Erskine on law and gospel
March 1, 2011
Here’s an old and helpful hymn on the law and the gospel from a true Scots worthy, Ralph Erskine (1685-1752):
The law supposing I have all,
Does ever for perfection call;
The gospel suits my total want,
And all the law can seek does grant.
The law could promise life to me,
If my obedience perfect be;
But grace does promise life upon
My Lord’s obedience alone.
The law says, Do, and life you’ll win;
But grace says, Live, for all is done;
The former cannot ease my grief,
The latter yields me full relief.
The law will not abate a mite,
The gospel all the sum will quit;
There God in thret’nings is array’d
But here in promises display’d.
The law excludes not boasting vain,
But rather feeds it to my bane;
But gospel grace allows no boasts,
Save in the King, the Lord of Hosts.
Lo! in the law Jehovah dwells,
But Jesus is conceal’d;
Whereas the gospel’s nothing else
But Jesus Christ reveal’d.
Paul Tripp has written a short piece about how the gospel affects life right now. The original appears at Desiring God.
Jason sat in front of me with the head-down, humped-shouldered posture of a confused and disappointed man. It wasn’t that Jason’s life had been a sad narrative of personal suffering. Sure, he had faced some hard things, but they were the typical things that you face when you’re living in a world that has been broken by sin. It wasn’t that Jason was alienated and friendless. He was surrounded by a group of less than perfect, but pretty faithful companions. It wasn’t that Jason was impoverished or homeless. No, he had a decent job and an adequate condo.
Jason’s problem was that he was lost in the middle of his own faith. It had become harder and harder for him to connect the beauty of what he believed to the gritty and often difficulty realities of his daily life. Jason’s problem was that he carried a gospel around with him that had a great big hole in the middle of it.
Jason could explain to you what it meant to say that he had been “saved by grace,” and he knew that he was going to spend eternity with his Savior. His problem was in the here and now. Day after day, in situation after situation and relationship after relationship, Jason didn’t carry with him a vibrant and practical sense of the nowism of the grace of Jesus Christ. Yes, Jason believed in life after death, but he desperately needed to understand life before death; the kind of radical life you will live when you understand what Christ has given you for the life he has called you to right here, right now.
Let me suggest four critical aspects of the nowism of the gospel (there are more) that Jason seemed functionally blind to.
1. Grace will decimate what you think of you, while it gives you a security of identity you’ve never had.
Grace will expose your sin, but it will not leave you without identity. Grace had liberated Jason, but he didn’t know it or live like it. He had not only been forgiven and empowered, but he had been given a brand new identity. Jason had been freed from looking inward for his identity. No longer did he have to measure his potential by his track record or the size of the problems he was facing.
His potential was as great as the grace of Christ. He had been freed from looking outward for his identity. No longer did he have to search for identity in his Read the rest of this entry »
Cross and criticism
March 23, 2010
Few things in life are more difficult to handle rightly than criticism. How hard it is to speak and to respond in a gospel-centered way. As a pastor, I am a frequent recipient of criticism–the constructive and the destructive, the accurate, the half-true, and the utterly false, the well-timed and the ill-timed, the gracious and the malicious–I have learned that how I respond reveals a lot about me. What do I do with my critics? Do I shrink them in my field of vision so that I no longer acknowledge them, regard them, pay any attention to them, share with them, or regard them as part of the family? Or do I inflate them in my field of vision so that I brood over their words and think about them constantly, see them as larger than they really are, give them control over my feelings and decisions, or allow them to lead me around like a bull with a ring in his nose?
I commend to you Alfred J. Poirier’s “The Cross and Criticism,” which appeared in the Spring, 1999, issue of The Journal of Biblical Counseling. Here’s an excerpt:
In light of God’s judgment and justification of the sinner in the cross of Christ, we can begin to discover how to deal with any and all criticism. By agreeing with God’s criticism of me in Christ’s cross, I can face any criticism man may lay against me. In other words, no one can criticize me more than the cross has. And the most devastating criticism turns out to be the finest mercy. If you thus know yourself as having been crucified with Christ, then you can respond to any criticism, even mistaken or hostile criticism, without bitterness, defensiveness, or blameshifting. Such responses typically exacerbate and intensify conflict, and lead to the rupture of relationships. You can learn to hear criticism as constructive and not condemnatory because God has justified you.
Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? (Rom. 8:33-34a).
Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil on my head. My head will not refuse it (Ps. 141:5).
That’s Easter
April 16, 2009
Below are two videos we showed in last Sunday evening’s Changed by Jesus service. They are produced by an Anglican church in London, St. Helen’s Bishopsgate:
Book review: Death by Love
December 2, 2008
But far be it from me
to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world (Galatians 6:14). Jesus’ death on the cross is the place where the justice, love, mercy and wisdom of God are most clearly displayed. The depth of our sin and the heights of God’s love cannot be grasped apart from the cross. Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, and Gerry Breshears, professor of theology at Western Seminary, have co-authored a book that seeks to apply the work of Christ to the real-life mess of people’s lives in their new book Death by Love: Letters from the Cross (Crossway, 2008).
Death by Love has an intriguing format. Each chapter begins with a brief profile of a real person whom Driscoll has counselled. Then follows a pastoral letter to that person in which Driscoll and Breshears apply biblical teaching about the person and work of Christ to the issues of sin and grace in that his/her life. The chapter concludes with an “Answers to Common Questions” about the theology presented in the letter. A look through the table of contents reveals a list of painful sins and problems:
Introduction: We Killed God: Jesus Is Our Substitutionary Atonement
“Demons Are Tormenting Me”: Jesus Is Katie’s Christus Victor
“Lust Is My God”: Jesus Is Thomas’s Redemption
“My Wife Slept with My Friend”: Jesus Is Luke’s New Covenant Sacrifice
“I Am a ‘Good’ Christian”: Jesus Is David’s Gift Righteousness
“I Molested a Child”: Jesus Is John’s Justification
“My Dad Used to Beat Me”: Jesus Is Bill’s Propitiation
“He Raped Me”: Jesus Is Mary’s Expiation
“My Daddy Is a Pastor”: Jesus Is Gideon’s Unlimited Limited Atonement
“I Am Going to Hell”: Jesus Is Hank’s Ransom
“My Wife Has a Brain Tumor”: Jesus Is Caleb’s Christus Exemplar
“I Hate My Brother”: Jesus Is Kurt’s Reconciliation
“I Want to Know God”: Jesus Is Susan’s Revelation
Appendix: Recommended Reading on the Cross
Driscoll speaks to each situation with candor and compassion. He is not afraid to say hard things. Best of all, he skillfully applies the person and work of Christ to each person’s needs: overcoming bitterness, rejecting self-righteousness, dealing with heinous sins of others, putting away malice and bitterness, turning away from sexual sin and addictions. The one theological objection I have is in “My Daddy is a Pastor,” a chapter written to his youngest son Gideon. He encourages his son not to take faith for granted (which is good) but does so in the context of a doctrine he calls “unlimited limited atonement.” Driscoll confuses the question of the power of the atonement with question of its design. He wants to safeguard the Reformed doctrine of “limited atonement” from the charge that it leaves no room for a sincere offer of the gospel to everyone without distinction or for a reconciliation of the world by the cross, but his explanation seems more confusing than enlightening.
Even with that bit of theological quibbling, I would recommend Death by Love without hesitation. It has given me fresh courage to speak of Christ and his finished work with greater boldness into the mess of people’s lives. It has refreshed my personal communion with God by enlarging the shadow of the cross in my own life. Take, and read, my friends.
The promise and the promiser
July 26, 2008
In preparing to preach tomorrow on 2 Peter 1:3-4, I found this bit of verse in Octavius Winslow’s The Precious Things of God:
How oft have sin and Satan strove to rend my soul from Thee, my God!
But everlasting is Thy love, and Jesus seals it with His blood.
The oath and promise of the Lord join to confirm the wondrous grace;
Eternal power performs the word, and fills all heaven with endless praise.
Amidst temptations sharp and long, my soul to this dear refuge flies;
Hope is my anchor, firm and strong, while tempests blow and billows rise.
The gospel bears my spirit up; a faithful and unchanging God
Lays the foundation of my hope in oaths and promises and blood.
Tops of the mountains of our guilt
April 8, 2008
“Standing at the foot of the cross, and beholding the Redeemer in his expiring agony, the Christian may indeed gather courage. When I think of my sin, it seems impossible that any atonement should ever be adequate; but when I think of Christ’s death it seems impossible, that any sin should ever be great enough to need such an atonement as that. There is in the death of Christ enough and more than enough. There is not only a sea in which to drown our sins, but the very tops of the mountains of our guilt are covered. Forty cubits upwards hath this red sea prevailed. There is not only enough to put our sins to death, but enough to bury them and hide them out of sight. I say it boldly and without a figure, — the eternal arm of God now nerved with strength, now released from the bondage in which justice held it, is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Christ.”
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled “The Believer’s Challenge,” delivered June 5, 1859
Whether we are elected
October 10, 2007
We are not saved because we believe that we are elect; rather, we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Listen to the counsel of the Second Helvetic Confession:
We therefore find fault with those who outside of Christ ask whether they are elected. And what has God decreed concerning them before all eternity? For the preaching of the Gospel is to be heard, and it is to be believed; and it is to be held as beyond doubt that if you believe and are in Christ, you are elected. For the Father has revealed unto us in Christ the eternal purpose of his predestination, as I have just now shown from the apostle in II Tim. 1:9-10. This is therefore above all to be taught and considered, what great love of the Father toward us is revealed to us in Christ. We must hear what the Lord himself daily preaches to us in the Gospel, how he calls and says: “Come to me all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Also, “It is not the will of my Father that one of these little ones should perish” (Matt. 18:14).
Let Christ, therefore be the looking glass, in whom we may contemplate our predestination. We shall have a sufficiently clear and sure testimony that we are inscribed in the Book of Life if we have fellowship with Christ, and he is ours and we are his in true faith.
There is no plan B…
April 23, 2007
Dr. Elliott Greene has been doing a marvelous job at FPC Kosciusko’s annual Bible Conference (look for mp3s of the sermons later this week at fpckosciusko.org), taking us through the book of Ephesians under the title ‘What the Church Would Be If She Knew What She Was.’ In introducing Dr. Greene on Friday evening I read for the second time an excerpt from Dr. Ligon Duncan’s introductory address at the recent Twin Lakes Fellowship. He had posted it on his blog. It sums up so much of the vision of what The Sweet Dropper is about and what FPC Kosciusko is about:
“What do we long to see come out of the Twin Lakes Fellowship?
“. . . a strong coalition of Bible-saturated, truth-driven, God-entranced, prayer-soaked, aggressively evangelistic, Christ-treasuring and exalting, Spirit-filled, sovereign grace-loving, missions-advancing, hell-robbing, strong-thinking, real-need-exposing, soul-winning, mind-engaging, vagueness-rejecting, wartime-life-style-pursuing, risk-taking, justice-advancing, Scripture-expounding, cross-cherishing, homosexuality-opposing, abortion-denouncing, racism-resisting, heaven-desiring, imputation-of-an-alien-righteousness-proclaiming, justification-by-faith-alone-apart-from-doing-preaching, error-exposing, complementarian, joyful, humble, loving, courageous, happy pastors working together for the Gospel. (Thanks to John Piper for many of these words and thoughts).
“And we want to see them leading strong evangelical churches who, while they hold as faithfully and biblically as they know how to certain doctrinal distinctives not shared by all other biblical evangelical churches, band together for the Gospel on a basis that is robustly doctrinal, historic, orthodox, reformational, world-opposing-while-at-the-same-time-world-serving, Bible-preaching, scriptural-theology-inculcating, real-conversion-prizing, deep biblical evangelism-practicing, New Testament church-membership-and-leadership-implementing, church-discipline-applying, healthy and growing Disciple-making – all for the display of God’s glory in the churches.
“May the Lord raise up such a ministerial fraternity – not on the basis of doctrinal minimalism but rather on the basis of shared conviction of the truth and Gospel forbearance in the areas where we differ; not to the detriment of our convictions regarding our distinctives in faith and practice in the local churches and families of churches we serve, but to their enhancement. And may the Lord raise up churches that are truly a witness to grace in this passing age, a display of the glory and power of God’s saving grace, outposts of heaven, suburbs of eternity. For the church is God’s strategy, and there is no plan B.”
Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave–a review
April 19, 2007
Lynard Skynard sang That Smell. You remember that one, don’t you?
Whiskey bottles, and brand new cars, oak tree you’re in my way
There’s too much coke and too much smoke
Look what’s going on inside you.
Ooooh that smell, can’t you smell that smell
Ooooh that smell–the smell of death surrounds you.
I should have read or sung that when I preached on Proverbs 9 last Sunday night (available at fpckosciusko.org). I owe Eddie Thomas thanks for bringing the Skynard song back to the forefront of my mind. A lot of what I said in the sermon about temptation and the voluntary slavery of sin was drawn from an excellent book by Dr. Edward T. Welch, Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave–Finding Hope in the Power of the Gospel (Presbyterian and Reformed, 2001).
Welch exposes the addict’s condition: a worship disorder that leads him/her to heed to the call of the ‘strange woman’ (to use the language of the early chapters of Proverbs) and begin a slowly developing courtship. Going into her house leads to a horrific discovery: ‘the dead are there…her guests are in the depths of Sheol’ (Proverbs 9:18). Her feast of pleasure is a banquet in the grave.
This book is a valuable resource, even if you are not an addict of some kind or ministering to an addict. Addicts are not a category to themselves when it comes to sin. Rather, Welch reminds us, ‘there is no “us” and “them” with addictions. The descent should feel familiar to us all…Having known something of the voluntary slavery [to sin] ourselves, we are more patient with those who are ensnared. We are also more eager to partner with them and lead them to Jesus Christ, the One who liberates them and carries us out of the pit’ [66].
Since my initial read of the book last fall, I find myself coming back again and again to this book in both my preaching and one-to-one ministry. Welch is straightforward in his assessment of the 12-step model that governs most treatment programs, acknowledging the model’s strengths and also unsparingly critiquing the self-reliance and self-righteousness that the 12-step model fosters. He provides a number of helpful ways to confront, listen, and bring our thoughts back again and again to the gospel, giving special emphasis to the vital role the Church plays in being a place of healing and ministry through the ordinary means of grace. Welch is especially skillful in bringing the reader to consider the addictions in his/her own life, widening the scope far beyond drug and alcohol dependence. He writes in the preface:
Theology makes a difference. It is the infrastructure of our lives. Build it poorly and the building will eventually collapse in ruins. Build it well and you will be prepared for anything. The basic theology for addictions is that the root of the problem goes deeper than our genetic makeup. Addictions are ultimately a disorder of worship. Will we worship ourselves and our own desires or will we worship the true God? Through this lens, all Scripture comes alive for the addict. No longer are there just a few proof texts about drunkenness. Instead, since all Scripture addresses our fundamental disorder of worship, all Scripture is rich with application for the addict. [xvi]
In his commentary on Galatians 5:4, Luther asks, ‘What do you do when you are caught in some sin? If your answer is, “I’ll do better next time,” then you have no need of Christ…Instead, despair of your own righteousness and trust boldly in Christ.’ Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave echoes Luther’s answer and equips us to engage into the fierce and painful battles against sin that all of us face.
