Since I've spent the majority of my professional career as a teacher of Scripture, philosophy, and theology, I've often had the opportunity to think about matters of pedagogy and other issues related to instruction. One thing that's always struck me as I have considered what it means to be an effective teacher is that most of the great teachers in history were themselves students of other great instructors. Sorates taught Plato; Plato taught Aristotle; and Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. The entire history of Western ideas has been affected by these four men. In theology, we see that Ambrose of Milan taught Augustine, and Augustine, through his writings, taught both Martin Luther and John Calvin. We owe a great debt to Ambrose, who by discipling Augustine got the ball rolling for the Reformation, in a manner of speaking.
That great teachers produce other great teachers tells us that we can't take the search for a teacher lightly. In fact, our choices of the instructors under whom we sit are among the most crucial and life-altering decisions we will ever make. We should take great care in selecting our instructors, particularly when we're considering those who will train us for our vocations. I've seen too many young people choose a school because it had a beautiful campus or national championship football team, or because of its location. I've seen too many young men and women not consider the faculty when they are evaluating different options for higher education. Yet it is the faculty that matters most. These are the people who have a definitive impact on our future. We have to think carefully about who will be teaching us and what they will teach us at every stage of life, but particularly during our college years.
Several teachers during my underegraduate and graduate years of study had an impact on me that resonates to this day. As an undergraduate student, I chose philosophy as my major because I had a great philosophy professor as my faculty advisor. I was drawn to this man, Dr Thomas Gregory, for his erudition and kindness. I ultimately ended up majoring in philosophy more out of my respect for the man than out of an innate affection for philosophy. I took every course that Dr. Gregory taught and, under his personal influence, developed a love for the history of ideas and the importance of logical thought.
When I was in seminary, I was privileged to have yet another incredible instructor - Dr. John Gerstner - who became my mentor in theology. He was instrumental in my decision to pursue doctoral studies. He insisted that I pursue a doctorate, and though I was initially reluctant, I told him that I would go on to further studies only if I could sit under the best teachers available. Imagine my surprise when Dr. Gerstner identified those individuals as G. C. Berkouwer and the faculty at the Free University of Amsterdam. After talking with Dr. Gerstner at length about it that day, I booked my family's journey to the Netherlands the next. That decision was one of the most important decisions I have ever made, and I don't regret it.
Three years ago, Ligonier Ministries opened Reformation Bible College to provide formal training in the things of God for young men and women. When we were planning the college, I was insistent that we hire the best faculty possible because I knew the quality of our education and its faithfulness to Scripture would be determined finally by our instuctors and the material they would present to our students.
It's ultimately no surprise that great teachers produce other great teachers. That seems to be the way God has designed us. In Scripture,we are called again and again to be disciples, or more precisely, learners. We need teachers if we are to learn, and great teachers raise up great learners who can then go on to produce other great learners. Christ is our preeminent example of this. Because He was a great teacher, He knew what to do in order to take a ragtag bunch of fishermen, Zealots, and tax collectors, and make them into the most influential bunch of learners the world has ever known. From their ranks we have been blessed with great teachers - Matthew, John, Peter, and others whose work continues to impact the world to this day. Of course, these men were inspired by the Holy Spirit in a manner that other teachers aren't. However, Christ's use of them to make disciples of all nations remains a model of how great teachers produce other great teachers.
No matter how great our earthly teachers may be, they will err. We will have to weigh their words against the Spirit-inspired teachings of the Apostles and prophets. But we dare not think we can ever reach a point where we cannot benefit from the teaching of others. Great teachers who are faithful to God's Word are a blessing to God's church. He will use them to build us up so that we can build up others.
(Dr. R. C. Sproul, chancellor of Reformation Bible College, Tabletalk, Sept. 2014, www.ligonier.org)
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Monday, August 18, 2014
Repentance In Brazil
Most people know that Rio de Janeiro hosted the 2014 FIFA World Cup. But what they may not kow is that this year's international spotlight on rio de Janeiro is part of a national upturn - an incredible blessing - that started after a group of Brazilian Christians came together to repent.
Rickie Bradshaw, a community transformation leader based in Houston, TX, and one of the many catalysts behind the decade-long prayer movement in Brazil, gives credit to God for this unfolding story of national transformation - both economic and spiritual. "Darkness lingered because of a broken covenant between God and His people," said Bradshaw, summarizing several centuries of Brazil's history. "But once it was addressed in the heavens, God was attracted to the region."
What did this "attraction" look like, and how did it begin? Bradshaw said a milestone came in 2006 with a time of corporate prayer in Recife, a coastal city where 5,000 intercessors met at The Sentinel Group's Transform Brazil conference to learn about revival. As one of six Americans attending the conference, Bradshaw witnessed how Brazilian leaders asked God one question in particular: "Why is the darkness lingering in this region?" They spent time to search and prayerfully wait for specific answers.
Searching for answers meant tracing the darkness to its source. The Transform Brazil team found a telltale clue as they reviewed Brazil's colonial past.
In 1645, there were 1,630 European Jews living in Recife, and under a short period of Dutch rule, these Jews were allowed to openly practice their faith. They thrived and established a vibrant community in the New World Their presence in Brazil boosted the economy through business and trade. However, the prosperity of Brazil's Jewish community made the colony's Portuguese and indigenous populations resentful, and when the Portuguese pushed out the Dutch in 1654, the Jews suffered persecution and were also ordered to leave.
While most of the Jews uprooted to Europe or the Caribbean, a remnant settled on an island called New Amsterdam, now known as New York City. Once again, these industrious Jews built successful businesses and thrived. Today, that island is Manhattan, one of the richest, most significant, and most powerful places in the world.
As the Transform Brazil team uncovered this story of discrimination, they were convicted of the need for repentance. They understood that a great injustice had taken place against a people that had come to create major economic imporvement in Brazil. Had their forefathers been grateful rather than bitter toward the Jews for their prosperity, perhaps Brazil's physical and spiritual landscape woud be different.
The Transform Brazil team pursued reconciliation in a tangible, public way by inviting a group of Jewish rabbis to come on stage while leaders of the converence prostrated themselves and asked forgiveness for what their forefathers had done. In response, the rabbis offered forgiveness and a blessing to the people of Brazil.
This profound act of national repentance and reconciliation galvanized Brazil's Christians. In 2008, Bradshaw returned to Recife for another speaking engagement and reported, "Many people met me on the coast and repented of their sins. I spoke about how the condition of the land directly related to what's going on in the hearts of His people and in a short period of time, thousands rushed to the altar to demonstrate their brokenness and desire for the Kingdom."
Immediately aftger that meeting, a breaking CNN international report on the Petrobras corporation announced the discovery of a giant oil field. The president of Brazil stood on a platform wearing a hard hat and holding a cup of extracted oil, rejoicing that the cup represented the future of Brazil - jobs, education, and medicine.
Coincidence? Bradshaw doesn't think so. He is convinced that repentance is paving the way for healing of the land (Zechariah 1:3 and 2 Chronicles 7:14). Brazil is now number 4 in the global economy (up from number 11) and unemployment is almost non-existent in some cities. Meanwhile, Christian prayer towers are prevalent across the country.
"The World Cup was in Brazil because God wants to bring attention to what is happening there," said Bradshaw. "Christians are giving Him credit. Oil has always been off the coast of Brazil, but nobody could find it - the world's largest oil company struck and missed - and then all of the sudden, when so many repent of national sin, they found it."
(Nichole Arnoldbik, IFA's National director of Communications, Intercessors For America, Sept. 2014,
www.IFAPray.org)
Rickie Bradshaw, a community transformation leader based in Houston, TX, and one of the many catalysts behind the decade-long prayer movement in Brazil, gives credit to God for this unfolding story of national transformation - both economic and spiritual. "Darkness lingered because of a broken covenant between God and His people," said Bradshaw, summarizing several centuries of Brazil's history. "But once it was addressed in the heavens, God was attracted to the region."
What did this "attraction" look like, and how did it begin? Bradshaw said a milestone came in 2006 with a time of corporate prayer in Recife, a coastal city where 5,000 intercessors met at The Sentinel Group's Transform Brazil conference to learn about revival. As one of six Americans attending the conference, Bradshaw witnessed how Brazilian leaders asked God one question in particular: "Why is the darkness lingering in this region?" They spent time to search and prayerfully wait for specific answers.
Searching for answers meant tracing the darkness to its source. The Transform Brazil team found a telltale clue as they reviewed Brazil's colonial past.
In 1645, there were 1,630 European Jews living in Recife, and under a short period of Dutch rule, these Jews were allowed to openly practice their faith. They thrived and established a vibrant community in the New World Their presence in Brazil boosted the economy through business and trade. However, the prosperity of Brazil's Jewish community made the colony's Portuguese and indigenous populations resentful, and when the Portuguese pushed out the Dutch in 1654, the Jews suffered persecution and were also ordered to leave.
While most of the Jews uprooted to Europe or the Caribbean, a remnant settled on an island called New Amsterdam, now known as New York City. Once again, these industrious Jews built successful businesses and thrived. Today, that island is Manhattan, one of the richest, most significant, and most powerful places in the world.
As the Transform Brazil team uncovered this story of discrimination, they were convicted of the need for repentance. They understood that a great injustice had taken place against a people that had come to create major economic imporvement in Brazil. Had their forefathers been grateful rather than bitter toward the Jews for their prosperity, perhaps Brazil's physical and spiritual landscape woud be different.
The Transform Brazil team pursued reconciliation in a tangible, public way by inviting a group of Jewish rabbis to come on stage while leaders of the converence prostrated themselves and asked forgiveness for what their forefathers had done. In response, the rabbis offered forgiveness and a blessing to the people of Brazil.
This profound act of national repentance and reconciliation galvanized Brazil's Christians. In 2008, Bradshaw returned to Recife for another speaking engagement and reported, "Many people met me on the coast and repented of their sins. I spoke about how the condition of the land directly related to what's going on in the hearts of His people and in a short period of time, thousands rushed to the altar to demonstrate their brokenness and desire for the Kingdom."
Immediately aftger that meeting, a breaking CNN international report on the Petrobras corporation announced the discovery of a giant oil field. The president of Brazil stood on a platform wearing a hard hat and holding a cup of extracted oil, rejoicing that the cup represented the future of Brazil - jobs, education, and medicine.
Coincidence? Bradshaw doesn't think so. He is convinced that repentance is paving the way for healing of the land (Zechariah 1:3 and 2 Chronicles 7:14). Brazil is now number 4 in the global economy (up from number 11) and unemployment is almost non-existent in some cities. Meanwhile, Christian prayer towers are prevalent across the country.
"The World Cup was in Brazil because God wants to bring attention to what is happening there," said Bradshaw. "Christians are giving Him credit. Oil has always been off the coast of Brazil, but nobody could find it - the world's largest oil company struck and missed - and then all of the sudden, when so many repent of national sin, they found it."
(Nichole Arnoldbik, IFA's National director of Communications, Intercessors For America, Sept. 2014,
www.IFAPray.org)
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
The Lessons of Calvin's 1541 Institutes
The lessons of Calvin's 1541 Institutes - What lessons does the author of the Institutes have to teach us?
Historically speaking, two things stand out. The first is the Reformer's debt to the Church Fathers of the third, fourth and fifth centuries, above all to Augustine and Chrysostom. The Fathers were by no means infallible, but they proved to be helpful allies in Calvin's endeavour to show that the evangelical faith was not a chicken newly hatched from Luther's egg. On occasion they articulate vital truths with beautiful economy. In the second place we are reminded of the broad front on which Calvin is obliged to fight. On the right is Rome's massive orthodoxy, refined by Scholastics of the quality of Lombard and Aquinas and super-refined by their less gifted imitators. On the left is a myriad of dissenting movements - Anabaptism, spiritualism, antinomianism, antitrinitarianism and the most shadowy "ism" of all - scepticism. The opposition to Rome and to the papacy is of course fundamental, but it is not exclusive.
On another, more important, level, the Institutes remind us that there is a good and a bad way to do theology. Speculative theology, which asks questions the Scriptures do not answer, or intuitive theology, which works upwards from man to God, is bad theology. The human mind cannot fathom the unfathomable. Calvin is adamant that only God can speak of God, and in words which accommodate themselves to our weakenss. Since we do not recognize God in his works of creation and of providence, we must seek him in his written Word, whose witness is sealed to us by his Holy Spirit. the Institutes of 1539/1541 contains well over two thousand biblical references, widely spread but with a marked concentration on the Psalms, Isaiah, the first and fourth Gospels, Romans and 1 Corinthians. Nor is Scripture a convenient peg on which doctrine may be hung, more or less at will; it is the indispensable foundation on which doctrine rests, the standard by which it is judged, and the rule by which it is corrected.
While election figures prominently in the Institutes as central to the plan of salvation, it is presented as an act not so much of God's sovereign power as of his merciful providence. By itself, election does not exhaust Calvin's understanding of redemption. The Institutes, faithful to the New Testament witness to Jesus Christ, lay much stress on the humanity of the Son of God. The necessity of the incarnation is driven home by a series of rapid questions. How could the Son mediate between God and man and intercede for sinners "if he were not our close neighbour, allied to us, a high priest able to pity our infirmities"? How could we be confident that we were God's children, without the guarantee that God's Son "took his body from ours, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, to become one with us", making ours by grace what was his by right? Who could make satisfaction for sin before a just and holy God, but the one "who bore the penalty for sin in the very flesh in which sin had been committed"? How could death be endured "except by one who is Man, and be overcome except by one who is God"?
Only by embracing Christ can we know God as Father. Only as the Son consents to be our brother does his Father become "our Father". The resulting family relationship - expressed more often by the image of adoption - so binds us to Christ that we are made one with him, grafted into him, joined to him together with all who are born of God's Spirit. "If we love Jesus Christ we will love him in our brothers."
On the cardinal doctrine of justification Calvin is at one with all the mainstream Reformers. For Christ's sake believers are accounted righteous by grace through faith. However, grace which renders us blameless before God but which leaves sanctification to us is not grace in all its fullness. While the pursuit of holiness is incumbent on every Christian, the author of the Institutes insists that justification and sanctification are inseparable, though distinct. God's will, he reminds us, was "to sanctify us by the offering of Jesus Christ made once and for all" (Heb. 10:10). "To receive Christ's righteousness," says Calvin, "we must first possess him. And we cannot possess him without sharing in his sanctification, since he cannot be divided into pieces. By sharing in Christ we are no less sanctified than justified." Our sancitification is therefore complete in Christ: it ought to be manifest in our works. That our works habitually fall short should drive us continually to repentance, to prayer, and to more earnest effort, but not to despair. Christ who is our wisdom, righteousness and redemption, is also our sanctification (1 Cor.1:30).
(Robert White, translator of 1541 edition of Calvin's Institutes, The Banner of Truth, Aug.-Sept. 2014)
Historically speaking, two things stand out. The first is the Reformer's debt to the Church Fathers of the third, fourth and fifth centuries, above all to Augustine and Chrysostom. The Fathers were by no means infallible, but they proved to be helpful allies in Calvin's endeavour to show that the evangelical faith was not a chicken newly hatched from Luther's egg. On occasion they articulate vital truths with beautiful economy. In the second place we are reminded of the broad front on which Calvin is obliged to fight. On the right is Rome's massive orthodoxy, refined by Scholastics of the quality of Lombard and Aquinas and super-refined by their less gifted imitators. On the left is a myriad of dissenting movements - Anabaptism, spiritualism, antinomianism, antitrinitarianism and the most shadowy "ism" of all - scepticism. The opposition to Rome and to the papacy is of course fundamental, but it is not exclusive.
On another, more important, level, the Institutes remind us that there is a good and a bad way to do theology. Speculative theology, which asks questions the Scriptures do not answer, or intuitive theology, which works upwards from man to God, is bad theology. The human mind cannot fathom the unfathomable. Calvin is adamant that only God can speak of God, and in words which accommodate themselves to our weakenss. Since we do not recognize God in his works of creation and of providence, we must seek him in his written Word, whose witness is sealed to us by his Holy Spirit. the Institutes of 1539/1541 contains well over two thousand biblical references, widely spread but with a marked concentration on the Psalms, Isaiah, the first and fourth Gospels, Romans and 1 Corinthians. Nor is Scripture a convenient peg on which doctrine may be hung, more or less at will; it is the indispensable foundation on which doctrine rests, the standard by which it is judged, and the rule by which it is corrected.
While election figures prominently in the Institutes as central to the plan of salvation, it is presented as an act not so much of God's sovereign power as of his merciful providence. By itself, election does not exhaust Calvin's understanding of redemption. The Institutes, faithful to the New Testament witness to Jesus Christ, lay much stress on the humanity of the Son of God. The necessity of the incarnation is driven home by a series of rapid questions. How could the Son mediate between God and man and intercede for sinners "if he were not our close neighbour, allied to us, a high priest able to pity our infirmities"? How could we be confident that we were God's children, without the guarantee that God's Son "took his body from ours, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, to become one with us", making ours by grace what was his by right? Who could make satisfaction for sin before a just and holy God, but the one "who bore the penalty for sin in the very flesh in which sin had been committed"? How could death be endured "except by one who is Man, and be overcome except by one who is God"?
Only by embracing Christ can we know God as Father. Only as the Son consents to be our brother does his Father become "our Father". The resulting family relationship - expressed more often by the image of adoption - so binds us to Christ that we are made one with him, grafted into him, joined to him together with all who are born of God's Spirit. "If we love Jesus Christ we will love him in our brothers."
On the cardinal doctrine of justification Calvin is at one with all the mainstream Reformers. For Christ's sake believers are accounted righteous by grace through faith. However, grace which renders us blameless before God but which leaves sanctification to us is not grace in all its fullness. While the pursuit of holiness is incumbent on every Christian, the author of the Institutes insists that justification and sanctification are inseparable, though distinct. God's will, he reminds us, was "to sanctify us by the offering of Jesus Christ made once and for all" (Heb. 10:10). "To receive Christ's righteousness," says Calvin, "we must first possess him. And we cannot possess him without sharing in his sanctification, since he cannot be divided into pieces. By sharing in Christ we are no less sanctified than justified." Our sancitification is therefore complete in Christ: it ought to be manifest in our works. That our works habitually fall short should drive us continually to repentance, to prayer, and to more earnest effort, but not to despair. Christ who is our wisdom, righteousness and redemption, is also our sanctification (1 Cor.1:30).
(Robert White, translator of 1541 edition of Calvin's Institutes, The Banner of Truth, Aug.-Sept. 2014)
Saturday, August 9, 2014
God Our Saviour
I Timothy 1:1
The fact that here in the Pastorals the name Saviour is frequently applied to God is, after all, not at all surprising, for even in his earlier epistles Paul frequently ascribes the work of saving man to "God"; for example, "It was God's good-pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe"; "but God . . . made us alive together with Christ....for by grace have you been saved through faith; and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God"; your salvation, and that from God". To "God" he also ascribes thedistinct acts in the programme of salvation.It is God who spared not his Son but delivered him up for us all. It is God who sets forth his son as a propitiation for our sins. It is he who commends his love toward us. It is God who blesses us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
Foreknowledge, foreordination, calling, justification, glorification are all ascribed to him. It is he who chose us. It is he who causes the gospel to be proclaimed. It is he who bestows his grace upon us. Faith is his gift. In view of all this we can almost say that it would have been strange if somewhere in his epistles the apostle would not have called God "our saviour". Calling God "our Saviour" is entirely proper. And since for Paul God ever saves through Christ, verse 1 is also a fitting prelude to verse 15: "Christ Jesus came into the world sinners to save."
(Rev. William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary, Banner of Truth Trust, Aug.-Sept 2014)
The fact that here in the Pastorals the name Saviour is frequently applied to God is, after all, not at all surprising, for even in his earlier epistles Paul frequently ascribes the work of saving man to "God"; for example, "It was God's good-pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe"; "but God . . . made us alive together with Christ....for by grace have you been saved through faith; and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God"; your salvation, and that from God". To "God" he also ascribes thedistinct acts in the programme of salvation.It is God who spared not his Son but delivered him up for us all. It is God who sets forth his son as a propitiation for our sins. It is he who commends his love toward us. It is God who blesses us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
Foreknowledge, foreordination, calling, justification, glorification are all ascribed to him. It is he who chose us. It is he who causes the gospel to be proclaimed. It is he who bestows his grace upon us. Faith is his gift. In view of all this we can almost say that it would have been strange if somewhere in his epistles the apostle would not have called God "our saviour". Calling God "our Saviour" is entirely proper. And since for Paul God ever saves through Christ, verse 1 is also a fitting prelude to verse 15: "Christ Jesus came into the world sinners to save."
(Rev. William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary, Banner of Truth Trust, Aug.-Sept 2014)
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Forerunner of the Reformation
John Wycliffe was the morning star of the Reformation. He was a protestant and a reformer more than a century before Martin Luther ignited the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Through Wycliffe, God planted the seeds of the Reformation, He watered the seeds through John Hus, and He brought the flower of the Reformation to bloom through Martin Luther. The seed of the flower of the German Augustinian monk Luther's 95 theses was planted by the English scholar and churchman John Wycliffe.
Wycliffe died on New Year's Eve, 1384. Three decades later, he was condemned as a heretic. In 1415, the Council of Constance condemned the Bohemian reformer John Hus (c. 1370-1415) and burned him at the stake, and it condemned Wycliffe on 260 counts of heresy. The council ordered that Wycliffe's bones be exhumed, removed from the honored burial grounds of the church, and burned, and his ashes scattered. More than a decade later, the Roman Catholic Church sought to counteract the spreading heresies of Wycliffe and his followers, the Lollards, by establishing Lincoln College, Oxford, under the leadership of Bishop Richard Fleming. Although the pope could condemn Wycliffe's teachings and scatter his bones, he was unable to stamp out his influence. Wycliffe's ashes were scattered into the River Swift in England's Midlands, and as one journalist later observed: "They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into the Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. Thus the brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; and they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine which now is dispersed the world over."
Wycliffe was committed to the authority and inspiration of Holy Scripture, declaring, "Holy Scripture is the highest authority for every believer, the standard of faith and the foundation for reform in religious, political and social life....in itself it is perfectly sufficient for salvation, without the addition of customs or traditions." As such, Wycliffe oversaw the translation of the Bible from Latin into the English vernacular. This was a radical undertaking, and it was against the express mandate of the papacy. His understanding of Scripture naturally led to his understanding of justification by faith alone, as he declared, "Trust wholly in Christ. Rely altogether on his sufferings. Beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by his righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation."
In the fourteenth century, at the dawn of the Reformation, Wycliffe shone as a burning and shining light of gospel truth, and his doctrine mirrored his life as one who lived by God's grace and before God's face, coram Deo, and for God's glory. Soli Deo gloria.
(Dr. Burk Parsons, editor of Tabletalk magazine, Tabletalk, July 2014, www.ligonier.org)
Wycliffe died on New Year's Eve, 1384. Three decades later, he was condemned as a heretic. In 1415, the Council of Constance condemned the Bohemian reformer John Hus (c. 1370-1415) and burned him at the stake, and it condemned Wycliffe on 260 counts of heresy. The council ordered that Wycliffe's bones be exhumed, removed from the honored burial grounds of the church, and burned, and his ashes scattered. More than a decade later, the Roman Catholic Church sought to counteract the spreading heresies of Wycliffe and his followers, the Lollards, by establishing Lincoln College, Oxford, under the leadership of Bishop Richard Fleming. Although the pope could condemn Wycliffe's teachings and scatter his bones, he was unable to stamp out his influence. Wycliffe's ashes were scattered into the River Swift in England's Midlands, and as one journalist later observed: "They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into the Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. Thus the brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; and they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine which now is dispersed the world over."
Wycliffe was committed to the authority and inspiration of Holy Scripture, declaring, "Holy Scripture is the highest authority for every believer, the standard of faith and the foundation for reform in religious, political and social life....in itself it is perfectly sufficient for salvation, without the addition of customs or traditions." As such, Wycliffe oversaw the translation of the Bible from Latin into the English vernacular. This was a radical undertaking, and it was against the express mandate of the papacy. His understanding of Scripture naturally led to his understanding of justification by faith alone, as he declared, "Trust wholly in Christ. Rely altogether on his sufferings. Beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by his righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation."
In the fourteenth century, at the dawn of the Reformation, Wycliffe shone as a burning and shining light of gospel truth, and his doctrine mirrored his life as one who lived by God's grace and before God's face, coram Deo, and for God's glory. Soli Deo gloria.
(Dr. Burk Parsons, editor of Tabletalk magazine, Tabletalk, July 2014, www.ligonier.org)
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
What Would Jesus Say? (And How Would He Say It?)
Christians today sometimes seem more concerned about the tone of what they say than the truth of it. Many a twenty-first-century church leader apparently thinks he is obliged to yield quietly to majority opinion on moral issues - while carefully observing all the rules of postmodern propriety.
Jesus was not like that. He was no domesticated clergyman with a starched collar and genteel manners; He was a bold prophet who regularly challenged the canons of political correctness.
The first word of Jesus' first sermon was repent - a term that was no more welcome then than it is today. Those without any sense of personal guilt - including the vast majority of religious leaders - were of course immediately offended. They were convinced that they were good enough to merit God's favor. Who was this man to summon them to repentance? They turned away from Jesus in angry unbelief.
The first act of Jesus' public ministry touched off a small riot. He made a whip of cords and chased money-changers and merchants out of the temple. That initiated a three-year-long conflict with the religious leaders. They ultimately handed Him over for crucifixion while crowds of laypeople cheered them on.
Would He receive a warmer welcome today from religious leaders, the media elite, or the political gentry? Anyone who has seriously considered the New Testament knows the answer. Postmodern culture is devoted to relativism. The average person is contemptuous of all absolute or exclusive truth-claims; convinced that self-love is the greatest love of all; satisfied that people are fundamentally good; and desperately wanting to believe that each of us is endowed with a spark of divinity.
To such people's ears, Jesus' message strikes a discordant note. He said: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?" (Luke 9:23-25) and, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (14:26).
How would Jesus contextualize that message for a pluralistic, tolerant, self-indulgent society like ours? I'm convinced His approach today would be the very same that we see in the Bible. To smug, self-satisfied, arrogant sinners (including multitudes on church rolls), His words would sound harsh, shocking, provocative. But to "the poor in spirit" (Matt. 5:3) - those who are exhausted and spent by the rages of sin, desperate for forgiveness, and without any hope of atoning for their own sin - Jesus' call to repentant faith remains the very gateway to eternal life.
(Dr.John MacArthur, president of The Master's College and Seminary, Tabletalk, July 2014, www.ligonier.org)
Jesus was not like that. He was no domesticated clergyman with a starched collar and genteel manners; He was a bold prophet who regularly challenged the canons of political correctness.
The first word of Jesus' first sermon was repent - a term that was no more welcome then than it is today. Those without any sense of personal guilt - including the vast majority of religious leaders - were of course immediately offended. They were convinced that they were good enough to merit God's favor. Who was this man to summon them to repentance? They turned away from Jesus in angry unbelief.
The first act of Jesus' public ministry touched off a small riot. He made a whip of cords and chased money-changers and merchants out of the temple. That initiated a three-year-long conflict with the religious leaders. They ultimately handed Him over for crucifixion while crowds of laypeople cheered them on.
Would He receive a warmer welcome today from religious leaders, the media elite, or the political gentry? Anyone who has seriously considered the New Testament knows the answer. Postmodern culture is devoted to relativism. The average person is contemptuous of all absolute or exclusive truth-claims; convinced that self-love is the greatest love of all; satisfied that people are fundamentally good; and desperately wanting to believe that each of us is endowed with a spark of divinity.
To such people's ears, Jesus' message strikes a discordant note. He said: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?" (Luke 9:23-25) and, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (14:26).
How would Jesus contextualize that message for a pluralistic, tolerant, self-indulgent society like ours? I'm convinced His approach today would be the very same that we see in the Bible. To smug, self-satisfied, arrogant sinners (including multitudes on church rolls), His words would sound harsh, shocking, provocative. But to "the poor in spirit" (Matt. 5:3) - those who are exhausted and spent by the rages of sin, desperate for forgiveness, and without any hope of atoning for their own sin - Jesus' call to repentant faith remains the very gateway to eternal life.
(Dr.John MacArthur, president of The Master's College and Seminary, Tabletalk, July 2014, www.ligonier.org)
Monday, July 14, 2014
Remembering Those Who Risked It All For FReedom
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Declaration of Independence, which was appproved on July 4, 1776, by the C ontinental Congress, is the mere fact that it exists.
Nowhere, ever, had a people offered to the world an open moral defense of their revolutionary, law-breaking intentions, at a moment when their actions on the battlefield appeared more suicidal than hopeful.
And nowhere, ever, before or after, has the cause of freedom been presented more perfectly, poetically or beautifully
All the men who signed the Declaration knew they were possibly signing away their lives and everything else dear to them. What was "revolution" for them was treason from the English Crown's point of view, and the punishment if they were caught would be torture and death at the hands of English soldiers - the most lethal military in the world at that time.
The macabre seriousness of the occasion was forever memorialized in the closing line of the Declaration, as the signers pledged their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor." Their pledge remains somewhat famous. But often people forget to whom the pledge was made: they pledged all they had not to God and not to the citizenry at large. Their pledge was to one another.
They knew well that if any betrayed the trust among them, the revolution would fail and freedom would have to wait for another time, another place. But their loyalty to each other and to the cause of freedom was unbreakable. And we today are the beneficiaries of their mutual loyalty.
The moral and political premise of the Declaration of Independence was a simple yet radical idea: Every human being - regardless of the time or place of birth, or gender, or the color of one'skin, or the language one speaks,or the gods one worships - possesses by nature a body that houses a free mind. In this way, all men truly are created equal. That's the simple part.
From this simple observation flow radical implications: If a body is home to a free mind, then that mind is the only truly rightful governor of that body. Self-government is right because it is woven into the fabric of human nature.
Any form of slavery or tyranny - any attempt of the mind of one person to own,control or abuse the body of another - is therefore wrong. Every moral wrong between human beings is a testament to the rightness of human equality.
Further, if a free mind directs the body it governs to create something, invent something, produce something useful, then the fruit of that labor belongs solely to the mind that made it. It belongs to no one else. Here we see that the idea of property is less economic, emphatically moral.
No one has a right to any property or any wealth that has been produced or earned by someone else. The inventions of some people are never the rights of others.
Consider: No one knows what future products or services technology might invent. But we know that no one has a right to them. You're free to work and earn and save in order to buy them, of course. But you have no right to them. If you did, then others would have an obligation now to invent them. Who has such an obligation? Answer: no one. And therefore no one has a right to anything that might be invented or produced by others, now or later.
From all this, a radical new vision of government arose in America: The purpose of government would be limited to protecting the natural freedoms, natural rights and property of those who mutually and voluntarily consent to form a government.
A government of limited purpose should be a government of limited power, which is precisely why the U. S. Constitution was written and ratified - to enumerate the few powers We The People grant to the government we created, and to make clear that government may not rightfully do anything else. Period.
More: Citizens have good reason to trust one another, because none has any legal authority to take anything away from or harm others. But government is different. Every law, every regulation, every rule and order and decree issued from government is ultimately backed up by the barrel of a gun. Government is a monopoly of force.
So while government may always be necessary, it's also always dangerous. A people who are wise and expect to remain free might extend civic trust to one another, but they should bind their government officials by the chains of the Constitution.
And if ever government exerises unjust and unauthorized powers, and we have no peaceful remedy available to us, we always reserve the natural right to choose revolution once again, just like we did on July 4, 1776. That's what freedom looks like. And that's what Independence Day is all about.
So let us celebrate this Fourth of July, 2014. As you enjoy the fireworks after sunset, let them be a reminderof the explosive fighting and dying required to establish the freedom you enjoy today. Remember how they fought, that for which they fought, and why we all are better off for it.
(Thomas Krannawitter, former professor of politics at Hillsdale College, now president of Speakeasy Ideas, Investors Business Daily, July 7, 2014)
Nowhere, ever, had a people offered to the world an open moral defense of their revolutionary, law-breaking intentions, at a moment when their actions on the battlefield appeared more suicidal than hopeful.
And nowhere, ever, before or after, has the cause of freedom been presented more perfectly, poetically or beautifully
All the men who signed the Declaration knew they were possibly signing away their lives and everything else dear to them. What was "revolution" for them was treason from the English Crown's point of view, and the punishment if they were caught would be torture and death at the hands of English soldiers - the most lethal military in the world at that time.
The macabre seriousness of the occasion was forever memorialized in the closing line of the Declaration, as the signers pledged their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor." Their pledge remains somewhat famous. But often people forget to whom the pledge was made: they pledged all they had not to God and not to the citizenry at large. Their pledge was to one another.
They knew well that if any betrayed the trust among them, the revolution would fail and freedom would have to wait for another time, another place. But their loyalty to each other and to the cause of freedom was unbreakable. And we today are the beneficiaries of their mutual loyalty.
The moral and political premise of the Declaration of Independence was a simple yet radical idea: Every human being - regardless of the time or place of birth, or gender, or the color of one'skin, or the language one speaks,or the gods one worships - possesses by nature a body that houses a free mind. In this way, all men truly are created equal. That's the simple part.
From this simple observation flow radical implications: If a body is home to a free mind, then that mind is the only truly rightful governor of that body. Self-government is right because it is woven into the fabric of human nature.
Any form of slavery or tyranny - any attempt of the mind of one person to own,control or abuse the body of another - is therefore wrong. Every moral wrong between human beings is a testament to the rightness of human equality.
Further, if a free mind directs the body it governs to create something, invent something, produce something useful, then the fruit of that labor belongs solely to the mind that made it. It belongs to no one else. Here we see that the idea of property is less economic, emphatically moral.
No one has a right to any property or any wealth that has been produced or earned by someone else. The inventions of some people are never the rights of others.
Consider: No one knows what future products or services technology might invent. But we know that no one has a right to them. You're free to work and earn and save in order to buy them, of course. But you have no right to them. If you did, then others would have an obligation now to invent them. Who has such an obligation? Answer: no one. And therefore no one has a right to anything that might be invented or produced by others, now or later.
From all this, a radical new vision of government arose in America: The purpose of government would be limited to protecting the natural freedoms, natural rights and property of those who mutually and voluntarily consent to form a government.
A government of limited purpose should be a government of limited power, which is precisely why the U. S. Constitution was written and ratified - to enumerate the few powers We The People grant to the government we created, and to make clear that government may not rightfully do anything else. Period.
More: Citizens have good reason to trust one another, because none has any legal authority to take anything away from or harm others. But government is different. Every law, every regulation, every rule and order and decree issued from government is ultimately backed up by the barrel of a gun. Government is a monopoly of force.
So while government may always be necessary, it's also always dangerous. A people who are wise and expect to remain free might extend civic trust to one another, but they should bind their government officials by the chains of the Constitution.
And if ever government exerises unjust and unauthorized powers, and we have no peaceful remedy available to us, we always reserve the natural right to choose revolution once again, just like we did on July 4, 1776. That's what freedom looks like. And that's what Independence Day is all about.
So let us celebrate this Fourth of July, 2014. As you enjoy the fireworks after sunset, let them be a reminderof the explosive fighting and dying required to establish the freedom you enjoy today. Remember how they fought, that for which they fought, and why we all are better off for it.
(Thomas Krannawitter, former professor of politics at Hillsdale College, now president of Speakeasy Ideas, Investors Business Daily, July 7, 2014)
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