In the first chapter of Isaiah, we find all the necessary foundation stones for a true and robust evangelicalism. The Lord has called a people to Himself, having brought up children to Himself (Is. 1:2). So they have a formal connection to Him, like good Episcopalians and Presbyterians, but those children have rebelled against Him. …
Morbid Marvin
So here comes a brief post straight atcha to respond to a couple of comments in my previous post on regeneration. The first issue has to do with a question about my comment that an Augustinian view of regeneration leads to fatalism. An extreme form of the kind of fatalism I have in mind can …
A Sublime Kind of Disrespect
I have written a great deal on regeneration as it relates to the Holy Spirit’s sovereignty. The wind blows where He wishes, and is not bottled up by anything whatever that we can do — whether we are talking about decision cards or baptismal fonts. Understanding this is a function of basic piety, and we …
A Stuffed Regeneration Bird
This morning I tweeted the following: “Some men display their copy of the Westminster Confession upon their shelves proudly, the highest achievement of the taxidermist’s art.” A friend wrote to ask what I meant by it. Would I say the same about the Heidelberg (I would), and what do I see as the solution? Do …
An Evangelical Center
Life is right at the center of God’s purposes for this dead world of ours. But the way into this new world He is fashioning is quite similar to the way we got into the old world — we have to be born into it. A new world, a new creation, requires, of necessity, a …
The Expulsive Power of a New Affection
I need to confess that I have kind of a crock pot brain. I throw things in there and hope that applied heat for an extended period of time will result in an acceptable stew. Occasionally something will just float to the surface and surprise me, something that happened to me just last week. I …
The Bride of Christ as Hot Mess
I am sometimes asked why I focus on the new birth so much. The question can be asked and answered on many different levels, but the foundational answer is that our condition is desperate. Like the Laodiceans (Rev. 3:18), we need to buy refined gold from Jesus, white garments to cover our shame, and eye …
Future Makers
It may sound inspiring to say “you can change your future,” but this raises the question. From what? To what? And how can you know that you did? There is no way to two-track it in order to compare them side by side. In order to understand your relationship to the future, you must understand …
The Immediacy of the Effectual Call
“Instead of the Church and the sacraments, the means of grace, being conceived, as they are represented in the Scriptures, and as they must be thought of in all healthful religious conceptions of them, as instrumentalities which the Holy Spirit uses in working salvation, the Holy Spirit is made an instrument which the Church, the …
Obey Your Confession
Note: I have a book in process which consists of my notes on the Westminster Confession. What follows, Lord willing, will be part of the introduction to that book. The Westminster is basically the systematics course for Greyfriars Hall. In case you were curious. Some of you have had occasion to look at the Constitution …