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Describing grace can be a daunting task. Descriptions like, "God's Riches At Christ's Expense," or "getting what we don't deserve" are true but not so helpful. Other descriptions may be good yet they leave grace untouchable; they keep grace as a theological expression rather than connecting the rubber with the road, as it were.
In essence, the grace of God guides, directs, draws, conforms, transforms, and renews its recipients in, through, and toward the Gospel. The Gospel itself is grace to its hearers, and the Gospel is a new kind of law; not that we must take hold of the law but that the law may take hold of us. The Gospel establishes a new kind of law within our hearts, and its fruit flourishes within and out of us (Romans 8:2, 1 Corinthians 9:21, Galatians 5).
Law and grace are not the same but two sides of the same coin. The relationship is reciprocal- one always leading to the other. Without both, you move into error (Romans 5-6). On the one hand, law is a task master without grace. It says, do this and live! But law is weak to save because of sin (Romans 8:3).
This is why the law leads us to grace and grace leads us to a new law- a law which was fulfilled by Christ and those who are Christ's reap righteousness. And this leads us to the means of grace.
In essence, the grace of God guides, directs, draws, conforms, transforms, and renews its recipients in, through, and toward the Gospel. The Gospel itself is grace to its hearers, and the Gospel is a new kind of law; not that we must take hold of the law but that the law may take hold of us. The Gospel establishes a new kind of law within our hearts, and its fruit flourishes within and out of us (Romans 8:2, 1 Corinthians 9:21, Galatians 5).
Law and grace are not the same but two sides of the same coin. The relationship is reciprocal- one always leading to the other. Without both, you move into error (Romans 5-6). On the one hand, law is a task master without grace. It says, do this and live! But law is weak to save because of sin (Romans 8:3).
This is why the law leads us to grace and grace leads us to a new law- a law which was fulfilled by Christ and those who are Christ's reap righteousness. And this leads us to the means of grace.
Continue reading The Law as a Means of Grace.
I asked the question earlier, "How can God, Who is unchanging, in Jesus take on human form (permanently I might add) and still be unchanged?" I know what I think. What do YOU think?
This is just an aspect of what I have been pondering as of late. But before I continue, you need to read, "What is the Love of God?" As well as, "God's Glory" and "The Glory of God in the Gospel". Yes, quite a bit of reading, but what I am about to embark in writing is deeply connected to the foundation upon which I have already built.
I do not want to separate God's Glory, God's Love and His unchanging character. How can God, In Jesus, take on human flesh yet be unchanged? Seth Rone hits the nail on the head, at least in part- maybe more :) .
We must keep in mind before creation, OUTSIDE time, God’s creative plan included the cross: see Acts 2:23, Acts 4:27&28, 1 Peter 1:19&20, and Revelation 13:8. In eternity past, God planned (foreordained) the cross- meaning, it was meant to happen and there was no chance that it could not not happen. In other words, the cross was not optional. It was THE plan of the ages.
Further, since God is love, then it is God's nature to give up His life as a ransom. Jesus said in John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." There is no possibility that God could have done otherwise. None. The cross was not plan B. It was the only plan.
This is why when God in Jesus took on human flesh, He did not change because there was never a time that God in Christ did not plan to die to save.
But at the same time, pardon the pun, WITHIN time, God did change.
Douglas Kelly says that the Incarnation is a greater miracle and mystery than God's creating everything out of nothing. The change WITHIN time from God to God/Man is ultimately what makes it a miracle and mystery at the same time. Amazing.
This is such a deep subject that it will take all of eternity to plumb its depths (and then we'll still need an infinite amount of eternities to continue the quest of plumbing those depths!). Wow.
It reminds me how absolutely insane it is to seek our satisfaction in idols that can neither see nor hear. When THIS God--the God that has come to us in Jesus like this--calls us to come to him....
So what do we do now? We place our faith in Jesus because He always planned to take on our sin, guilt, and shame- to be the Spotless Lamb slain from the foundation of the world for without faith, we can never please God (Hebrews 11:6).
If you've never placed your faith and trust in Jesus, now is always a good time to start. If you have placed your faith in Jesus in the past, continue to believe, look to the cross, and be saved.
There has never been another option for salvation.
This is the glory of the Gospel.
This is just an aspect of what I have been pondering as of late. But before I continue, you need to read, "What is the Love of God?" As well as, "God's Glory" and "The Glory of God in the Gospel". Yes, quite a bit of reading, but what I am about to embark in writing is deeply connected to the foundation upon which I have already built.
I do not want to separate God's Glory, God's Love and His unchanging character. How can God, In Jesus, take on human flesh yet be unchanged? Seth Rone hits the nail on the head, at least in part- maybe more :) .
We must keep in mind before creation, OUTSIDE time, God’s creative plan included the cross: see Acts 2:23, Acts 4:27&28, 1 Peter 1:19&20, and Revelation 13:8. In eternity past, God planned (foreordained) the cross- meaning, it was meant to happen and there was no chance that it could not not happen. In other words, the cross was not optional. It was THE plan of the ages.
Further, since God is love, then it is God's nature to give up His life as a ransom. Jesus said in John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." There is no possibility that God could have done otherwise. None. The cross was not plan B. It was the only plan.
This is why when God in Jesus took on human flesh, He did not change because there was never a time that God in Christ did not plan to die to save.
But at the same time, pardon the pun, WITHIN time, God did change.
Douglas Kelly says that the Incarnation is a greater miracle and mystery than God's creating everything out of nothing. The change WITHIN time from God to God/Man is ultimately what makes it a miracle and mystery at the same time. Amazing.
This is such a deep subject that it will take all of eternity to plumb its depths (and then we'll still need an infinite amount of eternities to continue the quest of plumbing those depths!). Wow.
It reminds me how absolutely insane it is to seek our satisfaction in idols that can neither see nor hear. When THIS God--the God that has come to us in Jesus like this--calls us to come to him....
So what do we do now? We place our faith in Jesus because He always planned to take on our sin, guilt, and shame- to be the Spotless Lamb slain from the foundation of the world for without faith, we can never please God (Hebrews 11:6).
If you've never placed your faith and trust in Jesus, now is always a good time to start. If you have placed your faith in Jesus in the past, continue to believe, look to the cross, and be saved.
There has never been another option for salvation.
This is the glory of the Gospel.
If there's one thing I've learned (and am still learning) over the years it's that the Gospel Changes Everything! This includes (but not limited to) my understanding of 'Scripture. The Gospel is so comprehensive in its power to change everything that it frees me from my previous understandings of Scripture to understanding passages anew and afresh. In other words, as my understanding of Scripture changes, I am free to embrace my new understanding instead of being fearful that "I am rejecting what I've been taught all these years!"
If we are hesitant in switching our view on (any) subject that Scripture addresses because we think "Scripture CAN'T teach that because I couldn't believe in a God who would say or express that in Scripture" then we definitely do not understand the Gospel nor Its power to change verything.
And we have a caricature of what Scripture teaches rather than what Scripture actually teaches.
The Gospel frees us to believe what we see Scripture teach. The Gospel, properly understood, frees us to say, "Wow, Scripture teaches THAT? That's a shocking revelation! If I see that in Scripture, I must believe it because Scripture teaches it."
I am not saying that the struggle to understand Scripture is wrong, but that the Gospel frees us to believe what we see in Scripture even WHEN it changes our paradigm of life and rocks our world.
For example, the Gospel frees us to switch from Dispensational Premil to Historic Premil or PostMil to Amil. And this is just eschatology! The Gospel frees us to change our views on subjects without fear that we are apostasizing (well, outside of the orthodox doctrines which establish the Christian faith).
The Gospel frees us to believe what Scripture teaches without fear. For fear is not of God and God has given a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind.
Yes, what we see in Scripture may rock our world and change how we view and interpret Scripture, but the Gospel frees us to embrace what we see so that we may bind our consciences to Scripture alone and not to what we think we ought to believe.
Yes, the Gospel changes everything.
Sadly, many people (not just men any more) have become enslaved to their lust. Many lives and families have been destroyed because of this stranglehold of sin. Here are some good resources for anyone who struggles in this area of lust and purity. But the best advice I can provide you is to take the first step and talk to your Pastor. He is there to help you. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it. It's the hard things of life that truly make a difference.
Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4. Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.
David Powlison from Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation has provided a free resource for pornography addiction - Breaking Pornography Addiction.
And last but not least, Mark Driscoll has recently released a PDF book called Porn Again Christian. You can download it here. Be warned, Mark takes no hostages as he addresses the topic. It is a frank discussion.
Why do I believe and promote a Christocentric interpretation of Scripture (both OT & NT) as the primary interpretation?
I will list off a few reasons and only touch on a couple.
1. Christ is the Mediator between God and Man.
2. God is Three-in-One (Trinitarian)
3. We can not directly know the Father except through the Son.
4. The Father can not be seen except in the Son.
5. Jesus is the face of God.
6. We can not know how good the Father is without knowing how good the Son is.
With all of this said (there are other reasons, too), if we see an issue or "fault" with the Christocentric view, it is not an issue with this view but with those whom have not represented it fully enough.
We can not understand the Father without understanding the Son. We can not truly understand passages like Psalm 103 without understanding God from a Trinitarian view with a Christocentric focus. Yes, we understand God is the Good Father, but God is the Good Son and the One can not be Who He is without the Other.
How do we know God is the Good Father? He gave us His Son. How do we know Jesus is the Good Son? Because He obediently submitted Himself as a Servant even unto death, even the death of the cross.
I do not want to cut this short, so I will point you to an earlier article I wrote about some of these issues with relation to Isaiah 6.
Blessings!
A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.
63:1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
4 So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
6 when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
9 But those who seek to destroy my life
shall go down into the depths of the earth;
10 they shall be given over to the power of the sword;
they shall be a portion for jackals.
11 But the king shall rejoice in God;
all who swear by him shall exult,
for the mouths of liars will be stopped.
Continue reading Your Rright Hand Upholds Me.
God created mankind in the image and community of the eternally existing Trinitarian God (Genesis 1:26) producing an inherent need and desire for "community" displayed in love by loving God with our whole being and loving others as ourselves (Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37-39). God created us so that we may know Him. His creative work of mankind was the act of drawing near to us which was an act of love When God acts, He acts in love because God is love.
"...God's nature is the grammar of God's will, which is a Wittgensteinian way of saying that God's being and acts are one. God is love (I John 4:8) – that is the defining divine perfection – and God is love from tip to toe. God's only power is the power of love, in which there is no domination, coercion, or violence. Such is the imminent perichoretic, self-giving, non-rivalrous love of the Trinity, economically embodied in the cross (and, as Luther said, crux robat omnia). 'Omnipotence,' T. F. Torrance urges, 'is what God does, and it is from His 'does' rather than from a hypothetical 'can' that we are to understand the meaning of the term. What God does, we see in Christ ..." (HT: Curt).Likewise, God's love is what God does, and it is from His 'does' rather from a hypothetical 'can' that we are to understand the meaning of the term. What God does, we see in Christ. P.T. Forsyth explains,
What ought we say about the love of God? In the cross, God's love for himself, his name and his authority, and his love for his creatures, is taken up and met in one action wherein God exhibits the very nature of his being as unconditional Holy Love. That's why not only is the doctrine of the Trinity necessary to make sense of the atonement, but the atonement is necessary to reveal the Trinitarian fellowship of God. The Holy Love that defines the perichoretic life of the Triune God has, by the grace of the Father in the action of the incarnate Son and by the mission of the Spirit, overflowed freely towards those outside of God's community that creatures may enter into the Holy Love communion that the Triune God has ever known and spoke creation into being for participation in.
In Jesus Christ, God has shown not only that he does not want to be God without us, but that he does not want us to be without him. And in the action of the Holy Spirit, the Triune God is present and active among us to hear and answer our prayers, to sustain us in all the happenings of life, and to continuously bring home to us afresh the good news of the Father's sanctifying action in Jesus Christ, guaranteeing our inheritance, and empowering us to live in the reality of being 'holy and blameless' before God (Ephesians 1:4).
We must not think of ourselves higher than we are. We possess nothing special, nor do we offer any benefit to God for God to choose us. Deuteronomy 7 explains, "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping [His] oath..." We are God's treasured possession; not because of anything good we possess but because God loves us. And God loves us because He loves us. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
This great love with which God loves us can not truly be experienced without our setting love upon others. "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother" (1 John 4:20-21). I believe C. S. Lewis says it well,
"When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased." - Letters of C.S. Lewis (8 November, 1952)
"... May our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. ... May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. ... The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, 3:5, 2 Corinthians 13:14).
Justin Childers has a helpful article on understanding the book of Revelation called 7 Interpretive Helps to Revelation. I hope he doesn't mind my reposting the whole thing:
How often are people people of the (God's) Word but are Christless in their thinking! On the other hand, how many people are people of the Word (John 1:1) yet they know nothing of God's Word? That is existentialism.
Oh to be people of the Word that we may be people of the Word! We must be both.
Oh to be people of the Word that we may be people of the Word! We must be both.
Some people do not know there are more views to Eschatology than the predominant Dispensational Premillennialism which is sad because each view has something good to offer within the discussion. One view may emphasize one thing while another view emphasizes another- and both are important.
The topic of Eschatology has garnered much debate, and at times, ruthless and love-less arguing since even the first century. One reason, I believe, Eschatology is dictated by our hermeneutic (the rules and method we use to read and understand Scripture). If an Eschatological view could be shown to be false, then the hermeneutic upon which the view rests would be faulty. From what I see, this is why Eschatology can be so contentious.
But showing the plausibility of one view over the others is a supposed insurmountable task and outside the scope of this series. This series is a survey of the views so that we can understand them and appreciate them for what they each have to offer.
Graeme Goldsworthy wrote in his book The Gospel in Revelation - "What we should not wish to see, in my opinion, is this brilliant portrayal of the end of the conflict between Christ and Satan being made a perpetual battle ground and the cause of conflict between Christians."
Good thoughts to think about before proceeding with this series.
The topic of Eschatology has garnered much debate, and at times, ruthless and love-less arguing since even the first century. One reason, I believe, Eschatology is dictated by our hermeneutic (the rules and method we use to read and understand Scripture). If an Eschatological view could be shown to be false, then the hermeneutic upon which the view rests would be faulty. From what I see, this is why Eschatology can be so contentious.
But showing the plausibility of one view over the others is a supposed insurmountable task and outside the scope of this series. This series is a survey of the views so that we can understand them and appreciate them for what they each have to offer.
Graeme Goldsworthy wrote in his book The Gospel in Revelation - "What we should not wish to see, in my opinion, is this brilliant portrayal of the end of the conflict between Christ and Satan being made a perpetual battle ground and the cause of conflict between Christians."
Good thoughts to think about before proceeding with this series.
