D.G. Hart offers a warning to Mark Jones, reminding him that Flattening Will Get You Nowhere | Old Life Theological Society.
Grace
All posts tagged Grace
In this post from Particular Voices, Sam Renihan uses John Norton’s meticulous definitions of the word grace to highlight the differences between Paedobaptist and Credobaptist covenant theology.
The Old Covenant of Works and the New Covenant of Grace – Edward Hutchinson | The Confessing Baptist
Was the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision a covenant of grace, works, or both? Whatever it was, it wasn’t the covenant of grace, the new covenant.
The Old Covenant of Works and the New Covenant of Grace – Edward Hutchinson | The Confessing Baptist.
In this section of Pink’s The Attributes of God, he rightly dispels the notion of “common grace” by distinguishing between grace and mercy. He also combats the idea that grace and works somehow cooperate in our justification before God.
The Grace of God – A.W. Pink | The Confessing Baptist.
I recently had the privilege of delivering a sermon dealing with the subject of preaching as a means of grace. You can download or listen to the audio of it here. Below, I have posted the written version, which is a bit shorter than the audio, as I was able to expand a bit and use some illustrations which I hope were helpful. I pray my readers will find the content edifying.
The Grace of the Preached Word of God
6/30/2013
Redeemer Presbyterian Church
This morning we are not going to be focusing on only one particular section of Scripture. Instead, we’re going to be diving into many passages of God’s Word, and we’re going to try to piece together what God has to say about his Word, and in particular, the preaching of his Word. We’re going to see how preaching is a means of grace. First, we’ll take a look at the word grace and how Scripture describes it, and then we’ll inquire as to how we can receive that grace. We’ll see specifically how God, in his Word to us, works to bring about our salvation and continues to strengthen and build us up in our faith. Continue Reading
Do the Westminster Standards teach Merit? More importantly, do the Scriptures teach Merit? What is Merit? Did Christ merit anything by His work on earth? Was Adam, in God’s original arrangement with him, justified by works, or through faith? There are some who deny a meritorious arrangement with Adam, denying the existence of a “Covenant of Works.” Pastor Wes White tackes these questions and responds to the erroneous claims of the Joint Federal Vision Profession in this post:
Do the Westminster Standards Teach Merit?
In order to answer the question of whether the Westminster Standards teach merit, we must know what merit is. So, what is merit? Merit is defined in the dictionary as worth. As a verb, to merit something is to deserve something.
With that definition in mind, we can now consider whether the Westminster Standards teach merit. If you search the Westminster Standards, you will find that it does use the word “merits” in reference to Christ. Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 55 says that Christ appears in our nature before the Father in heaven “in the merit of his obedience and sacrifice on earth.” Thus, Christ’s obedience and sacrifice on earth was meritorious, and it is Christ’s will that the merit of His obedience and sacrifice would be “applied to all believers.”
You can read the rest of Pastor White’s excellent post here.
I never really liked the guy. Not to say I hated him, but he was a somewhat crude individual who liked to pretend he was smarter than those around him. Because of this, he was often the butt of people’s jokes, and not always were these jokes made behind his back. I am sad to say that I was a part of this ridicule, if not to his face. But he tended to be a pain to work with, and, now that I think about it, we were only using his frequent mistakes as an excuse to make ourselves feel superior.
I don’t know his beliefs. I saw him show up at my church one night, but instead of trying to make him feel welcome, I avoided him.
I don’t know his age, but he couldn’t have been more than twenty at most.
I don’t even know his name. I probably did once, but since everyone always called him by his nickname, his real name was soon lost to my memory.
And today I found out he’s dead. He drove his truck into a lake and drowned.
Not to be morbid, but the next time you find yourself making fun of the geek across the room, or even the jerk who tries to belittle everyone he meets, think about how tomorrow they might not be here. Think about how YOU might not be here tomorrow. Think about how hopelessly lost in sin and pathetic you were, would be, and perhaps still are, without the grace of God. Think about the ones who mercilessly mocked Jesus, abusing Him both physically and emotionally, hurting the only One who was without sin. And think about how He endured all the while, and repaid evil with good. Even as He was being crucified, He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
So who will you choose to imitate? Jesus, in His everlasting love, patience, grace, and forgiveness? Or will you play the part of those who oppressed Him and the others around them, deluding themselves with the foolish notion that they were somehow better, by their own right, than their fellow sinners?
Remember, as I will try to, that if not for the grace of God, there would we be also.
The Sovereign Logos 