INTRODUCTION As the people of God, we must not ever be content with unanswered prayer. We cry out to the Lord, and we do not do this because we want to hear ourselves talking in a religious way. We do this because we seek deliverance and salvation. THE TEXT Unto thee will I cry, O …
Sweet Purple Doctrine
The Poems of Rowan Williams (Eerdmans, 2002, 111 pp. Rowan Williams is the current Archbishop of Canterbury. This is the second book of his I have read, and the first that I have finished. The first book, his treatment of the heretic Arius, was scholarly and well-written, but it lost me somewhere and I ditched. …
Talking Reasonably to My Windshield
A friend recently gave me a couple of CDs of a recent broadcast of The White Horse Inn with Michael Horton. While listening to the program (I am not done yet) a couple of comments caught my attention. I think that if we worked though the issues surrounding these comments, we might have the possibility …
The Slavery of Relativism
Dear visionaries, Susanna has outed me. Was that nice? I ask you. First things first: she says, “In my ‘simplistically relativist’ world some things are always wrong . . .” I do not want to say that anything was wrong with your history courses, but something was seriously askew in your philosophy and ethics study. …
Preparing the Tongue for Worship
No man can tame the tongue, James tells us. But the Word of God also tells us that what is impossible for men is possible with God. What is impossible for the flesh is easy for grace. We have thanked God for the work He is doing in our midst. It is right that we …
Plus Nothing
The points made in the previous post apply in another way to the problem posed for sola fide by theological Arminianism. To be faithful to Scripture we have to reject all notions of “faith-plus-something-else” salvation. Salvation must be all of God. The ground of our salvation must be Christ and His work alone. Just as …
Faith Alone
Faith is the alone instrument that God uses to bring justification to the individual believer. This faith that He uses is the real thing, living faith, faith that looks to Christ alone (apart from any defective works that person might have). But a very common form of “defective works” would have to include defective theories …
That We Might Be One in You
Our Father in heaven, You have given us the rest we enjoy from our physical labors, and You have given us the rest of our salvation. We ask that we would be marked as people of grace, rest, delight, and kindness. As we look forward to worship tomorrow, we ask that You would bless this …
Persevering Grace
It cannot be the case that all who are covenantally “in Christ” by virtue of baptism are in exactly the same position as regards the grace and favor of God—with no distinction save that some persevere. To think that having “all grace” except for persevering grace is somehow reassuring is to have a wildly skewed …
Joy and Strength/Psalm 21
As with many of the psalms, David intends himself in the description, but under the inspiration of the Spirit, the language transcends David’s situation, and finds its fullest fulfillment in the triumph and victory of the Lord Jesus. “The king shall joy in thy strength, O LORD; and in thy salvation how greatly shall he …