15 Saturday Nov 2014
Posted in Christianity, Personal, Theology
Tags
emotions, experience, friendship, Gospel, homosexuality, loneliness, Romans, Scripture, sexual sin, sexuality, sin, temptation, witnessing
A couple of days ago, one of my classmates sent me a PM through Twitter, asking me my thoughts about Andrew Wilson’s recent piece for ThinkTheology. We PMed back and forth on the subject, but as I was at work (sorry, boss), I couldn’t think it through as it deserved. Now seemed like a good time.
19 Friday Oct 2012
Posted in Christianity, Personal, Theology
Tags
baptism, Gospel, John Chrysostom, John Murray, Paul, prayer, repentance, Romans, temptation
There is a total difference between surviving sin and reigning sin, the regenerate in conflict with sin and the unregenerate complacent with sin. It is one thing for sin to live in us; it is another for us to live in sin.
–John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans 1955), 145
I am baptized into Christ’s death, John Chrysostom tells me, by virtue of dying as Christ did.
11 Friday May 2012
Posted in Book Discussion, Christianity, Theology
Tags
culture, deception, false teaching, leadership, Paul, psalms, repentance, Romans, sin, teaching, temptation, Thomas Brooks
To get this book from Amazon, click on the book cover.
Thomas Brooks’ book Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices talks about various ways the Christian is dissuaded from the life Christ wants him or her to live. One such idea is to present God as made up entirely of mercy, to the exclusion of other things which can be said about him.
One way the Christian can fight the urge of our time to view God this way is to consider that the people of God who have gone before didn’t consider God’s mercy as an excuse to sin. The psalmist wrote,
3 For your steadfast love is before my eyes,
and I walk in your faithfulness.4 I do not sit with men of falsehood,
nor do I consort with hypocrites.
5 I hate the assembly of evildoers,
and I will not sit with the wicked.–Psalm 26:3-5, ESV
27 Tuesday Jul 2010
Posted in Book Discussion, Theology
Part 6 of a series discussing C. F. W. Walther’s important treatise Law and Gospel: How to Read and Apply the Bible.
The Law tells us what to do. It doesn’t give us the strength to carry out its demands; instead, it urges us on in an unwillingness to keep the Law. When the Law has forced its way into the heart, the heart rebels against it (against God himself) and becomes furious at the idea that God would demand such impossible things from him/her. This even leads to them cursing God and wishing Him dead. “The effect of preaching the Law, then, is to increase people’s lust for sinning,” says Walther.
Second, the Law offers the person no means to free himself from sin and throws him into despair.
Third, if the only teaching applied to people is the Law, then they despair, die and perish in their sin. More on this in a future post…
Come on, Dave you may say. Where is THIS taught in Scripture?
