Blogging the Institutes Day 53 2.5.4 - 2.5.8

What purpose do teachers, preachers, exhortations, or reprimands have once one becomes a "believer" in Christ? If one is born again shouldn't that be enough? What is the purpose to bible study, of listening to sermons, of talking out issues with friends? Why does it seem like there are so many that think little of these things?

Well, there are MANY purposes for those things, but "had exhortations and reprimands no other profit with the godly than to convince them of sin, they could not be deemed altogether useless. Now, when, by the Spirit of God acting within, they have the effect of inflaming their desire of good, of arousing them from lethargy, of destroying the pleasure and honeyed sweetness of sin, making it hateful and loathsome, who will presume to cavil at them as superfluous?"

The danger of this attitude can be seen across the scope of the Church today. People forget about sin. They accept the grace of God, they accept Jesus. But the only change that is seen in their lives is that they feel eternally forgiven. Their actions don't change, "because they feel forgiven", their views don't change, "they don't have to" they feel forgiven.

Preaching, Teaching, Talking, Reading -- all, if only, bring light to sin. And when sin is brought to your face, the only place you can go is to the Cross. And when you encounter the cross, you will "feel" what forgiven is really like.

And your actions and your view will change.

Blogging the Institutes Day 52: 2.4.7 -2.5.3

The idea of unabated human free will is not biblical; Free will to chose God, free will to do good, free will to make any choice based solely on your own. It's just not. Any semi-serious study of Romans, the Words of Jesus, and the entire Old Testament's pointing to God's redemptive history will prove this. Scriptures continually state that God wills some hearts of flesh and other hearts of stone and that grace is through faith, a gift from God and not of works.

If you believe that free will indeed exist, and that you are the final decision maker in your faith, or that you have the ability to chose good over evil, I honestly pray for you. For if that is the case then you are leaving your faith, and your eternal future in your own hands, your own sinful hands. And where there is sin there is punishment, all the works in the world will not cover up that stain.

"The abettors of this error would see a still better refutation of it, if they would attend to the source from which the apostle derives the glory of the saints -- 'Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and who he justified, them he also glorified' (Rom 8:30). On what ground, then the apostle being judge, are believers crowned? Because by the mercy of God, not their own exertions, they are predestinated, called, and justified. Away, then, with the vain fear, that unless free wills stands, there will no longer be any merit! It is foolish to take alarm, and recoil from that which Scripture
inculcates. 'If thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?' (1 Cor 4:7). You see how everything is denied to free will, for the very purpose of leaving no room for merit. And yet, as the beneficence and liberality of God are manifold and inexhaustible, the grace which he bestows upon us, inasmuch as he makes it our own, he recompenses as if the virtuous acts were our own."

Augustine puts it like this, " If you are to receive your due, you must be punished. What then is done? God has not rendered you due punishment, but bestows upon you unmerited grace. If you wish to be an alien from grace, boast your merits."

I wish to be no alien from grace, but a current and forever resident of grace!

Blogging the Institutes Day 51: 2.4.1 - 2.4.6

I enter this subject humbly, as I do not have all the answers, and can not even begin to do a detailed Q&A, but it is a subject that settles well in my soul, one I feel is closest to God in description, and most glorifies Him as Sovereign.

John Piper made a statement during his TULIP seminar, which I feel may have come from the reading of this section. Piper said that God wills means, and God wills ends. At time you may be a functioning part of the means, and at time you may be experiencing the ends.

Calvin puts it this way, "And the interference of divine providence goes to the extent not only of making events turn out as was foreseen to be expedient, but of giving the wills of men the same direction."

The best picture of this is in the story of Job, and how all at once God, Satan, and man can be involved in one singular "evil", yet God is not unjust for allowing that "evil" to occur. Where God uses Satan and man as the means to the ultimate end of humbling Job to produce worship and saying, "What the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away."

God will get His Glory. If He were to ever act in a way were the end was not His receiving of Glory, that would be an injustice to Himself, and a very weak picture of a Holy Awesome God.

Blogging the Institutes Day 50: 2.3.10 - 2.3.14

Thank God we are not left to ourselves to preserver to the end. It is only God's Grace that allows us to continually fight off sin and the devil. Without this continual and effectual grace we would not stand a change.

Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian monk, one in which Calvin has quoted quite a bit lately, made a very poignant prayer in regard to perseverance,

"Draw me, who am in some measure unwilling, and make me willing; draw me, who am sluggisly lagging, and make me run."

That's my prayer, and maybe one in which you would consider as well!

Finally Alive - Read It!

"The Son of Man came “to give his life a ransom for many.” This
had to happen as the basis of the free and gracious gift of the new
birth for undeserving sinners like us. And since the new birth is
the gift of eternal life, not just new life, the ransom price had to be
imperishable—not like silver or gold. The blood of Christ is infi nitely
valuable and, therefore, can never lose its ransoming power. The life
it obtains lasts forever. So the way God brings about the new birth
is by paying a ransom for the eternal life it imparts."

-Excerpt from Finally Alive by John Piper.

Read it online for free

"There is nothing new under the sun"

In Ecclesiastes King Solomon sets out on the ultimate experiment..... to find ultimate pleasure. He tries all kinds of avenues; parties, women, kingdoms, work and find one truth, that there is nothing new under the sun. I encourage all who see this to begin to listen to Matt Chandler, lead pastor at the Village Church, clearly and wonderfully teach this amazing book. It has rocked my world.

http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/sermons?kw=ecc&type=sermons&match=any

Blogging the Institutes Day 49 2.3.5 -2.3.9

Argument: Everything Proceeding from Man is Corrupt (Continued), Anything Good Proceeding from Man, is actually Proceeding from Christ.

1. "Thus the soul (in its natural state), in some strange and evil way, is held under this kind of voluntary, yet sadly free necessity, not bond and free; Bond in respect of necessity, free in respect of will: and what is still more strange, and still more miserable, it is guilty because free, and enslaved because guilty, and therefore enslaved because free."
2. "Since the Lord, in bringing assistance, supplies us with what is lacking, the nature of that assistance will immediately make manifest its converse, ie., our penury. When the apostle says to the Philippians, "being confident of this very thing, that he which has begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ", there cannot be a doubt, that by the good work thus begun, he means the very commencement of conversion in the will. God, therefore, begins the good work in us be exciting in our hearts a desire, a love, and a study of righteousness, or (to speak more correctly) by turning, training, and guiding our hearts unto righteousness; and he competes this good work by confirming us unto perseverance."
   
3. But if the Holy Spirit meant to show that no good can ever be extracted from our heat until it is made altogether new, let us not attempt to share with him what he claims for himself alone.
4. "For in saying (Augustine that is), as he often does, that the Lord prevents the unwilling in order to make him willing, and follows after the willing that he may not will in vain, he make him the sole author of good works.
5. If, when engrafted into Christ, we bear fruit like the vine, which draws its vegetative power from the moisture of the ground and the dew of heaven, and fostering warmth of the sun, I see nothing in a good work, which we can call our own, without trenching upon what is due to God.
6. In this way, the Lord both begins and prefects the good work in us, so that it is due him, first, that the will conceives a love of rectitude, is inclined to desire, is moved and stimulated to purse it; secondly, that this choice, desire, and endeavor fail not, but are carried forward to effect; and lastly, that we go on without interruption, and persevere even to the end."
   

Blogging the Institutes Day 48 2.3.1 -2.3.4

Argument: Everything Proceeding from Man is Corrupt

Points of Support:

1. Christ says that we must be born again, because we are flesh. He requires us not to be born again of the body, but of the mind. The mind must be totally renewed
2. Everything in man, which in not spiritual, falls under the denomination of carnal. But we have nothing of the Spirit except through regeneration (being born again). Everything, therefore, which we have from nature is flesh.
3. Ps 62:9 "Those of low estate are but a breath; those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath." The human mind receives a humbling blow when all the thoughts which proceed form it are derived as foolish, frivolous, perverse, and insane.
4. Rom 3:10-18 "as it is written: None is righteous, no not one, no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." The object is not merely to upbraid men in order that they may repent, but to teach that all are overwhelmed with inevitable calamity, and can be delivered from it only by the mercy of God.
5. "For as a body, while it contains and fosters the cause and matter of disease, cannot be called healthy, although pain is not actually felt; so a soul, while teeming with such seeds of vice, cannot be called sound."
6. But we ought to consider, that, notwithstanding the corruption of our nature, there is some room for divine grace, such grace as, without purifying it, may lay it under internal restraint...If every soul is capable of such abominations (and the apostle declares this boldly), it is surely easy to see what the result would be, if the Lord were to permit human passion to follow its bent...In the elect, God cures these diseases in the mode which we shortly be explained; in others, he only lays them under such restraint as may prevent them from breaking forth to a degree incompatible with the preservation of the established order of things."
7. The virtues which deceive us by an empty show may have their praise in civil society and the common intercourse of life, but before the judgment sear of God they will be of no value to establish a claim of righteousness."

This can be a very scary thought for those who think being good, and doing good, is all that really matters.

Blogging the Institutes Day 47 2.2.14 - 2.2.27

This is profound once understood, knowing that grace must be given before you can understand, so in understanding, you know you have grace.

"We are all sinners by nature, therefore we are held under the yoke of sin. But if the whole man is subject to the dominion of sin, surely the will, which is its principal seat, must be bound with the closest chains. And, indeed, if divine grace were preceded by any will of ours, Paul could not have said that, 'it is God which worketh in us both to will and to do' (Phil 2:13). Away, then, with all the absurd trifling which many have indulged in with regard to preparation. Although believers sometimes ask to have their heart trained to the obedience of the divine law, as David does in several passages, it is to be observed, that even this longing in prayer is from God.

Augustine said it this way is speaking about the inability of human reason to understand the things of God,

"The grace of illumination is not less necessary to the mind than the light of the sun to the eye.

Blogging the Institutes Day 46 2.2.18 - 2.2.23

What power does human reason hold, in regard to the kingdom of God and spiritual discernment? Calvin breaks down the kingdom of God and spiritual discernment into three things: knowledge of God, knowledge of His paternal favor toward us, and the method of regulating our conduct in accordance with the divine law, and examines human reason in light of them:

Knowledge of God & God's Paternal Favor Towards Us

The short and sweet of it is this, that human reason simply can not begin to reach the level of understanding God and His Paternal Love for us alone. John 1:4-5 says, "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." The human soul is indeed "irradiated with a beam of divine light, so that it is never left utterly devoid of some small flame, or rather spark, though not such as to enable it to comprehend God. And why so? Because its acuteness is, in reference to the knowledge of God, mere blindness." We must have help through the Holy Spirit to be able to grasp the knowledge and love of God. As we see from Moses that even the most visual proof is not enough to overcome our fallen "human reason", "while upbraiding the people for their forgetfulness, at the same time observes, that they could not become wise in the mysteries of God without his assistance. 'Ye have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, unto Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land; the great temptations which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and these great miracles: yet the Lord has not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day'."

"No, is not He Himself the living image of His Father, in which the full brightness of His glory is manifested to us? Therefore, how far our faculty of knowing God extends could not be better shown than when it is declared, that though his image is so plainly exhibited, we have not eyes to perceive it. What? Did not Christ descend into the world that he might make the will of His Father manifest to men, and did he not faithfully perform the office? True! He did; but nothing is accomplished by his preaching unless the inner teacher, the Spirit, open the way into our minds. Only those, therefore, come to him who have heard and learned of the Father. And in what is the method of this hearing and learning? It is when the Spirit, with a wondrous and special energy, forms the ear to hear and the mind to understand."

Method of Regulating Our Conduct

Man has to some extent the ability to regulate our conduct based on the engraving of divine law on the heart. This is ability can be seen when looking at the abstract level, homicide is an evil, "no man will deny," yet it has its flaws in that at the say time "one who is conspiring the death of his enemy deliberates on it as if the thing was good."

"This is correctly termed the knowledge of the works of righteousness, a branch in which the human mind seems to have somewhat more discernment than in the former two, since an apostle declares, 'When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meantime accusing or else excusing one another.' If the gentiles have the righteousness of the law naturally engraved on their minds, we certainly cannot say that they are altogether blind as to the rule of life. Nothing, indeed, is more common, than for man to be sufficiently instructed in a right course of conduct by natural law, of which the apostle here speaks."

It comes down to us ultimately needing God for everything.

The Invisible Hand by R.C. Sproul

I just finished the final page of The Invisible Hand by R.C. Sproul and in reflection I must say that this will go down as "one of those books" that absolutely changed me. If you haven't noticed the sub title of this blog it references the Providence of God, which this book inspired. This book was so influential because reading a book on the Providence of God forces you to constantly reflect on your every moment and how God is there and working in that exact moment, its a reflection that springs so much joy, and makes me feel so small.

Reading this book while reading Calvin was like riding a full speed train into the wall of humility.

Blogging the Institutes Day 45 2.2.12 - 2.2.17

In yesterday's post we ended with stating that the pursuit of humility does not mean that we should slothfully ignore the powers and skills God has bestowed to us, but inversely we should give God the deserved glory and use them for the spreading of His Fame. So in the next few sections Calvin analyzes our natural and supernatural gifts and how the natural have been corrupted by sin and the supernatural (the pursuit of faith and righteousness for attainment of heavenly life) have been completely withdrawn. It is funny that I encounter this subject as just yesterday I was listening to a seminar by John Piper on TULIP, and he was covering the same topic. That unbelievers do not have the ability to do good, and by good we mean that every act should be done to the Glory of God and if it is not, it can not be "good". But this is not to say that we should not Glorify God for the work He does through unbelievers. If an unbeliever builds a hospital and that hospital saves thousands and thousands of lives, but never acknowledges God's role in that hospital, the building of that hospital was not "good", but we as believers can give all the Glory to God for using those people to carry out His healing.

Calvin says it like this, "But if the Lord has been pleased to assist us by the work and ministry of the ungodly in physics, dialectics, mathematics, and other similar sciences, let us avail ourselves of it, lest, by neglecting the gifts of God spontaneously offered to us we be justly punished for our sloth."

How wonderful it is that God fulfills His promise, that he works everything for the good of those who love Him, even in the use of the ungodly.

Blogging the Institutes Day 44 2.2.8 - 2.2.11

There is no such thing as free will, there is only will freed by God.

"Without the Spirit the will of man is not free, inasmuch as it is subject to lusts which chain and master it. And again, that nature began to want liberty the moment the will was vanquished by the revolt into which it fell. Again, that man, by making a bad use of free will, lost both himself and his will [Adam]. Again, that free will having been made a captive, can do nothing in way of righteousness. Again, that no will is free which has not been made so by divine grace. Again, that the righteousness of God is not fulfilled when the law orders, and man acts, as it were, by his own strength, but when the Spirit assists, and the will (not the free will of man, but the will freed by God) obeys.

Calvin goes so far as to warn the use of the term "free will" because of its immediate implied meaning. "Declaring that the freedom of man is nothing else than the emancipation or manumission from righteousness, he seems to jest at the emptiness of the name [will]. If any one, then, chooses to make use of this term, without attaching any bad meaning to it, he shall not be troubled by me on that account; but as it can not be retained without very great danger, I think the abolition of it would be of great advantage of the church. I am unwilling to use it myself; and others, if they will take my advice, will do well to abstain from it.

This entire discussion of free will was for the end purpose of creating a foundation on which true understanding of humility can be built. Once we understand that "free will" is nothing more than our freeing from compulsion, and is not our ability to equally choose good over evil, we will see that without divine grace we can do no good. No good, that is the foundation of humility. Calvin puts it this way, "Here however, I must again repeat what I premised at the outset of this chapter, that he who is most deeply abased and alarmed, by the consciousness of his disgrace, nakedness, want, and misery, has made the greatest progress in the knowledge of himself. Man is in no danger of taking too much from himself, provided he learns that whatever he wants is to be recovered in God." As Augustine once said, "As the orator, when asked, 'what is the first precept in eloquence? answered, Delivery: What is second? Delivery: What the third? Delivery: so, if you asked me in regard to the precepts of the Christian religion, I will answer, first, second, and third, Humility."

We see that our ultimate goal is humility, but this is not the humility that leaves us secluded in a room all ours of the day, with no interaction. As Calvin says, "I do not ask, however, that man should voluntarily yield without being convinced, or that, if he has any powers, he should shut his eyes to them, that he may thus be subdued to true humility; but that getting quit of the disease of self-love and ambition, under the blinding influences of which he thinks of himself more highly than he ought to think, he may see himself as he really is, by looking into the faithful mirror of Scripture."

Blogging the Institutes Day 43 2.2.4 - 2.2.7

In discussion of "free will" it is important to come to a consensus on the meaning of the word. The common opinion of those who Calvin referenced was free will is the "power of reason to discern between good and evil; of will, to choose the one or other." Calvin's ultimate purpose is not to refute each of the stances he observed, but to simply list them as to provide context for his argument leading up to the idea that free will is not the ability to choose equally between good and evil, but to the extent of which it frees us from compulsion. "In this way, then, man is said to have free will, not because he has a free choice of good and evil, but because he acts voluntarily, and not by compulsion. This is perfectly true; but why should so small a matter have been dignified with so proud a title?"

Calvin's problem was not solely with the idea of free will, but the definition and the words themselves. He felt that ascribing this idea of "the extent to which we are free from making decisions based on compulsion" was not worthy of the the title of "will". And this is why, "How few are there who, when they hear free will attributed to man, do not immediately imagine that he is the master of his mind and will in such a sense, that he can of himself incline himself either to good or evil? It may be said that such dangers are removed by carefully expounding the meaning to the people."

Calvin's wanted to break down this idea of free will so that when people heard the term, they did not assume it was referencing the total free ability to choose good over evil, but simply the extent to which we do not respond immediately to compulsions.

Blogging the Institutes Day 42 2.1.9 - 2.2.3

As we continue to barely scratch the surface of the second book we see Calvin laying a foundation for the redemptive power of Christ. He begins, as discussed in the previous post, with the fall of man and "original sin", and has now moved to the deprivation of free will due to that fall. In today's section we do not get very deep into how man is now deprived of freedom of will, that should be coming very shortly... stay tuned.

Blogging The Institutes Day 41 2.1.5 - 2.1.8

In continuation of the analysis of Adam's Fall we take a step deeper to look at "original sin" and its effects on those following Adam. There have been arguments made that man should not have to suffer for and are not responsible for the fall of one man. I'm sorry but that is just not the case. For Adam held the responsibility of being the perfect human. It was his job to glorify God through righteousness. He failed to do that. And in that failure tainted his original state. "It should be enough for us to know that Adam was made the depository of the endowments which God was pleased to bestow on human nature, and that, therefore, when he lost what he had received, he lost not only for himself but for us all." An example would be "from a corrupt root corrupt branches proceeding, transmit their corruption to the saplings which spring from them."

"Surely there is no ambiguity in David's confession, 'I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me'. His object in the passage is not to throw blame on his parents; but the better to commend the goodness of God toward him, he properly reiterates the confession of impurity from his very birth. Ad it is clear, that there was no peculiarity in David's case, it follows that it is only an instance of the common lot of the whole human race. All of us, therefore descending from an impure seed, come into the world tainted with the contagion of sin. No, before we behold the light of the sun we are in God's sight defiled and polluted. 'Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one,' says the book of Job."

But this knowledge is not meant for defeat, but for growing an attitude of humility toward Jesus. "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 5:19-21)

It is this depth of knowledge that helps foster humility and an understand of true Grace. The Grace that Jesus showed on the Cross. The deeper the understanding of Grace the closer we come to our Father, and the closer we come to our Father, the more we are satisfied and He is ultimately most Glorified.

Amen

Blogging The Institutes: Day 40 2.1.1 - 2.1.4

Understanding Adam's fall and the impact it has on the rest of mankind following him is an absolute necessity in understanding ourselves and what we can do to re-attain our original state. We first must look for the cause of Adam's sin, "infidelity opened the door to ambition, and ambition was the parent of rebellion, man casting off the fear of God, and giving free vent to his lust." In short, Adam's ambition to attain more, his pride, resulted in his casting off the fear of God, and once the consequence was blinded, the action prevailed. So "the strongest curb to keep all his affections under due restraint, would have been the belief that nothing was better than to cultivate righteousness by obeying the commands of God, and that the highest possible felicity was to be loved by him." Easy enough right? Just realize that when all the options are on the table, the best one is to realize that by cultivating righteousness we experience the highest emotion, the love of God.

Wouldn't it be great if that were it. Seems simple. Do Good, Experience Love. But that scenario only factors in our actions, and since the moment of Adam's fall, we became incapable of cultivating righteousness on our own.

Enter Jesus. Enter the Cross. Enter Grace. For God knows we are not able to cultivate righteousness so He made a way for us to still experience His love by sending His Son to die, to cover our inabilities with Grace.

So without understanding our inability to cultivate righteousness, without understanding the root cause of Adam's fall, we subject ourselves to the exact same trap, the trap of pride. And where pride lives, Grace can not.

So how do we re-attain our original state? We can't. Only by humbling ourselves and allowing the blood of Christ to cover our sin do we experience "the highest possible felicity" to be loved by Him.