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.