Oh, the temptations that men of discontented spirits are subject to! The Devil loves to fish in troubled waters. That is our proverb about men and women, their disposition is to fish in troubled waters, they say it is good fishing in troubled waters. This is the maxim of the Devil, he loves to fish in troubled waters; where he sees the spirits of men and women troubled and vexed, there the Devil comes. He says, 'There is good fishing for me', when he sees men and women go up and down discontented, and he can get them alone, then he comes with his temptations: 'Will you suffer such a thing?' he says, 'take this shift, this indirect way, do you not see how poor you are, others are well off, you do not know what to do for the winter, to provide fuel and get bread for you and your children', and so he tempts them to unlawful courses.
"The inheritance that Christ has purchased for the elect, is the Spirit of God; not in any extraordinary gifts, but in his vital indwelling in the heart, exerting and communicating himself there, in his own proper, holy, or divine nature; and this is the sum total of the inheritance that Christ purchased for the elect. For so are things constituted in the affair of our redemption, that the Father provides the Saviour or purchaser, and the purchase is made of him; and the Son is the purchaser and the price; and the Holy Spirit is the great blessing or inheritance purchased, as is intimated, Gal. 3:13, 14; and hence the Spirit often is spoken of as the sum of the blessings promised in the gospel, Luke 24:49, Acts 1:4, and chap. 2:38, 39, Gal. 3:14, Eph. 1:13. This inheritance was the grand legacy which Christ left his disciples and church, in his last will and testament, John chap. 14, 15, 16. This is the sum of the blessings of eternal life, which shall be given in heaven. (Compare John 7:37, 38, 39, and John 4:14, with Rev. 21:6, and 22:1, 17.) It is through the vital communications and indwelling of the Spirit that the saints have all their light, life, holiness, beauty, and joy in heaven; and it is through the vital communications and indwelling of the same Spirit that the saints have all light, life, holiness, beauty and comfort on earth; but only communicated in less measure.(A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, 121, emphasis mine)
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was born at Oxford on 13th June 1893, the only child of the Rev. Henry Sayers, of Anglo-Irish descent. Her father was at the time headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School, and she was born in the headmaster's house. She was brought up at Bluntisham Rectory, Cambridgeshire, and went to the Godolphin School, Salisbury, where she won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford. In 1915 she graduated with first class honours in modern languages. Disliking the routine and seclusion of academic life she joined Blackwell's, the Oxford publishers, worked with her Oxford friend Eric Whelpton at L'École des Roches in Normandy, and from 1922 until 1931 served as copywriter at the London advertising firm of Bensons.Let us, in heaven's name, drag out the divine drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction. If the pious are the first to be shocked, so much the worse for the pious—others will pass into the kingdom of heaven before them. If all men are offended because of Christ, let them be offended; but where is the sense of their being offended at something that is not Christ and is nothing like him? We do him singularly little honor by watering down his personality till it could not offend a fly. Surely it is not the business of the Church to adapt Christ to men, but to adapt men to Christ.
The dogma is the drama—not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death — but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to a heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe. (Letters to a Diminished Church, 20-1)
“The cliché, God hates the sin but loves the sinner, is false on the face of it and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first fifty Psalms alone, we are told that God hates the sinner, His wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible, the wrath of God rests both on the sin (Romans 1:18ff) and on the sinner (John 3:36).”
-D.A. Carson
The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, Crossway, 2000, p. 70.
(HT: Reformed Voices)
You can read The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God on line here.
Not that the saints are made partakers of the essence of God, and so are godded with God, and christed with Christ, according to the abominable and blasphemous language and notions of some heretics: but, to use the Scripture phrase, they are made partakers of God's fullness, Eph. 3:17, 18, 19, John 1:16, that is, of God's spiritual beauty and happiness, according to the measure and capacity of a creature; for so it is evident the word fullness signifies in Scripture language. (emphasis mine)
The biblical metaphysics...makes a clear distinction between the Creator and the world, his "creaturely other." God is the Lord; the universe serves him. God is entitled by nature to be Lord; we are not. His lordship extends to everything that he has made. So there is no continuum between God and creation. There are no degrees of divinity; God is divine, we are not...So we have here, fundamentally, not a continuum, but a distinction between everything divine and everything creaturely. (emphasis mine)
This section is very practical and very convicting. Sometimes I wonder if I am nothing more than a big baby! I have not been a student of Christ like I need to be in the area of contentment.
The lessons that Christ teaches are:
1. The lesson of self-denial.
2. The vanity of the creature.
3. A third lesson which Christ teaches a Christian when he comes into his school is this: he teaches him to understand what is the one thing that is necessary, which he never understood before.
4. The soul comes to understand in what relation it stands to the world.
5. Christ teaches us wherein consists any good that is to be enjoyed in any creature in the world.
6. Christ teaches the soul whom he brings into this school in the knowledge of their own hearts.
7. The seventh lesson by which Christ teaches contentment is the burden of a prosperous outward condition.
8. Christ teaches them what a great and dreadful evil it is to be given up to one's heart's desires.
9. The ninth and last lesson which Christ teaches those whom he instructs in this art of contentment is the right knowledge of God's providence.
1. By studying your heart you will come soon to discover wherein your discontent lies.In the first way of help we are given the first watch metaphor:
2. This knowledge of our hearts will help us to contentment, because by it we shall come to know what best suits our condition.
3. By knowing their own hearts they know what they are able to manage, and by this means they come to be content.
When a man has a watch, and understand the use of every wheel and pin, if it goes amiss he will soon find out the cause of it; but when someone has no skill in a watch, if it goes amiss he does not know what is the matter, and therefore cannot mend it. So indeed our hearts are as a watch, and there are many wheels and windings and turnings there, and we should labor to know our hearts well, that when they are out of tune, we may know what is the matter.Knowing one's heart in detail will allow the Christian to know exactly what is impairing the heart in terms of discontentment. If we do not know our hearts, we may be upset and anxious and not know the cause of it. My eldest daughter gets very vexed when she encounters new things. We have discussed this tendency and she is learning to know her heart in this way. This helps her to deal with the lack of peace in a purposeful way instead of just fretting. She still cries in many of these situations, but she knows why she is crying and takes steps to work through it.
1. The universality of providence, wherein the soul must be thoroughly instructed in to come to this art of contentment.The metaphor we are looking for comes out in the third point.
2. The efficacy that is in providence.
3. The infinite variety of the works of providence, and yet the order of things, one working towards another.
4. Christ teaches them the knowledge of providence.
There is an infinite variety of the works of God in an ordinary providence, and yet they all work in an orderly way...We, indeed, look at things by pieces, we look at one detail and do not consider the relation that one thing has to another, but God looks at all things at once, and sees the relation that one thing has to another. When a child looks at a clock, it looks first at one wheel, and then at another wheel: he does not look at them all together or the dependence that one has upon another; but the workman has his eyes on them all together and sees the dependence of all, one upon another: so it is in God's providence...Now notice how this works to contentment: when a certain passage of providence befalls me, that is one wheel, and it may be that if this wheel were stopped, a thousand other things might come to be stopped by this. In a clock, stop but one wheel and you stop every wheel, because they are dependant upon one another. So when God has ordered a thing for the present to be thus and thus, how do you know how many things depend upon this thing? God may have some work to do twenty years hence that depends on this passage of providence that falls out this day or this week.
"Our generation is overwhelmingly naturalistic. There is almost complete commitment to the concept of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. This is its distinguishing mark. If we are not careful, even though we say we are biblical Christians and supernaturalists, nevertheless the naturalism of our generation tends to come in upon us. It may infiltrate our thinking without our recognizing its coming, like fog creeping in through a window opened only half an inch. As soon as this happens, Christians begin to lose the reality of their Christian lives. As I travel about and speak in many countries, I am impressed with the number of times I am asked by Christians about the loss of reality in their Christians lives. Surely this is one of the greatest, and perhaps the greatest reason for a loss of reality: that while we say we believe one thing, we allow the spirit of the naturalism of the age to creep into our thinking unrecognized. All too often the reality is lost because the "ceiling" is down too close upon our heads. It is too low. And the ceiling which closes in is the naturalistic type of thinking." - Francis Schaeffer
What do eating habits, film noir, reptiles, human cloning, Facebook, economics, and poetry have to do with the Christian life? “Everything,” Ken Myers would argue, and does, thoughtfully and audibly, at least every other month. For Myers—the living library behind the Mars Hill Audio Journal—what the church needs today is not more specialists, whether in theology or philosophy or church growth, but more “well-informed generalists” who are interested in understanding all of culture in order to live more faithfully in God’s world…
You cannot evade the issue of God; whether you talk about pigs or the binomial theory, you are still talking about Him…. Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true. Zulus, gardening, butcher’s shops, lunatic asylums, housemaids and the French Revolution — all these things not only may have something to do with the Christian God, but must have something to do with Him if He really lives and reigns...Now if Christianity be...a fragment of metaphysical nonsense invented by a few people, the, of course, defending it will simply mean talking that metaphysical nonsense over and over. But if Christianity should happen to be true-then defending it may mean talking about anything or everything...Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true. (Daily News, December 12, 1903)Chesterton valued the generalist over the specialist. Interestingly, for Chesterton, the generalist par excellence is the mother. Consider this excerpt from the FAQ section on the webpage of The American Chesterton Society:
Chesterton consistly defended the amateur against the professional, or the "generalist" against the specialist, especially when it came to "the things worth doing." There are things like playing the organ or discovering the North Pole, or being Astronomer Royal, which we do not want a person to do at all unless he does them well. But those are not the most important things in life. When it comes to writing one's own love letters and blowing one's own nose, "these things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly." This, argues Chesterton (in Orthodoxy) is "the democratic faith: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves - the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state."
As for "the rearing of the young," which is the education of the very young, this is a job not for the specialist or the professional, but for the "generalist" and the amateur. In other words, for the mother, who Chesterton argues is "broad" where men are "narrow." In What's Wrong with the World, Chesterton forsaw the dilemma of daycare and the working mother, that children would end up being raised by "professionals" rather than by "amateurs." And here we must understand "amateur" in its truest and most literal meaning. An amateur is someone who does something out of love, not for money. She does what she does not because she is going to be paid for her services and not because she is the most highly skilled, but because she wants to do it. And she does "the things worth doing," which are the things closest and most sacred to all of humanity - nurturing a baby, teaching a child the first things, and, in fact, all things.
The response by the crowd, "His blood be upon us and our children", jumped out at me. Originally, the crowd cried this so that Pilate would free them to crucify Christ. And I realize that I was in that crowd seeking to crucify the Son of God.
15 Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. 16 And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. 17 So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” 18 For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. 19 Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.” 20 Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. 21 The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” 22 Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” 23 And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!” 24 So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves.” 25 And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” 26 Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified. (emphasis mine)
David Martin McIntyre (1859 – 8 March 1938) was a Scottish preacher and Principal of the Bible Training Institute, Glasgow from 1913 to 1938.
David McIntyre was the son of Rev Malcolm McIntyre, (16 January 1819 – 10 October 1903) and his wife Mary Ann (Miller), (6 September 1829 – 31 July 1862). David's father Malcolm was Free Church of Scotland minister of Monikie, Angus from July 1849 to his death. David had an elder sister Margaret Grace and an elder brother Miller Malcolm, both of whom died in their childhood (1863 and 1874 respectively). David's mother was the daughter of the previous minister of Monikie, James Miller, who came out of the Church of Scotland at the Disruption.
Our Lord takes it for granted that His people will pray. And indeed in Scripture generally the outward obligation of prayer is implied rather than asserted. Moved by a divinely-implanted instinct, our natures cry out for God, for the living God. And however this instinct may be crushed by sin, it awakes to power in the consciousness of redemption. Theologians of all schools, and Christians of every type, agree in their recognition of this principle of the new life. Chrysostom has said, "The just man does not desist from praying until he ceases to be just;" and Augustine, "He that loveth little prayeth little, and he that loveth much prayeth much;" and Richard Hooker, "Prayer is the first thing wherewith a righteous life beginneth, and the last wherewith it doth end;" and Père la Combe, "He who has a pure heart will never cease to pray, and he who will be constant in prayer shall know what it is to have a pure heart;" and Bunyan, "If thou art not a praying person, thou art not a Christian;" and Richard Baxter, "Prayer is the breath of the new creature;" and George Herbert, "Prayer...the soul's blood."
Narcissism describes the trait of excessive self-love based on self-image or ego.
The term is derived from the Greek mythology of Narcissus. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus pined away and changed into a flower that bears his name, the narcissus.
The more I have thought about different topics, the more I’ve realized that there is theology everywhere. And this is what motivates me to write; it’s what motivates me to read and to think and to explore. Everywhere I turn I see theology, whether in a book about the atoning work of Jesus Christ or in a book about the future of business or in a biography of a man who lives half a world away. Sometimes the theology is lying on the surface, exposed and easy to see. Sometimes it is hidden within and just needs to be coaxed out. But always there is something to think about, something to wrestle with, something to help me think deeply about how Christians are to live in this world.
Maybe you didn't know this, but the Bible gives you a special privilege in dealing with sin committed against you. It's called forbearance. It means you can bring love into play in such a way that can cut someone free from their sin against you - without them even knowing or acknowledging what you've done! Forbearance is an expression or mercy that can cover both the big sins of marital strife and the small sins of marital tension. And let's face it; small sins are the fuel for most marital blazes.
Let's be careful here. Forbearance doesn't mean we tuck sin away for another time. It's not a variation on patience, nor is it some Christianized, external "niceness" where you pretend nothing bothers you. It's not even a kind of ignoring the sin, in the sense of refusing to acknowledge it.
In forbearance, we know (or at least we suspect) we have been sinned against, but we actually make a choice to overlook the offense and wipe the slate clean, extending a heart attitude of forgiveness and treating the (apparent) sin as if it never happened. Proverbs 19:11 tells us it is a "glory to overlook an offense." Forbearance is preemptive forgiveness, freely and genuinely bestowed.
Of course, righteousness often demands that we address the sin of another, even if it may create some unpleasant results. (We'll discuss this in chapter seven.) It's not forbearance to suppress a sin you can't readily release, or to prefer the pain of being sinned against to what you imagine would be the greater pain of discussing it, or to let a pattern of sin in your spouse go completely unaddressed.
Forbearance applies to specific instances of sin. It involves a clear-eyed realization that we may have been sinned against, and then a bold-hearted, Gospel-inspired decision to cover that sin with love. Peter gives us the key to forbearance. "Above all. keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8). Looks like Peter learned the lessons of Luke 6 pretty well.
When we are sinned against, we can cover it-overwrite it, if you will-with the perspective of love. Thus, forbearance includes a commitment to earnestness in love, actively holding ourselves accountable to keeping the sin covered. (When Sinners Say "I Do", 88-9)
Dave Harvey is responsible for church care, church planting, and international expansion for Sovereign Grace Ministries. He has served as a member of the Sovereign Grace Ministries leadership team since 1995.Now on to those excerpts:Dave has been in pastoral ministry at Covenant Fellowship Church (Glen Mills, PA) since 1986, was ordained in 1988, and served as senior pastor from 1990 to 2008. He has served on the board of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation since 2006. Dave received a Master of Arts in Missiology from Westminster Theological Seminary in 1989, worked toward a Master of Divinity from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1993 to 1995, and in 2001 became a graduate in Westminster’s D.Min. program. The subject of his doctoral thesis was the identification and equipping of church planters.
Dave contributed a chapter to Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World (Crossway, 2008) and is the author of When Sinners Say “I Do”: Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage (Shepherd, 2007). Dave also wrote a chapter for Why Small Groups?, a book from Sovereign Grace’s Pursuit of Godliness series. He continues to work on other writing projects.
Dave lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Kimm, their four children, and despite his many protests, one stray cat.
It may not sound too earth-shattering at first, but based on Scripture and everything I've learned about pastoring in the last twenty-one years, I assure you that this truth can rock your world. Here it is: What we believe about God determines the quality of our marriage. (When Sinners Say "I Do", 20)
How a husband a wife build their marriage day-by-day and year-by-year is fundamentally shaped by their theology. It governs how you think, what you say, and how you act. Your theology governs your entire life. And it determines how you live in your marriage. (When Sinners Say "I Do", 21)
Three of the most important components of a solid, biblical theology of marriage: The bible is the foundation for a thriving marriage...The gospel is the fountain of a thriving marriage...The focus of a thriving marriage is the glory of God. (When Sinners Say "I Do", 22-8)
This also means that the gospel is an endless fountain of God's grace in your marriage. To become a good theologian and to be able to look forward to a lifelong, thriving marriage, you must have a clear understanding of the gospel. Without it, you cannot see God, yourself, or your marriage for what they truly are. (When Sinners Say "I Do", 25)
What if you abandoned the idea that the problems and weaknesses in your marriage are caused by a lack of information, dedication,or communication? What if you saw your problems as they truly are: caused by a war within your own heart? (When Sinners Say "I Do", 29)
Maybe you are beginning to sense that if your experience of sin is not all that bitter, and your experience of marriage not all that sweet, maybe your theology is not all that it should be. (When Sinners Say "I Do", 32)
The reason for this trivialization, of course, is that the idiom of pain and suffering places the individual at the centre of the universe and makes him or her the measure of all things. In other words, it panders to the idolatry of fallen human nature. Suddenly, it is my experience, my feelings, my pain, which are the most important things. Sure, I have never known what it is like to see my loved ones gassed and cremated at Auschwitz, but I can be a victim too: I have lost my job, or been sworn at while driving, or had my opinions belittled in a blog somewhere. I don't know the pain of those who have really suffered - but my own trivial discomforts are just as important because I am me, I am the centre of the universe as I know it, and I deserve to feel good about myself. To deprive me of this is simply cruel.
Carl R Trueman is Departmental Chair of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He has an MA in Classics from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Church History from the University of Aberdeen. He is editor of the IFES journal, Themelios, and has taught on the faculties of theology at both the University of Nottingham and the University of Aberdeen. He has authored a number of books, including The Claims of Truth: John Owen's Trinitarian Theology and The Wages of Spin: Critical Writings on Historic and Contemporary Evangelicalism. He lives in Oreland, a suburb of Philadelphia, with his wife, Catriona, and his two sons, John and Peter.
When once a hypocrite is thus established in a false hope, he has not those things to cause him to call his hope in question, that oftentimes are the occasion of the doubting of true saints; as, first, he has not that cautious spirit, that great sense of the vast importance of a sure foundation, and that dread of being deceived. The comforts of the true saints increase awakening and caution, and a lively sense how great a thing it is to appear before an infinitely holy, just and omniscient Judge. But false comforts put an end to these things and dreadfully stupify the mind. Secondly, The hypocrite has not the knowledge of his own blindness, and the deceitfulness of his own heart, and that mean opinion of his own understanding that the true saint has. Those that are deluded with false discoveries and affections, are evermore highly conceited of their light and understanding. Thirdly, The devil does not assault the hope of the hypocrite, as he does the hope of a true saint. The devil is a great enemy to a true Christian hope, not only because it tends greatly to the comfort of him that hath it, but also because it is a thing of a holy, heavenly nature, greatly tending to promote and cherish grace in the heart, and a great incentive to strictness and diligence in the Christian life. But he is no enemy to the hope of a hypocrite, which above all things establishes his interest in him that has it. A hypocrite may retain his hope without opposition, as long as he lives, the devil never disturbing it, nor attempting to disturb it. But there is perhaps no true Christian but what has his hope assaulted by him. Satan assaulted Christ himself upon this, whether he were the Son of God or no: and the servant is not above his Master, nor the disciple above his Lord; it is enough for the disciple, that is most privileged in this world, to be as his Master. Fourthly, He who has a false hope, has not that sight of his own corruptions, which the saint has. A true Christian has ten times so much to do with his heart and its corruptions, as a hypocrite: and the sins of his heart and practice, appear to him in their blackness; they look dreadful; and it often appears a very mysterious thing, that any grace can be consistent with such corruption, or should be in such a heart. But a false hope hides corruption, covers it all over, and the hypocrite looks clean and bright in his own eyes. (Religious Affections, 73, emphasis mine)
Evangelical churches today are increasingly dominated by the spirit of this age rather than by the Spirit of Christ. As evangelicals, we call ourselves to repent of this sin and to recover the historic Christian faith.
In the course of history words change. In our day this has happened to the word "evangelical." In the past it served as a bond of unity between Christians from a wide diversity of church traditions. Historic evangelicalism was confessional. It embraced the essential truths of Christianity as those were defined by the great ecumenical councils of the church. In addition, evangelicals also shared a common heritage in the "solas" of the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation.
Today the light of the Reformation has been significantly dimmed. The consequence is that the word "evangelical" has become so inclusive as to have lost its meaning. We face the peril of losing the unity it has taken centuries to achieve. Because of this crisis and because of our love of Christ, his gospel and his church, we endeavor to assert anew our commitment to the central truths of the Reformation and of historic evangelicalism. These truths we affirm not because of their role in our traditions, but because we believe that they are central to the Bible.
