Category Archives: The Church

Jesus the Very Thought of Thee

Posted by Jay on January 13, 2012 1 comment

Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.

Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound than Thy blest Name,
O Savior of mankind!

O Hope of every contrite heart,
O Joy of all the meek,
To those who fall, how kind Thou art!
How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find? Ah, this
Nor tongue nor pen can show;
The love of Jesus, what it is
None but His loved ones know.

O Jesus! light of all below!
Thou fount of life and fire!
Surpassing all the joys we know,
And all we can desire.

No other source have we but Thee,
Soul-thirst to satisfy.
Exhaustless spring! the waters free!
All other streams are dry.

Jesus, our only Joy be Thou,
As Thou our Prize wilt be;
Jesus, be Thou our Glory now,
And through eternity.

Listen to this Hymn

- Jesus the Very Thought of Thee (Bernard of Clairvaux)

Justification by Christ Alone

Posted by Jay on January 6, 2012 1 comment

Enjoy this outstanding lecture by the late John Gerstner as he compares the Biblical understanding of justification by faith alone to the Roman Catholic heresy and the modern day easy-believism.

Gospel-Centered Sanctification

Posted by Jay on January 2, 2012 9 comments

We just finished up another episode of Puritan Voices last week and our focus was on the importance of the gospel in the believer’s life. Much of our emphasis really came down to sanctification and how the believer should “preach the gospel to themselves” on a constant basis and through this we can achieve true sanctification. Over the last year or so, I’ve followed authors who promote this idea of “gospel-centered sanctification” but the more I really look deeply into this teaching it seems to improperly promote a resting faith in both justification and sanctification without the call to the believer to pursue sanctification through an active faith as a result of regeneration. Are we straying from the Biblical truths that our holiness and sanctification stems from our union with Christ (John 15) through a real change in our heart and dispositions? There are clear imperatives in Scripture to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Gospel-centered sanctification teachings seem to fall short in handling those imperatives. Have we forgotten that Christ is the vine and we are the branches and apart from Him we can do absolutely nothing? I believe so and therefore we must be very careful in how we proclaim what is commonly called gospel-centered sanctification. It has some validity to be sure. We as Christians should preach the glorious gospel to ourselves but neglecting the reality of regeneration is not being faithful to what Scripture teaches as a whole with regard to progressive sanctification, in my humble opinion.

I’ve been an advocate of this teaching for quite some time, but after really looking deeper into what Scripture says I believe it to have shortcomings with regards to the right understanding of faith’s role in progressive sanctification and a neglect to recognize Christ Himself and our union with Him as the core of our sanctification and not resting faith. (Faith is essential in sanctification. I’m not denying that. But’s it’s important to realize the type of faith being discussed.) For example, it’s important to recognize that justifying faith is resting faith [in Christ], and sanctifying faith is active faith. The Christian life is one of constant rest, and constant labor. (James 2; 1 John 3:3-9)

Don’t get me wrong. I commend those who rightly proclaim the joy and necessity for believers to preach the gospel to themselves. I need to preach the gospel to myself constantly! There is great truth in this gospel-centered focus and it is where the Church needs to be. But, we must not neglect the full counsel of Scripture and the duality of a faith that rests and a faith that acts. Both must be proclaimed in a healthy balance. Like the old hymn writer put it, “trust [passive faith] and obey [active faith] for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey.”

I commend a most excellent article by Calvin Beisner on his critique of this particular element of Sonship Theology where he does an outstanding job of explaining the errors in this teaching as well as pointing us in the right direction. May God’s Word prevail and may we be kept by His power rightly diving the Word of truth!

Eager to get your thoughts on this topic.

Here’s the link to Calvin Beisner’s article in pdf format.

Here is an article by Joel Taylor that also focuses on this issue.

Soli Deo Gloria!

A Hellish Heaven

Posted by Jay on December 9, 2011 2 comments

“Heaven would be hell to me without Christ.” – Thomas Goodwin

This beautiful quote from the Puritan Thomas Goodwin also reminds me of a question John Piper asks in his book God is the Gospel: would you be happy in heaven if Christ were not there? Before the Lord saved me I was a professing believer and my desire for heavenly things was strictly carnal. I wanted the everlasting life and of course to escape hell. I wanted the golden streets and the pearly gates but I did not want God. I wanted to go to heaven, I just didn’t want God to be there. I was ashamed of Christ and I never spoke of Him to others. I’m so thankful that the Lord in His sovereign grace turned my heart of stone to a heart of flesh and granted me the gift of repentance and faith in His Son. He saved a man who for most of his life professed faith but possessed it not and was ashamed of the gospel and it’s Author. It’s only through being born from above by His power and grace that I can echo the words of Goodwin that heaven would truly be hell without Christ.

I know there are many people who believe they are seeking God. Through church attendance, morality, activities and even a head-knowledge of who Christ is (James 2:19), they believe they are heaven-bound. But Scripture speaks otherwise. Not a single person outside of Christ seeks God. Period. Paul tells us in Romans that people don’t seek God. (Romans 3:11) The reality is that people seek the things of God but they don’t seek Him. They want heaven and all God’s benefits but they simply don’t want Him. They truly could be happy in heaven if Christ were not there. This is why I laugh at so-called “seeker sensitive” churches that model their worship after and for unbelievers. Unbelievers and nominal Christians aren’t seeking God. They are seeking health, happiness and the American dream and in their minds God is often a way to get those things. Seeker sensitive churches simply feed this devilish lie. This is why false teachers like Joel Osteen pack their seats service after service with people who want everything God (and the world) has to offer except true salvation and the ultimate result of that salvation: God Himself. Salvation truly is a means to an end. And that end is unhindered communion for all eternity with God in Christ. John sums up heaven for us in five beautiful words: “we will see His face.” (Revelation 22:4)

The grand reality is that God must seek us before we will seek Him. We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19) God causes our dead souls to be born from above and then and only then do we come to Him in repentance and faith. Paul describes regeneration as a miracle greater than that of the creation account. (2 Corinthians 4:6)

Do you love Christ or do you love His benefits? One affection is the result of a transformed heart. The other is a natural desire of the fallen nature. If you do love Christ above all things, rejoice in His sovereign grace and be humbled that nothing inherently in you caused this regenerative miracle. (John 1:13) If you honestly can say that you’d be happy in heaven without Christ, cry out to the Lord Almighty to open your eyes to His glory in the face of Jesus Christ and embrace Him in repentance and faith. All who come to Him He will in no wise cast out. (John 6:37)

Soli Deo Gloria

Tempted and Tried

Posted by Jay on December 9, 2011 No comments

I am working my way through an excellent book by Dr. Russell Moore entitled Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph and Christ. Below is a snipper from the chapter entitled Starving to Death where Moore gives excellent Biblical insight into the root issues behind sin and how Satan works in the lives of believers. It’s refreshing to see a book that highlites the reality of the war with sin and temptation in the lives of believers and how God often uses that struggle to conform us more into the image of Christ. I also admire Moore’s understanding of how important it is for the community of the church to bear one another’s burdens through a biblical understanding of the struggles with sin in believer’s lives. I highly recommend this book. It’s well written and also gives some very excellent O.T. insight that often has the reader saying, “oh now I see the connection!” I know I’ve already had some “aha!” moments as I plow through this book.

Enjoy this snippet:

Sometimes we actually empower Satan by the way we speak of Christian conversion. We highlight the testimony of the ex-alcoholic who says, “Since I met Jesus I’ve never wanted another drink.” Now that happens sometimes, and we should give thanks for God’s power here. But this liberation is no more miraculous, indeed in some ways less so, than the repentant drunk who says, “Every time I hear a clink of ice in a glass I tremble with desire, but God is faithful in keeping me sober.”

The girl with the same-sex desires might conclude she is doomed to be a lesbian because she isn’t drawn to boys and still fights her attraction to girls. Family members who have to cut up their credit cards to keep from spending every paycheck on what they see advertised may conclude they’re just not “spiritual” enough to follow Christ because they still war against their wants. Nonsense! You are not what you want. You are who you are. And that’s defined by the Word of God. It might be that God frees your appetite from whatever it’s drawn toward, but usually he instead enables you to fight it. This might go on for forty days, for forty years, for an entire lifetime. That’s all right. There must be room then in our churches for a genuine bearing of one another’s burdens when it comes to appetites. Pretending the appetites are instantly nullified by conversion is a rejection of what God has told us – that we are still in the war zone.

True Discipleship

Posted by Jay on November 23, 2011 7 comments

When I first saw this video I continued saying in my mind, “yes! This is what it’s all about.” I am so tired of churches that focus on programs, entertainment, sports programs and “stuff”. (Programs aren’t entirely bad unless they become the focus which is exactly what is plaguing many churches today.) They want to pack the doors on Sunday mornings but they do not equip the saints to go out into the world and make disciples. This video does a good job of showing this problem. While I don’t agree entirely with the ministry who developed this video regarding their understanding of “kingdom multiplication” and an unbalanced message that instead of being in church we should be out in the world, I think it sends a proper message to most larger churches who are obsessed with programs and just getting people in the door and trying to be so much like the world. Bottom line, church is for believers, not the world! The key is, if we understand church Biblically then the saints will naturally seek to go out into the world as lights of Christ but they will also deeply desire to be in the family of Christ on the Lord’s Day and any other time they can corporately get together to feast on God’s Word, be held accountable and worship Christ the Lord.

Would love to get your thoughts after watching this video:

HT: Jeremy Gardiner’s Twitter feed

So True …

Posted by Jay on November 21, 2011 5 comments

This is an excellent snippet from a very passionate sermon by Paul Washer. It’s going to offend many – especially most behind the pulpit today who refuse to proclaim the gospel or rely on the erroneous “decisional regeneration” so prevalent in most churches.

Do You Love the Reproofs of the Word?

Posted by Jay on November 19, 2011 3 comments

“Question: How shall we know that we love the reproofs of the Word? (1) When we desire to sit under a heart-searching ministry. Who cares for medicines that will not work? A godly man does not choose to sit under a ministry that will not work upon his conscience. (2) When we pray that the Word may meet with our sins. If there is any traitorous lust in our heart, we would have it found out and executed. We do not want sin covered, but cured. We can open our breast to the bullet of the Word and say, ‘Lord, smite this sin.’”

- Thomas Watson

Preaching the Gospel to Yourself Daily

Posted by Jay on November 8, 2011 1 comment

“Preaching the gospel to ourselves every day gives us hope, joy, and courage. The good news that our sins are forgiven because of Christ’s death fills our hearts with joy, gives us courage to face the day, and offers us hope that God’s favor will rest upon us, not because we are good, but because we are in Christ.”

— Jerry Bridges

True Revival

Posted by Jay on November 1, 2011 11 comments

How often as believers do we want God to change our circumstances but we don’t want Him to change us. I know in my own life I often pray fervently for God to change my circumstances but neglect crying out to Him to change me. How often I forget that God in His mighty sovereignty is using those circumstances to change me and make me more like Christ. I’m reminded as I read through Scripture that God is not primarily concerned with my happiness but my holiness. God’s will for the lives of believers is our sanctification. Far from the false teachings of those like Joel Osteen who proclaim that God wants us to be materially prosperous and happy all the time, Scripture is clear that God’s will for us is to be conformed into the image of His Son. It is appointed for us not only to believe but to suffer for the sake of Christ. (Philippians. 1:29)

Where is the crying out in the church today for sanctification? Where is the mourning over sin and a desire for the Great Physician to take out His divine scalpel and cut away the idols and worldliness in our lives that we think make us happy but actually drive us away from God and from the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)

We do need revival in the American church today but revival does not come about by a church committee or throwing a tent up on the church grounds. True revival begins when the church returns to the true gospel, declares the full counsel of God’s Word, desires true repentance and cries out to God for conformity to the image of His Son.

I am preaching to myself in this post. I too am caught up in the worldly things and so often desire God to change my circumstances and not me.

Lord, forgive our foolish ways and grant us true, constant repentance and a desire to be holy no matter the cost. Conform us more and more into the glorious image of Your Son and drive us away from self and circumstance and help us not only cling to the cross of Christ but carry our own as we seek to die to self and live to You.

Soli Deo Gloria

God’s Sanctifying Crushing Hand

Posted by Jay on September 26, 2011 7 comments

We might well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until He does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration. The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. So He conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for Himself.

A. W. Tozer (HT: A Voice Crying Out)

Can’t I Just Ask God to Forgive Me?

Posted by Jay on September 10, 2011 3 comments

“I know that if I just ask God for forgiveness, He will forgive me.” This is one of the most common responses I get when sharing the gospel with unbelievers. Shockingly, the response above is most often given by those who claim to be believers. Sadly, this demonstrates a very sad state of the American church. It would be different if I lived in an area of the United States that was more liberal and not as churched, but I live in the heart of the south – in the Bible belt where there is literally a church on every corner. (In some places there are several churches on a single corner!) We’ve become a church culture so gospel-less that the average person who attends church cannot articulate the gospel.

What alarms me is that the average church-goer believes that they are heaven-bound because 1) they attend church and have been baptized or 2) they have asked God to forgive them. I want to focus on the second response since this is one that I hear most often.

One way I like to share the gospel is to turn it around and get people to share it with me. I’ll tell them that I have lived a horrible life and I have three minutes to live and desire to go to heaven. I’ll ask them to tell me how I can be forgiven and go to heaven. What I most often get is a simple, “just ask God to forgive you and He will.” I’ll ask, “is that all I have to do?” They respond, “yep!”

This is where there is an inadequate understanding of God and how he is revealed in Scripture. God is a forgiving God. The Bible tells us He is. But the Bible also clearly tells us that God is also just and He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. He is a just Judge and must deal with sin. If he just forgave us of our sins without dealing with our sins then He would be unjust and frankly would not be good. He would be a bad judge. One of the greatest questions that fallen humanity must ask is, “how can God be just and the justifier of the wicked?” This truly is the ultimate question. I believe it was Horatius Bonar in his excellent work The Everlasting Righteousness who began his treatise on justification by asking that very question.

So, this causes a dilemma. If we really begin to delve into God forgiving sinners we really must ask how can He justly forgive sinners without there being a penalty paid for the sin? How can God be just and justify guilty sinners? In fact, I believe it was Paul Washer in one of his excellent sermons on the gospel who used Proverbs 17:15 to setup “the gospel dilemma”. This verse teaches us that it is an abomination to God if the wicked are justified and the righteous are condemned. So then, based on this verse if an unbeliever were to simply ask God to forgive him and God did, then He would be going against His own word and would be an abomination in His own eyes.

Here is where the gospel shines with all its glorious splendor. God can and does forgive sinners but only if our sin is dealt with and His justice is satisfied. It is impossible for us to do anything to satisfy that debt since we are already sinners and even our most contrite and heartfelt sorrow is in itself tainted with sin. The only solution is for someone who is without sin to stand in our place. What we need is a great transaction. This is exactly what Christ did for us. 2 Corinthians 5:21 is in my opinion one of the most glorious verses in all of Scripture. It tells us that God made Christ who was perfect and sinless to become our sin so that we would have the righteousness of God in Him. Christ is the answer to how God can be just and the justifier of sinners. God imputed all the sins of the elect on Christ on the cross (allowing Christ Himself to remain perfectly sinless) and poured out all the wrath on Christ in our stead. This way, God is just and has dealt with our sin. No created thing will ever be able to point the finger at God and accuse Him of being unjust in saving His elect. The other side of this amazing transaction is that through repentance and faith, Christ’s perfect righteousness is imputed to us. When God looks on believers He sees the perfect, spotless righteousness of His Son.

So, God does forgive sin but only through the vicarious, penal, substitutionary death of His Son. No amount of tears or begging for forgiveness will work outside of faith in Christ. Think about it this way. If God just forgave everyone who asked, then Christ died needlessly. If God could just sweep our sin under the “celestial rug” and not deal with it taking only our plea for forgiveness then Christ’s death was pointless. The cross demonstrates to us not only the love of God but also His justice.

One last point. It’s is inevitable that when sharing the gospel that unbelievers will quote 1 John 1:8-9. They will use this verse to “prove” that all they have to do is ask God for forgiveness and He will forgive. There is a problem though. This verse is not written to unbelievers. It applies only to believers in Christ Jesus. There is a very important little four letter word in this verse that is essential to our understanding of the gospel. That little word is “just”. John tells us that if believers will confess their sins to God as Father that He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins. He can only be just in forgiving us our sins because Christ has stood in our place and bore the wrath. So this verse is speaking of the constant need for believers to confess their sins to God as Father so that fellowship with Him is unhindered. An unbeliever cannot claim the promises of this verse since he is not covered under the atoning work of Christ.

I hope that as you’ve read through this that you will marvel with me at the wisdom of God in the gospel. Marvel at His grace and mercy but be aware that His grace and mercy are made available only through the cross-work and merit of Christ Jesus. Our prayers as believers should go out to the church in America that it will return to proclaiming the full and true gospel of Jesus Christ and repent from the gospel of moralism and legalism. I see first hand week after week when evangelizing to people who are active church members who know absolutely nothing of the true gospel. They believe they are saved and going to heaven for every reason imaginable except for the one and only way through Christ.

I pray also that if you’re reading this and you have been trusting in your own act of asking for forgiveness for your salvation, turn in repentance and faith to the only One who can save you – Jesus Christ. Cry out to God to open your eyes to the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 4:6) that you may embrace Christ as your Lord and Savior. Today is the day of salvation!