of thought to account for those same facts. He was not aware that for every scientific “fact” that he typed, there had to be a cogent and comprehensive network of presuppositions to make sense of them. But why the double standard? Why do his “facts” have to be true and my epistemological inquiries “unsolved?” What kind of comprehensive worldview is this person embracing that would support the statement that what science “says” (whatever that means) is a fact (what is a fact?) but what the epistemologist says is “unsolved?” On what basis can one make such a claim?

One cannot. The Bible would never support such a statement. Unsolved? It’s a mystery, isn’t. We “know” that some object falls (due to the “laws” of acceleration) at a rate of 32 feet per second per second, but by golly if I simply ask “how does one account for this,” they say “that’s unsolved! It’s a mystery! We don’t know! Stop the philosophy because we are dealing with the “real” facts!” Their intellectual condemnation is just. What needs to be asserted here is that the scientific method operates under an epistemology called rational empiricism. It is a mix of some type of rationalism (that reason alone can account for a belief) and empiricism (that sense experience can account for knowledge). It includes a great deal of induction (reasoning from the particular to the general) and deduction (reasoning from the general to the particular). It can employ syllogisms (premises with a conclusion) and abductive reasoning, which attempts to arrive at a conclusion from a hypothesis that one has constructed. That is a great deal of the epistemology of the scientific method. It is simply taken for granted that this is possible and thought systems are rarely examined because one figures “if I can see the object falling, then it must be falling because I am watching it fall.” (And people accuse Scripturalists of reasoning in a circle)! I will not attempt to refute either rationalism or empiricism in this blog post, but I will ask for a favor. When you think of a fact, do not think of it simply floating around in a vacuum. Think of how you are arriving at the fact and what tools or machinery or system or foundation you are using to be able to construe that fact. Then we can talk about how “unscientific” the Bible is (whatever that means). It is also important to note that I am not pitting the false dilemma of Science vs. the Bible. There is no such thing as that dilemma - that false dichotomy that has seemed to dominate western thought for centuries. The exact sciences have absolutely no bearing in and of themselves to stand alone and are in need of a worldview to support them.

Felipe Diez III
Minister_of_Music@yahoo.com

 

The Law Of Love?

There is a very large part of Christendom which teaches that the moral Law of God, as given in the Decalogue, has been replaced by the "Law of Christ" and is not to be found in any "codified" (arrange according to a plan or system) sense but rather comes from the believer's new desire, by the leading of the Spirit, to love our neighbor.

To this Dr. Robert Reymond explains their view a bit more and demonstrates why it should be rejected:

Bruce’s proposal and proposals resembling it—heard so often today that the position has acquired among Christian ethicists its own special designation, namely, ‘Christian Intuitionism’—is that the renewed consciousness of the Christian has an intuitive sense of what is right and wrong. A popular version of this ethical theory is expressed by the words, ‘As a Christian I don’t need a written code of regulations. The law of love, infused within me by the Holy Spirit, will lead me to do the right thing.’ This proposal urges that since the heart of the believer is renewed after the image of God in knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and love, the renewed person will spontaneously respond in the only way that bespeaks the divine exemplar after which the heart has been renewed. Of course, since the same renewal occurs over time in the hearts of a great number of individuals, which renewal dictates similar responses to similar situations, these ‘common responses’ produce a ‘moral convention’ which can become codified and systematized. If there are any objective norms of acceptable behavior, this is the explanation for their appearance. That is to say, any objective norms are human conventions which flow out of the renewed spirit, not objective norms revealed by God that exist objectively prior to the palingenesis to which the renewed spirit must give heed. In sum, the renewed heart does not require objective laws in order to know what to do or not to do.

...Against the second condition—the Christian intuitionist’s insistence that the outflow of love toward God and one’s neighbor which springs naturally from every renewed heart does away with the Christian’s need for objective norms for approved behavior and his insistence that the intuited ‘readings’ of love’s dictates are the only ‘norms’ that one needs to develop a biblical ethic—I would advance the following four arguments:

First, with John Murray I would urge that ‘the thought of the passages [where the law is said to be written on the heart of the renewed person, Jer 31:33; Heb 8:10; 10:16] is not that we come to know what the law is by reading the inscription upon the heart. The thought is rather that there is generated in the sinful heart a new affinity with and a love to the law, to the end that there may be cheerful, spontaneous, loving fulfilment of it.’ Surely Adam in the state of original integrity had the law of God inscribed upon his heart, but ‘this inscription did not obviate the necessity of giving to Adam positive directions respecting the activity which was to engage interest, occupation, and life in this world’. Murray explains:

  The procreative mandate, for example, had respect to the exercise of one of his fundamental instincts. Adam as created must have been endowed with the sex impulse which would have sought satisfaction and outlet in the sex act. But he was not left to the dictates of the sex impulse and of the procreative instinct; these were not a sufficient index to God’s will for him. The exercise of this instinct was expressly commanded and its exercise directed to the achievement of a well-defined purpose. Furthermore, there was the marital ordinance within which alone the sex act was legitimate.

  These original mandates … show unmistakably that native endowment or instinct is not sufficient for man’s direction even in the state of original integrity. The exercise of native instincts, the institutions within which they are to be exercised, and the ends to be promoted by their exercise are prescribed by specially revealed commandments. If all this is true in a state of sinless integrity, when where was no sin to blind vision or depravity to pervert desire, how much more must expressly prescribed directions be necessary in a state of sin in which intelligence is blinded, feeling depraved, conscience defiled, and will perverted!

Second, I would say that while it is true that love is the fulfillment of the law (Matt 22:37–40; Rom 13:10), it must never be forgotten that love to God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind and love to our neighbor as ourselves are themselves commandments. We are commanded to love God and our neighbor. The antithesis which is oftentimes set up between love [as the only proper norm for action] and commandments [depicted as a sub-Christian norm for biblical ethics] overlooks this elementary fact. Love itself is exercised in obedience to a commandment: ‘Thou shalt love.’

Love then is not ultimate but is dictated by a divine command that is its logical prius. Love then is itself obedience to a commandment which comes from a source (namely, God) other than itself, and not to love is sin because it is the transgression of this commandment of God. We do not, by taking refuge in love as the only proper ‘norm’ of biblical ethics, totally escape thereby the norm of law.

Third, while again it is true that Jesus declares that on the two commandments of love hang all the law and the prophets (Matt 22:37–40) and Paul affirms that love is the fulfillment of the law (Gal 5:14), these very statements draw an obvious distinction between love and the law that hangs on it, and between love and the law that it fulfils.… In neither case do love and law have the same denotation. Hence there must be content to the law that is not defined by love itself. We may speak, if we will, of the law of love. But, if so, what we must have in view is the commandment to love or the law which love fulfils. We may not speak of the law of love if we mean that love is itself the law. Love cannot be equated with the law nor can law be defined in terms of love.

Fourth, the consistent witness of Scripture is to the effect that love is never allowed to discover or dictate its own standards of conduct. The renewed heart is simply never allowed spontaneously to define the ethic of the saints of God. To the contrary, the Bible confronts us with objectively revealed precepts—all either explicit commandments or implicates of the Ten Commandments—to be regarded as the norms for human behavior. Neither Adam in Paradise was permitted nor even the most committed saint since the Fall has been permitted to chart for himself the path he would take. Nor has the love which is the fulfillment of the law ever existed in a situation that is absent from the revelation of God respecting his will for mankind. To think so amounts to an abstraction that has never been true of the human experience. Rather, from the beginning—even from the state of innocence—into the New Testament era itself which extends to the present, the norms of human behavior have come in the form of divinely revealed objective commandments and precepts. After setting forth the doctrinal bases for the Christian life, the writers of the New Testament letters follow them with ethical imperatives addressed to the Christian mind and heart. They clearly understand that it is not enough to explicate the glories of our ‘so great salvation’ and to conclude their letters with such explication. They do not assume that the Holy Spirit will simply lead believers to see what they must do in light of their ‘so great salvation’—the error of the Anabaptists in the sixteenth century who separated the Spirit of God from the written Word of God. To the contrary, they provide their readers detailed, at times highly detailed, moral instructions—this moral instruction, as we have seen, being nothing more than the Decalogue and/or its implicates (see the extended treatments of ethical behavior in Romans 12–16 and Ephesians 4–6).

To conclude, according to Murray, ‘the notion … that love is its own law and the renewed consciousness its own monitor is a fantasy which has no warrant from Scripture and runs counter to the entire witness of biblical teaching.’ In sum, I would urge that the uniform biblical witness in this regard is that the Decalogue is the covenant norm and way of life for all human behavior, Christian no less than non-Christian.*

*Reymond, R. L. (2000). Paul, Missionary Theologian (482,489-491). Scotland: Christian Focus Publications.

Dr. Reymond On Justification

Over against Rome’s polemic that the righteousness of justification is to be construed in terms of “sanctification and renewal of the inward man,” that is, in terms of the Christian’s “being inwardly made increasingly righteous” through the impartation or infusion of sanctifying grace stands the consentient biblical (and Protestant) insistence that the righteousness of justification is neither a righteousness which comes through any efforts on our part nor a righteousness infused or generated in us by the Holy Spirit. Rather, the righteousness of justification, as we have already said, is the objective God-righteousness of Jesus Christ, which God the Father, in the very act of justifying the ungodly, imputes to him, thereby constituting him legally righteous in his sight (which “constituting” act, of course, no human judge can do when a guilty party stands before him).

That the righteousness of justification is the God-righteousness of the divine Christ himself, which is imputed or reckoned to us the moment we place our confidence in him (see justification as a finished act in Rom. 5:1—“having been justified”), is amply testified to when the Scriptures teach that we are justified (1) in Christ (Isa. 45:24–25; Acts 13:39; Rom. 8:1; 1 Cor. 6:11; Gal. 2:17; Phil. 3:9), (2) by Christ’s death work (Rom. 3:24–25; 5:9; 8:33–34), (3) not by our own but by the righteousness of God (Isa. 61:10; Rom. 1:17; 3:21–22; 10:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9) and (4) by the righteousness and obedience of Christ (Rom. 5:17–19). In short, the only ground of justification is the perfect God-righteousness of Christ that God the Father imputes to every sinner who places his confidence in the obedience and satisfaction of his Son. Said another way, the moment the sinner, through faith in Jesus Christ, turns away from every human resource and rests in Christ alone, the Father imputes his well-beloved Son’s preceptive (active) obedience to him and accepts him as righteous in his sight. And the sinner, now a Christian, may (and as far as his righteousness before God is concerned he must) sing thereafter, in the words of Horatius Bonar:

 

      Not what my hands have done

         can save my guilty soul;

      Not what my toiling flesh

         has borne can make my spirit whole.

      Not what I feel or do

         can give me peace with God;

      Not all my prayers and sighs and tears

         can bear my awful load.

      Thy work alone, O Christ,

         can ease this weight of sin;

      Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God,

         can give me peace within.

      No other work, save thine,

         no other blood will do;

      No strength, save that which is divine,

         can bear me safely through.

*Reymond, R. L. (1998). A new systematic theology of the Christian faith (746–747). Nashville: T. Nelson.

Book Recommendation Of The Year

There are a few ways in which I build up my library. One is through the author himself. The other is through footnotes and bibliographies of other good books. Still one more is from the recommendation of other godly people. Perhaps one of the most interesting ways I purchase a theological books is from seeing it quoted (see Facebook and Twitter are indeed a good place for this). Sometimes thee quotes are so profound in the biblical truths they convey surely the rest of the book mus be that much better. Though I have been fooled by this method for the most part it has been of great help (of course it will be helpful if the people quoting them are reliable and godly).

My book recommendation for the year (so far) is by Dr. Alan Cairns and titled Chariots of God:God's Law in relation to the Cross & the Christian. You can find it at Amazon (temporarily out of sock as of today), or if your prefer you can get it from Logos. For the record, we get no compensation for this. Our only only consolation is that any person that buys the books we recommend, cite or quote will be rooted, built up and grounded further in the faith. They will draw closer to Christ. That they will worship Him, live for Him and proclaim His glorious Gospel to a sinful people that stand in danger of His wrath.

To pique you interest allow me to give a lengthy quote from the book:

First of all, one truth must be emphasized: No one can be saved by keeping the law of God. God offered life on the basis of keeping the law once and only once, and that was in the Garden of Eden. When Adam fell, such was the devastating result of the entrance of sin into humanity that from that point onwards it was totally impossible for men to fulfil God’s law. By any attempt at personal obedience, it was impossible for them to remove the guilt and stain of the sin of which they were already guilty. It was impossible for them to establish a perfect righteousness before God.

When the rich young ruler came to the Lord Jesus Christ, he asked Him what good thing he might do to inherit eternal life. The Lord Jesus answered him, “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). Some imagine that the Saviour was offering the young man eternal life on the basis of law-keeping. The Lord Jesus would not have been so cruel. We are told that He looked on this young man and loved him. Thus we are certain that He was not dealing with him in irony or in judgment, but in kindness. But there would have been no kindness in saying to a man who was a sinner by nature and practice, “If you provide yourself a perfect obedience to the law you will have eternal life.” That would have been a cruel mockery. To see what the Lord meant, consider the story of the rich young ruler. Here was a very upright young man who could not imagine that he was a sinner. As he came before the Saviour he said, “I have kept the entire law.” Anyone who thinks or speaks like this has no conception of sin or of the absolute holiness of God. So the Lord Jesus met the young man on his own ground. In effect He said to him, “You wish to gain eternal life by your obedience to the law. But the standard of the law is one of perfect righteousness. If you cannot meet that standard you can never enter into life.” The Saviour’s treatment of the young ruler left him in no doubt (a) that he loved his wealth more than he loved God; and (b) that he was unwilling to become a disciple of Christ. If the young man had little doubt about his goodness when he approached the Lord Jesus, he could have had no doubt about his sinfulness as he went away—a sorrowful, money-worshipping Christ rejector.

It is always difficult to get men to see their sin. All too often preachers compound the difficulty. In their desire to be “relevant” to people today they adopt the slang of the streets. One preacher recently thought he had a better way of showing men their sin than by quoting or expounding any statement of Scripture. He told his audience that God had said, “You really goofed up.” Not only did that preacher have no right to attribute such language to the Lord, but his definition of sin was extremely deficient. That became alarmingly clear as he went on to speak of sin as a lack in man that hindered his living up to his potential and as something that hurt his neighbours. In his entire treatment of sin, the preacher made no reference to the absolute holiness of God or to the absolute righteous standard of His law.

Nowadays, it is common for men to claim that they are “not too bad.” The absence of any real consciousness of deep and terrible guilt is attributable, at least in part, to the fact that the Christian pulpit has been largely silent on the holiness of God, holiness so awesome that the very angels of heaven cover their faces in God’s presence and cry, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” Let a sinner get just a glimpse of the holiness of God and he will never again claim that he is not too bad or that he is doing his best to work his way to heaven.

In His treatment of the rich young ruler, the Lord Jesus clearly teaches us to see the sinfulness of the best of men and to recognize their inability to do anything to merit eternal life. Unless a man has a holiness as perfect as that of the purest archangel from the moment of his conception until the moment of his death, he can never gain salvation by keeping the law.*

*Cairns, A. (2000). Chariots of God: God’s Law in Relation to the Cross and the Christian (71–72). Greenville, SC; Belfast, Northern Ireland: Ambassador-Emerald International.

     

Weekly Dose Of Lloyd-Jones

But the view of the Church which we put forward in the last lecture demands that there should be discipline. Furthermore, as we have just seen, the practice of discipline is something to which we are exhorted repeatedly and strongly in the Scriptures themselves.Now discipline is to be exercised along two main lines. First of all, it is to be exercised with respect to doctrine. We read: ‘A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject’ (Tit. 3:10). John says that if a man does not bring the true doctrine he must not be received at all, not even into one’s home, let alone into the church. Let me make this clear. This does not mean that Christians should never admit an unbeliever into their house. Of course it means nothing of the sort! What it does mean is that if a man who claims not only to be a Christian but also a teacher is teaching error, you certainly must not receive him into your house. But of course you receive the unbeliever into your house in order that you may talk to him about Christian things. Paul puts this perfectly in 1 Corinthians 5:11 where he says, in effect, ‘In all these matters of discipline I am not referring to those who are out in the world, because if you are to keep yourself from all those people it would mean that you have got to go right out of the world! No, I am not saying that, but I do say that if a man who is a brother is guilty of these things, don’t keep company with him.’

So the New Testament tells us that we really must be concerned about doctrine in the Church, and that we must do something about false doctrine. And I think that the whole situation confronting us today is abundant proof of the terrible consequences of failing to exercise discipline with respect to doctrine. I do not hesitate to assert that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers in the nineteenth century failed to exercise the discipline they should have done when that fatal Higher Criticism began to come in from Germany. It was because they failed to discipline the people who believed and taught such things, that we are witnessing the present situation. With a mistaken tolerance and, often, a misunderstanding of the teaching of the parable of the tares, they allowed this wrong teaching, hoping that things would soon be better; and they talked about maintaining a positive witness and not being negative! In this present generation we are reaping the consequences of that tragic fallacy on the part of church leaders.*

*Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (1998). The church and the last things (16–17). Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.

Emotions Are A Blessing From The Lord

If there is one are that I am guilty of downplaying or at times misrepresenting it would be the role of "feelings" in the Christians life. Praise the Lord that He has provided godly men to help out in this much needed area.

The "Doctor" says:

Now we move on to another theme, very closely connected of course, and very closely associated with these fears and apprehensions with respect to the future. This theme is indicated in this sixth verse and it concerns the whole problem of feelings-feelings in the Christian life. Perhaps there is nothing so frequently encountered as a cause of spiritual depression and unhappiness in the Christian life as this very problem of feelings. Where do they come in, and what should they be? People are constantly troubled about the matter, and I am sure that all who have ever been engaged in pastoral work will agree that there is no particular subject that brings people so often to the pastor as this very problem of feelings. Now that is very natural because, after all, we all desire to be happy. That is something that is innate in human nature; nobody wants to be miserable, though I am aware of the fact that there are people who seem to enjoy being miserable and some who seem to find their happiness in being unhappy! I regard it as a great part of my calling in the ministry to emphasize the priority of the mind and the intellect in connection with the faith; but though I maintain that, I am equally ready to assert that the feelings, the emotions, the sensibilities obviously are of very vital importance. We have been made in such a way that they play a dominant part in our make-up. Indeed, I suppose that one of the greatest problems in our life in this world, not only for Christians, but for all people, is the right handling of our feelings and emotions. Oh, the havoc that is wrought and the tragedy, the misery and the wretchedness that are to be found in the world simply because people do not know how to handle their own feelings! Man is so constituted that the feelings are in this very prominent position, and indeed, there is a very good case for saying that perhaps the final thing which regeneration and the new birth do for us is just to put the mind and the emotions and the will in their right positions.*

Soli Deo Gloria!


*Martyn Lloyd-Jones;D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure (Kindle Locations 1380-1392). Kindle Edition.

Dr. Reymond On Worship

I was going to offer my own thoughts on worship in the Christian church but then I started reading Dr. Robert Reymond's great (one of my top five systematic theologies) book A New Systematic Theology Of The Christian Faith; after going to his section on worship I realized I would better serve others by quoting him. Here are his words:

For its own spiritual health and well-being then, the church must continually bear in mind the importance of this regulative principle in all that it does in its worship of God. Accordingly, the Reformed worship tradition has a number of things to say to this generation of Christians about the issue of worship.

First, the Reformed worship tradition should remind every generation of Christians that the worship of God is the most important of all the Christian’s tasks. That is the primary reason why the Christian should go to church: to worship God. In today’s church climate this is a radical idea. Nevertheless, Christians should go to church, not to evangelize, not to provide a comfortable “consumer-friendly” setting for the unchurched, not even primarily for the benefit which fellowship with other Christians provides, and definitely not just for lectures and devotionals, but in order to worship God. Christians should also understand that evangelism and the missionary task are not the most important tasks the church has. Such efforts exist among the nations, as John Piper argues in his Let the Nations Be Glad, only because worship of the true God among them does not!

Second, Reformed Christians must convince this generation that their tradition’s “regulative principle” regarding worship should be the governing principle of all Christian worship, that is to say, that Christians must do in worship only those things which God commands, clearly perceiving that “what is not commanded is forbidden” and just as self-consciously rejecting the dictum that “what is not expressly forbidden is permissible” (see again Gen. 4:4–5; Lev. 10:1–2; Num. 16–17; 2 Chron. 26:16–19; Jer. 19:5; Matt. 15:9; Mark 7:6–13; John 4:22–24; 14:6; Col. 2:20–23). This approach to worship will produce a worship that is biblical, spiritual, simple, weighty, and reverent. It will produce a worship centered upon God, substantial and life-transforming. It will prohibit a worship that is superficial in character, complicated by ritual, stimulated by props, and flippant in tone.

Anyone who will take the time to study the matter will have to conclude that worship in evangelical churches in this generation is, speaking generally, approaching bankruptcy. There is neither rhyme nor reason, much less biblical warrant, for the order of and much that goes on in many evangelical church services today. The fact of the matter is, much evangelical “worship” is simply not true worship at all. For decades now evangelical churches have been conducting their services for the sake of unbelievers. Both the revivalistic service of a previous generation and the “seeker service” of today are shaped by the same concern—appeal to the unchurched. Not surprisingly, in neither case does much that might be called worship by Christians occur. As a result, many evangelicals who have been sitting for years in such worship services are finding their souls drying up, and they have begun to long for something else. Accordingly, they have become vulnerable to the appeal of the mysterium of hierarchical liturgical services. This is why some today are “on the Canterbury trail” or defecting to Greek Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Others who have been simply spectators for years in their worship services are getting caught up in the people-involving worship of charismatic services.

...The Triune God of the Reformed faith is an awe-inspiring, absolutely sovereign, infinitely just, and infinitely gracious, incomprehensible Deity. He will not long be known as such or served as such by a people fed rote ritual or revivalistic preaching or emotional choruses and gospel songs. Our God must be worshiped with the mind as well as the heart. Faith in him requires understanding. And the understanding of Christian congregations grows primarily as it is nourished by the singing of hymns and psalms and by the prayers and preaching of the public worship services. Therefore, Reformed churches cannot adopt forms of worship that are either simply “liturgical” or theologically shallow and expect to remain for long biblically sound, Reformed, and presbyterian. Reformed theology, like all systems of theology, must have a form of worship through which it is expressed and communicated. Neglect that form of worship and Reformed theology will cease to be meaningful.

What then should Reformed worship include? It will include theologically sound congregational singing. For this I recommend the new Trinity Hymnal. It will also include the much-neglected singing of the psalms, which express the full range of human emotions in worship. The biblical psalms are realistic in a way that many hymns are not and that choruses can hardly ever be. They also contrast the righteous and the wicked, highlight the conflict between them, and thereby encourage a bold, militant spirituality such as the Huguenot and Puritan forefathers knew and lived by. For this I recommend, particularly for churches for whom regular psalm-singing would be a new thing, the Trinity Psalter.

Reformed worship will emphasize and feature biblically based, hermeneutically sound expository preaching of the Holy Scripture, the only infallible rule of faith and practice, as interpreted by the Westminster Confession of Faith and the two Westminster Catechisms.

Reformed worship will also include contemplation of God’s holy law in keeping with the law-gospel paradigm in order to aid the worshiper in his understanding of his vileness before God (its second use) and to promote its use as a guide for Christian conduct (its third use). Our carnal and antinomian age is in desperate need of a healthy dose of the law of God. Evangelical Christians have become morally lazy, excuse-ridden, and relativistic. It is the Reformed tradition, above all others, which has given prominence to reading and meditating on the law of God. Regular contemplation of God’s holy law in worship would do much to cure this age of its rampant immorality and “carnal Christianity” and to restore true personal piety, parents’ and children’s responsibilities, and the Protestant work ethic in the world.

What should Reformed worship exclude? It should exclude all that God does not command, all announcements (which can be made prior to the call to worship), and any and all other things which do not contribute directly to the Bible’s prescribed worship of God.*

Soli Deo Gloria!


*Reymond, R. L. (1998). A new systematic theology of the Christian faith (872–874). Nashville: T. Nelson.

I'm An "Ancient Paths" Kind Of Guy

Thus says the LORD: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it’ (Je 6:16).


When it comes to the worship of the thrice holy God, I like to stick to what the Bible calls the "ancient" or "old" paths. That is to say I believe the worship of Christ is to be defined as commanded by Himself; as given in Scripture. To come before the Almighty, whether it be privately or corporately, requires it be done reverently and not flippantly. Nor are we to tack on "worship" to any practice because we are sincere and our hearts are in it.

Of course this is not a popular idea in this day and age, where churches feel it is okay to become "innovative" and "creative" in many church services, in order to keep the people "comfortable," "interested" and the church "relevant." It is often brought in, for further support, that to reach the so called "seekers" we must keep them coming back by "contextualizing" not only the Word of God but our services too, so it can relate to them. If I can sum up the argument in another way, it is the view that if it is not forbidden by Scripture than it is acceptable to God.

To complicate matters even further, many of the modern practices of worship, in both the singing and order of services, have been around for sometime and have been a part of some church's traditions (those that would object to the postmodern, seeker-friendly model) for so long that some believe that it is the "ancient" paths.They believe is the right model. But we must not let such assumptions go untested.

To give you an idea of where I'm coming from I will present one example. I've attended churches that will sing the Pledge of Allegiance and/or the Star Spangled Banner on the Fourth of July and Memorial Day to honor the country and men that have fought for our freedom. Many claim they are actually giving the glory to God in doing so, all while publicly thanking the all who served and honoring our country.

As noble as that  may be, it has no place in the corporate worship of God among His covenant people. The Sabbath day is resigned for the worship and honor of Christ the Lord and Him alone and for the edification of His people. I believe it is error to take that day and time to honor men.

I often encounter objections (those that are not questioning my patriotism) like "What is so wrong about that. It is harmless. We are not worshiping these people, we are simply acknowledging that how God has blessed us and raised up such people to give us our freedom." Besides the fact that no one is accusing any one of worshiping people, we would argue that it is not harmless. In fact it is distracting. Attention is being shifted from Christ to men and then back to Christ. People have a hard time focusing on Christ as it is and to add one more distraction can hardly be harmless. Anytime we come into the presence of God distracted, it shows a lack of reverence or fear of God. Not only that it, stifles the work of the Spirit in our lives that we benefit from in the worship of God both in singing unto Him and the proclamation of His Word. I say this as one who always felt this way before I believed in the Regulative Principle of Worship (if it is not commanded in Scripture then it is forbidden).

Perhaps by now people are saying to themselves "Scripture, please?" Very well then. A case can and has been made from Leviticus 10:1-3. We read "Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD has said, ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’ ” And Aaron held his peace." If you notice, the text says that Nadab and Abihu were killed by the Lord, not for doing something that was expressly forbidden nor for doing something drunkenly (as some commentators suggest from v. 9) but for approaching the Lord in a way that He had not commanded. They attempted the worship of God with "strange" or "unauthorized" fire. They took it upon themselves to irreverently approach God (a form of worship). Seemed pretty harmless. Their motives, most likely, were even genuine and sincere. They seemed to be passionate. In modern words their "hearts were into it." There is one problem. It didn't matter, it was unacceptable to God. The sanctification of God's name and His glory is ultimate and He prescribes how that is to be accomplished. His very own words, after He consumed Nadab and Abihu with fire, are "Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified (emphasis mine). It follows, then, that our sincerity and genuineness do not justify everything we tack on "worship" to, as worship.

Here is some commentary on the passage:

For moderns this incident is strange and enigmatic. At first blush it appears that Yahweh is a capricious, vengeful deity, unworthy of human devotion, but it must be remembered that Yahweh is a holy and jealous God, consuming all who profane his glory (cf. Deut 4:24). The manner of the death of these two men accords with the epithet of Yahweh: “Yahweh your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God” (Deut 4:24). Yahweh, the true God, is holy. His holiness is powerful, affecting all that comes into his presence. It cleanses, consumes, or transforms. Its power might be compared to electricity. Electricity is a useful, wonderful source of energy, but in order to work with it safely one must be very careful and astute. Whoever touches uninsulated, hot wires is severely shocked, burned, or, depending on the voltage, instantly killed. When a person approaches God properly, his holiness imparts life (cf. Isa 57:15) and inspires wonder (cf. Exod 3:3–4). But should anything that is profane or unclean enter God’s presence, it is consumed.*

The default objection tends to be "But that is the Old Testament" (or similar sympathies). To this I simply direct the readers attention to Mark 7:1-13, 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 and Rev. 2-3:22.

I am not attempting to "stifle" anyone's "worship." For worship to be "stifled" it must be proven that our practices in church are indeed worship. Un-biblical traditions must not go unchallenged.

I end with a final quote from Malcolm Watts:

Worship is the reverence and homage that we render to the Supreme Being, through the means such as praise, prayer, the reading of Scripture, and the preaching of the Word of God. "Reformed worship" is worship that is strictly according to God's written Word, which is "the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him." It includes everything authorized by Scripture, and excludes everything not authorized by Scripture. Calvin stated the biblical and Reformed view of worship when he wrote this: "We are not to seek from men the doctrine of the true worship of God, for the Lord has faithfully and fully instructed us how he is to be worshiped."*

And the Westminster Confession of Faith chapter 21, article 1:

I. The light of nature shows that there is a God, who has lordship and sovereignty over all, is good, and does good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served, with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the might. But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture.

I believe there is a very real reason the WCF, Savoy Declaration and the LBCF 1689 all say the same thing in this area.

Soli Deo Gloria!

*Hartley, J. E. (2002). Vol. 4: Word Biblical Commentary : Leviticus. Word Biblical Commentary (133). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

* Malcolm Watts, (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 47-48

Weekly Dose Of Lloyd-Jones

But if you say to many people who call themselves Christians, “What does it mean to become a Christian?” they do not know. They have a vague notion that somehow or other you sometimes think about God and about religious matters, and then you try to do a bit of good and live a good life, and, well, that is it—you are a Christian. Or perhaps you were taken to church when you were young and you have just gone on from there. 
They think Christianity is a spirit of friendship and benevolence and a desire to do good. As we have seen, some modern writers say that whenever you find love or kindness, you find God. But I repeat, that is far removed from what we find in the book of Acts. Here is something entirely different. Here are 3,000 people who passed from there to here, from this to that. What happened to them?
The first thing is that the 3,000 people underwent a complete change. Their whole position was revolutionized. Their thinking, their actions, their outlook were all changed. It is as complete as that—and that is Christianity. There is nothing more definite than being a Christian, according to the New Testament; and people who do not know what it is to be a Christian or cannot tell you why they are Christians are by definition not Christians at all. There is something unique, special, specific about being a Christian. You can find many men and women who are not Christians who do a lot of good, think noble thoughts, and are ready to make great sacrifices. But they will tell you they are not Christians, and they are not. The so-called humanist will say, “Everything you people stand for and do, I can do, without any of your doctrine and your shibboleths, without all your accretions and all those myths that you add on to your teaching.”


I was reading an article recently by one of the leading humanists at the present time in which the author was commenting on the programs she listens to on the radio and watches on television. She said, “I notice that they [Christians] are very shy about mentioning God and the Lord Jesus Christ. They are all so anxious to show that after all what they have got is so much like that which is best in the world”—and she is perfectly right. It is not surprising that the vast majority of people are outside the church. But none of that is Christianity. As we have seen, Luke starts off the book of Acts by saying, “The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up.” It is all about Him. And if you do not speak about Him but simply talk about good ideas and good thoughts and how to do this and that, what you are talking about is not Christianity.


So we find here that these people underwent a complete change. How did it happen? It was not the preaching of Peter. If you read Peter’s sermon, you see that he quotes Scriptures, he develops certain arguments. Quite right. Logically sound. He makes his case, and you cannot contradict it. But Peter’s sermon, read in cold print, does not account for the fact that something vital happened to 3,000 people! What accounts for that is the action of the Holy Spirit. “They were pricked in their heart” (Acts 2:37). The men and women standing there and listening to an exposition of certain Old Testament Scriptures were in trouble. They were disturbed, and they cried out. This was the work of the Holy Spirit, and there would never have been a Christian church but for this. This is what makes her; this is what causes her to persist. This is the explanation of the revivals and reformations down through the centuries.

Now this is something that we cannot understand. It is something that happens to us, something that takes place in us, and we ourselves are amazed at it. It is not something we do. Let me make this perfectly clear. You cannot “take up” Christianity. You can take up Christian Science; you can take up many cults; you can take up many movements; you can even join a church. But you cannot take up Christianity. By definition Christianity is something that takes you up. It is not primarily something you do, but something that is done to you. You cannot explain it. You cannot dissect it or analyze it. It is the power of the Holy Spirit.*

Soli Deo Gloria!



*Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (2000). Authentic Christianity (1st U.S. ed.) (48–50). Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.

Thoughts On The Love Of God And Calvin

I normally offer some of my own thoughts and then defer to others but I offer none of my when and instead defer to Calvin:

3. Though this is said in accommodation to the weakness of our capacity, it is not said falsely. For God, who is perfect righteousness, cannot love the iniquity which he sees in all. All of us, therefore, have that within which deserves the hatred of God. Hence, in respect, first, of our corrupt nature; and, secondly, of the depraved conduct following upon it, we are all offensive to God, guilty in his sight, and by nature the children of hell. But as the Lord wills not to destroy in us that which is his own, he still finds something in us which in kindness he can love. For though it is by our own fault that we are sinners, we are still his creatures; though we have brought death upon ourselves he had created us for life. Thus, mere gratuitous love prompts him to receive us into favour. But if there is a perpetual and irreconcilable repugnance between righteousness and iniquity, so long as we remain sinners we cannot be completely received. Therefore, in order that all ground of offence may be removed, and he may completely reconcile us to himself, he, by means of the expiation set forth in the death of Christ, abolishes all the evil that is in us, so that we, formerly impure and unclean, now appear in his sight just and holy. Accordingly, God the Father, by his love, prevents and anticipates our reconciliation in Christ. Nay, it is because he first loves us, that he afterwards reconciles us to himself. But because the iniquity, which deserves the indignation of God, remains in us until the death of Christ comes to our aid, and that iniquity is in his sight accursed and condemned, we are not admitted to full and sure communion with God, unless, in so far as Christ unites us. And, therefore, if we would indulge the hope of having God placable and propitious to us, we must fix our eyes and minds on Christ alone, as it is to him alone it is owing that our sins, which necessarily provoked the wrath of God, are not imputed to us.

4. For this reason Paul says, that God “has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world,” (Eph. 1:3, 4). These things are clear and conformable to Scripture, and admirably reconcile the passages in which it is said, that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,” (John 3:16); and yet that it was “when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,” (Rom. 5:10). But to give additional assurance to those who require the authority of the ancient Church, I will quote a passage of Augustine to the same effect: “Incomprehensible and immutable is the love of God. For it was not after we were reconciled to him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us, but he loved us before the foundation of the world, that with his only begotten Son we too might be sons of God before we were any thing at all. Our being reconciled by the death of Christ must not be understood as if the Son reconciled us, in order that the Father, then hating, might begin to love us, but that we were reconciled to him already, loving, though at enmity with us because of sin. To the truth of both propositions we have the attestation of the Apostle, ‘God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,’ (Rom. 5:8). Therefore he had this love towards us even when, exercising enmity towards him, we were the workers of iniquity. Accordingly in a manner wondrous and divine, he loved even when he hated us. For he hated us when we were such as he had not made us, and yet because our iniquity had not destroyed his work in every respect, he knew in regard to each one of us, both to hate what we had made, and love what he had made.” Such are the words of Augustine (Tract in Jo. 110).

Soli Deo Gloria!

*Calvin, J. (1997). Institutes of the Christian religion. Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Our Covenant God

From the pen of David McKay:

Most Christians, if they have heard of Covenant Theology at all, think of it as cold, obscure, speculative, old-fashioned, artificial, a straitjacket imposed on the Bible. It is tragic that that is the case. No doubt there have been proponents of Covenant Theology who at times have been obscure, speculative, and many other undesirable things. Covenant theologians are, after all, fallible human beings, and sinners too, (although, we trust, saved sinners). At its best, however, Covenant Theology is faithful to the Word of God and full of the warmth of the love of God. When God makes a covenant with his people, it really is ‘a bond of love’, that brings salvation and an eternal hope to people who were dead in sin, ‘without hope and without God in the world’ (Ephesians 2:12).

Covenant Theology does not in any way minimise or overlook the wrath of a holy God on sin, but its focus is on the loving relationship which God in his infinite love establishes with those he takes to be his people. ‘I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people’ (Leviticus 26:12) is a promise to fill the Christian’s heart with joy, and one to make those who are not Christians reconsider what they are missing by living as they do. Could anything be more beautiful than the gracious covenant which the Lord makes with saved sinners?

The theme of God’s covenant with his people runs all the way through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and relates in one way or another to every area of theology. In the course of this study, therefore, we look at subjects ranging from the nature of God, through the provision of salvation in Christ, to the ‘last things’ in what is known as ‘eschatology’. We will try throughout to listen to what Scripture says, without forcing it into a preconceived framework or attempting to make its teaching neater than it actually is. We believe, however, that the approach adopted by Covenant Theology serves to show the wonderful unity of God’s revelation to us, without in any way hiding its rich diversity. To see the way in which the Lord deals with his people by means of a covenant stirs wonder and evokes worship.*

Soli Deo Gloria!


*McKay, D. (2001). The Bond of Love: Covenant Theology and the Contemporary World (7–8). Fearn, Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus Publications.

Thoughts On The Love Of God And John Gerstner

There is little doubt that the love of God is the most popular therefore most preached on attribute of God. Many a Christian and unbeliever know about the "love" of God. The question is it the correct teaching of the love of God? I have read and listened to countless sermons and teachings on the "love" of God that have made me cringe and left me scratching my head (I, too, have been guilty, in the past, of botching the love of God).

The impression that is often left is that God "loves" everyone equally the same unconditionally and that He has the power to save everyone if He so desires but "loves" people so much that He leaves it to their "free-will" to "accept" His love and the many who do not God will be eternally saddened that He has to punish them. Thus God becomes some weak God that has the power to save all but doesn't even though He loves everyone the same. Aside from the problem that everyone who "accepts" His love now has some room to boast since they were smart enough to receive His "love," we are faced with the explicate declaration of God Himself that, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated" (Ro. 9:13). Spin the word "hated" any way you wish but one things is undeniably clear- God did not love Esau they way He loved Jacob and such love was not contingent upon their so called "free-will" or acceptance of His love (Ro. 9:11). Did God "force" Jacob to love Him? Of course not. They amazing thing about grace is that it wins the hardened sinner over. That is to say it takes the Christ rejecter and makes him new. The Spirit of God breathes life into the person dead in their trespasses and sins so that he is now convicted of his sin and the judgement of  God and understands that, speaking of Jesus, the Word of God says "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Co 5:21). In biblical terms it is called "regeneration" or "born again."

That is love! If the Lord were to leave us all to our own wills, apart from His saving grace, we would all perish. God first acted upon us before we called upon Christ just as we read in Ephesians 2:1-5 "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved (emphasis mine)." Notice that it is God performing that action making us alive. God gives life not potential life. Dead people do not raise themselves. But since God is rich in mercy and is love He grants life to those he predestined to adopt, in love, in eternity past (Eph. 1:3-14).

And contrary to popular assumption, that God gives every single sinner a measure of faith and it is up to each one tho exercise it because He loves everyone the same, God does not act upon every sinner in a saving manner else all would be saved. The Gospel is to be proclaimed to all but that does mean all have a measure of faith to believe. In fact the only place the Word of God mentions a measure of faith being granted is spoken of in reference to believers (Ro. 12:3) in connection with spiritual gifts. So unless on is willing to assert that God grants every single individual that has ever lived a spiritual gift (even those currently perishing in hell) it is quiet silly to assume that faith is given to everyone.

It is at this point that many a believer will get emotionally involved and upset thinking that if that is true then God is unjust or unfair. God must "love" everyone equally the same they believe (and most likely because they were always taught) and in comes the common cliche, "God loves the sinner but hates the sin!" To this John Gerstner rightly points out:

"Repent or Perish" forces people to ponder seriously the slogan, "God hates the sin and loves the sinner." Is a necessary repentance consistent with "God loves the sinner"? If God loves the sinner while he is alive, it is strange that God sends him to hell as soon as he dies. God loves the sinner to death? Loves him to everlasting torment?

There is something wrong here. Either God loves the sinner and will not send him into the furnace of His eternal wrath; or He sends him into His eternal wrath and does not love him.

What leads almost everyone to believe that God loves the sinner is that God does the sinner so much good. He bestows so many favors including letting him continue to live. How can God let the sinner live and give him so many blessings, unless he loves him? There is a kind of love between God and sinners. We call it the "love of benevolence." That means the love of goodwill...God can do well to the sinner without loving him with the other kind of love...*

Understanding the sovereign love of God becomes only problematic when we know little of His holiness and sovereignty. That is also to say that if you know little of His holiness you know little of His love or if you know nothing of His holiness you know nothing of His love.

Soli Deo Gloria!


* Quoted by Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology (Boston, MA.: Reformation Ministries International, 2003), pp. 107-108

They Hate Jesus

I'm not speaking of atheists or agnostics. No, I'm referring to the many professors of Christ that shape and fashion Him into something that resembles more of a man. I'm speaking in regards to those that preach a Jesus from the pulpit to which even the demons say about, not only them, but the Jesus they proclaim "Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?”


It is the wolves (I know of no "gentle" way to put it) that isolate the "love" of God in John 3:16, redefine or ignore the word "perish," all while denying that God is wrathful because He is holy and good while sin is evil committed against Him and that those outside of Christ will face such wrath as declared further in the same chapter (John 3:36). Or even those who may say they believe it but fail to speak of it because they wish not to offend any "seeker" and give God a bad name. Those that believe they can give God a better testimony of His name than He has for Himself. It is those that forget that it was one and the same Christ who said not only (in regards to His sheep) "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love" (Jn 15:9), but also “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish" (Lk 13:2–3).


They hate Jesus who mock penal substitutionary atonement and the blood of Christ. Those who call it "cosmic child abuse" or think it grotesque because it focuses too much on Jesus and not enough on them. Those who believe and teach that God loves you and sees you outside of Christ and are completely content with contradicting the Apostle Paul who said "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith" (Php 3:7–9) because they, in some sense, believe his words are less inspired and therefore fallible.

They hate Jesus who only "love" Him because they believe He "loves" them because they are so good and lovable and He is dependent on them escaping "hell on earth" by living the way He lived and being a "follower"of Jesus for His satisfaction else He will be eternally saddened if they don't receive His "abundant life."

They hate Jesus who scorn and mock doctrine and theology.

They hate Jesus who must distort, pervert and bludgeon His word because they do not like what it says.

John Wenham says it much nicer:

All theological error is due in some way or other to the misuse  of the Word of God, whether by addition or subtraction or distortion. Traditions of men are always in danger of blunting the Word of God.*

Why does it matter? Wenham answers:

It is when we see the Creator standing over against His creation, distinct from it, yet controlling  every particle of it; loving his children with infinite love, yet hating evil with infinite hatred, that we see theism in all its glory. Any form of Christianity which begins to confuse Creator and creature, or which begins to forget the severity of God's wrath, is departing from the truth and is detracting from the glory of God.*

Oh they hate Jesus. Remember all they say and teach concerning Him comes from the heart as Christ declares, "But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone" (Mt 15:18–20 emphasis mine); "The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks" (Lk 6:45 emphasis mine).

Soli Deo Gloria!

*John W. Wenham, The Goodness of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 1974), p. 185
*Ibid, p. 184