Pride and Humility

"Pride pushes us away from God; humility draws us toward God. Humility puts us on God's side, so to speak, where we agree with God about our true condition and our true need for Christ."
                   -  Randy Alcorn www.epm.org

Trusting in God

Do we really know what it means to trust in God? I mean when it really matters. It's very easy to trust God for all of our needs when the bills are all up to date, your marriage is great, and the kids are all angels.
But what about when you are behind in your bills, your marriage is on the rocks, and your children are far from God? Can we trust in the sovereignty of God then? Do we really believe He holds the future in His hands?
The promise of Philippians 4:13 holds true in any situation. In context, it calls us to be content whatever the circumstances. Our contentment and satisfaction comes from our identity in Christ, not from our circumstances in this world. "I can do all things through Christ" how? through His strength. Not through any way of me trying harder, or working harder, or leaning in my own understanding. Many times in the Bible we are told to trust. Abraham, Moses, and David are just a few of the people in the Bible that are told to trust. Are we any better than these giants if the faith?           We also need to trust in the same God that rescued the Israelites, and raised David up to be king. The same God who sent His son to die on the cross for all of our sins, past, present and future.
Regardless of our own feelings of anxiety, we need to trust in the sovereignty of God, and know that He is still on the throne. If He is indeed Lord of our life, then we have nothing to fear, and everything to look forward to.

Philippians 4:13

"You can see there, that when the apostle says, I can do all things through Him who strengthens me, he is speaking about contentment. In any circumstance, he had learned to be content by depending on Christ who gave him the strength to persevere in any situation.

And that is a perspective that we are called to emulate. In fact, immediately before the verses cited above, Paul writes in verse 9:

(9) The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

He tells his readers to follow his example, and then he immediately talks about contentment. Clearly, the attitude that Paul possessed is one that should characterize us as well."
   -  Nathan Busentitz

More A. W. Pink

"There is a safe and sure criterion by which the Christian may gauge his inward impulses, and ascertain whether they proceed from his own restless spirit, an evil spirit, or the Spirit of God. That criterion is the written Word of God, and by it all must be measured. The Holy Spirit never prompts anyone to act contrary to the Scriptures. How could He, when He is the Author of them! His promptings are always unto obedience to the precepts of Holy Writ.....Therefore, if one claimed "guidance" in assuming an unequal yoke by marrying an unbeliever, 2 Corinthians 6:14 would prove conclusively that it was not the "guidance" of the Holy Spirit."~ Arthur Pink, "The Holy Spirit"

Fighting for Certainty

"God and truth are inseparable. . . . That is why God incarnate--Jesus Christ--is called the truth (John 14:6). . . .the existence of absolute truth and its inseparable relationship to the person of God is the most essential tenet of all truly biblical Christianity. . . . A biblical perspective of truth also necessarily entails the recognition that ultimate truth is an objective reality. Truth exists outside of us and remains the same regardless of how we may perceive it. Truth by definition is as fixed and constant as God is immutable. . . . Amazingly, Christians in our generation need to be reminded of these things. Truth is never determined by looking at God's Word and asking, 'What does this mean to me?' Whenever I hear someone talk like that I'm inclined to ask, 'What did the Bible mean before you existed? What does God mean by what he says?' Those are the proper questions to be asking. Truth and meaning are not determined by our intuition, experience, or desire. The true meaning of Scripture--or anything else, for that matter--has already been determined and fixed by the mind of God. The task of the interpreter is to discern that meaning. And proper interpretation must precede application" (John MacArthur, The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception, p.xv,xx, xxi). KS

Monergism

"Monergism simply means that it is God who gives ears to hear and eyes to see. It is God alone who gives illumination and understanding of His word that we might believe; It is God who raises us from the dead, who circumcises the heart; unplugs our ears; It is God alone who can give us a new sense that we may, at last, have the moral capacity to behold His beauty and unsurpassed excellency. The apostle John recorded Jesus saying to Nicodemus that we naturally love darkness, hate the light and WILL NOT come into the light (John 3:19, 20). And since our hardened resistance to God is thus seated in our affections, only God, by His grace, can lovingly change, overcome and disarm our rebellious disposition. The natural man, apart from the quickening work of the Holy Spirit, will not come to Christ on his own since he is at enmity with God and cannot understand spiritual things. Shining a light into a blind man's eyes will not enable his to see, since, as we all know, sight requires new eyes or some restoration of his visual faculty. Likewise, reading or hearing the word of God itself cannot elicit saving faith in the reader (or hearer) unless the Spirit first "germinates" the seed of the word in the heart, so to speak, which then infallibly gives rise to our faith and union with Christ. Like unto Lydia whom "the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul," (Acts 16:14) He must also give all His people spiritual life and understanding if their hearts are to be open and thus turn (respond) to Christ in faith.

The following are some Christians in the history of the Church who believed and taught monergism:

Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther (who considered this doctrine the heart of the Reformation), John Calvin, John Owen, the Puritans of the 17th century, Augustine, George Whitefield, and some contemporary pastors and theologians such as Martyn Lloyd-Jones, John Piper, Wayne Grudem, R.C. Sproul, D.A. Carson, Michael Horton, J.I. Packer, James Montgomery Boice, and signatories to the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals."
- from monergism Facebook group

What is our nature?

"The reason no one can come to Jesus (John 6:44) is that it is not our nature to come. It is our nature, and therefore our will, to flee from Christ, not come to him. The fact is, and a sad fact at that, we do not want to come. We are delighted not to come. We willingly and freely and voluntarily choose to stay in our sin and unbelief, because we find nothing at all in Jesus that is alluring, appealing, truthful, or in any way an improvement on what we already are and have on our own. Were we ever to come to the point of wanting to come to Christ for life, we could do so. Indeed, Jesus says we most assuredly will (John 6:37)! But such "wanting," such "coming," is not of our own making. It is of God. It is of the Father who in eternity past "gave" us to the Son and now in time "draws" us to faith. Simply put, no one, of himself or herself, wants to be saved. But whoever, by God's power, is made willing shall be saved!"

~ Sam Storms, Chosen for Life, A Case for Divine Election

It started in the Garden

"It started in the garden of Eden ... You see, when you've done something wrong, it's not natural to look inside yourself for the cause. Sin makes us all shockingly self-righteous ... Somehow, some way, we all buy into the delusion that our biggest problems live outside us, not inside us ... Because accepting blame is not natural, it takes rescuing, transforming grace to produce a humble, willing, broken, self-examining, help-seeking heart ... Only grace can decimate your defenses and lead you to confess. Only grace can cause you to quit pointing your finger and to run to your Redeemer for his forgiveness and delivering power. Only grace can enable you to forsake your own righteousness and find your hope and rest in the righteousness of another. " Paul Tripp

Five Solas of the Reformation

The Five Solas of the Reformation by James Montgomery Boice

1. Scripture alone. When the Reformers used the words sola Scriptura they were expressing their concern for the Bibles authority, and what they meant is that the Bible alone is our ultimate authority"not the pope, not the church, not the traditions of the church or church councils, still less personal intimations or subjective feelings, but Scripture only. Other sources of authority may have an important role to play. Some are even established by God"such as the authority of church elders, the authority of the state, or the authority of parents over children. But Scripture alone is truly ultimate. Therefore, if any of these other authorities depart from Bible teaching, they are to be judged by the Bible and rejected.

2. Christ alone. The church of the Middle Ages spoke about Christ. A church that failed to do that could hardly claim to be Christian. But the medieval church had added many human achievements to Christs work, so that it was no longer possible to say that salvation was entirely by Christ and his atonement. This was the most basic of all heresies, as the Reformers rightly perceived. It was the work of God plus our own righteousness. The Reformation motto solus Christus was formed to repudiate this error. It affirmed that salvation has been accomplished once for all by the mediatorial work of the historical Jesus Christ alone. His sinless life and substitutionary atonement alone are sufficient for our justification, and any gospel that fails to acknowledge that or denies it is a false gospel that will save no one.

3. Grace alone. The words sola gratia mean that human beings have no claim upon God. That is, God owes us nothing except just punishment for our many and very willful sins. Therefore, if he does save sinners, which he does in the case of some but not all, it is only because it pleases him to do it. Indeed, apart from this grace and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit that flows from it, no one would be saved, since in our lost condition, human beings are not capable of winning, seeking out, or even cooperating with Gods grace. By insisting on grace alone the Reformers were denying that human methods, techniques, or strategies in themselves could ever bring anyone to faith. It is grace alone expressed through the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ, releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from death to spiritual life.

4. Faith alone. The Reformers never tired of saying that justification is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. When put into theological shorthand the doctrine was expressed as justification by faith alone, the article by which the church stands or falls, according to Martin Luther. The Reformers called justification by faith Christianity's material principle, because it involves the very matter or substance of what a person must understand and believe to be saved. Justification is a declaration of God based on the work of Christ. It flows from Gods grace and it comes to the individual not by anything he or she might do but by faith alone (sola fide). We may state the full doctrine as: Justification is the act of God by which he declares sinners to be righteous because of Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.

5. Glory to God alone. Each of the great solas is summed up in the fifth Reformation motto: soli Deo gloria, meaning to God alone be the glory. It is what the apostle Paul expressed in Romans 11:36 when he wrote, to Him be the glory forever! Amen. These words follow naturally from the preceding words, For from him and through him and to him are all things (v. 36), since it is because all things really are from God, and to God, that we say, to God alone be the glory.

-James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2001), pp. 65-149.

Arminian vs. Calvinism

The Arminian believes that God knocks on the door to man's heart and man decides to answer or not. The Calvinist believes that anyone whom the Holy Spirit regenerates is saved. This is because God's grace works effectually only on the elect. He never wastes His effort or is frustrated in His design. If you are one of God's elect, He will bring you to Himself sometime in your life. His desire for you will never be quenched until you are one of His.

~ Craig R. Brown, The Five Dilemmas of Calvinism

Good Works

"Human efforts, good deeds, works of merit, avail nothing to procure salvation. None of these will unbar the gates of Paradise. If all the good works of men, from Adam to the present time, could be collected and concentrated in one individual — it would avail nothing! Jesus is the only way to Heaven." - William Nicholson, 1862 (Christ, the Way to Heaven)

Irresistible Grace

"C.H. Spurgeon preached the doctrine of irresistible grace, which teaches that all who are called by God to come to faith in Jesus will ultimately do so. it is important to state that it does not teach that all who hear a Gospel message or receive an invitation to trust Christ will believe. These examples of a 'general call' can be ignored and resisted. We are instead referring to the work of the Holy Spirit in calling an individual to repent and believe the Gospel.

We see in Scripture that no one is able to come to Christ unless he is first drawn by God to do so. John 6:44 states, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." Being totally depraved, we will not and cannot choose God on our own. So it is clear that those who come to Christ are first drawn by Him.

Spurgeon summarized this truth by saying, "You cannot look to Christ before he has looked to you. If you are willing to be saved, He gave you that will." [1]

While this is an important aspect of irresistible grace, it is not the entire scope of the doctrine. Irresistible grace further teaches that while some may resist this calling of God for a time, His will in saving those whom He calls cannot be thwarted (John 6:37; Romans 8:30). Spurgeon emphatically made this point:

You yourselves say, "we won't come;" God says, "You shall come." Yes! There are some here who are laughing at salvation, who can scoff at Christ, and mock at the gospel; but I tell you some of you shall come yet. "What!" you say, "can God make me become a Christian?" I tell you yes, for herein rests the power of the gospel. It does not ask your consent; but it gets it. It does not say, will you have it? But it makes you willing in the day of God's power. [2]

This doctrine does not speak of merely overriding man's will, but of changing it supernaturally. Says Spurgeon:
A man is not saved against his will, but he is made willing by the operation of the Holy Ghost. A mighty grace which he does not wish to resist enters into the man, disarms him, makes a new creature of him, and he is saved. [3]

When God calls sinners to come to Him, they will come; "And nought in heaven, nor on earth, nor in hell, can stop them from coming." [4]

God's will in electing sinners unto salvation cannot be thwarted, though His calling may be resisted for a season. Those whom He calls will ultimately be saved."

---------

[1] Steven Lawson, The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon, (Reformation Trust Publishing), 54.

[2] C.H. Spurgeon, "Effectual Calling," (March 30, 1856), accessed January 28, 2015. http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0073.htm.

[3] The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon, 52-53.

[4] Ibid., 55.

Article by Clay Kraby

Irresistible Grace

"The result of God's Irresistible Grace is the certain response by the elect to the inward call of the Holy Spirit, when the outward call is given by the evangelist or minister of the Word of God. Christ, himself, teaches that all whom God has elected will come to a knowledge of him (John 6:37). Men come to Christ in salvation when the Father calls them (John 6:44), and the very Spirit of God leads God's beloved to repentance (Romans 8:14). What a comfort it is to know that the gospel of Christ will penetrate our hard, sinful hearts and wondrously save us through the gracious inward call of the Holy Spirit (I Peter 5:10)!

Salvation is accomplished by the almighty power of the triune God. The Father chose a people, the Son died for them, the Holy Spirit makes Christ's death effective by bringing the elect to faith and repentance, thereby causing them to willingly obey the Gospel. The entire process (election, redemption, regeneration) is the work of God and is by grace alone. Thus God, not man, determines who will be the recipients of the gift of salvation."

God's Sovereign Will

"No one can act outside of God's sovereign will or against it. Centuries ago, Augustine said, "Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen: he either permits it to happen, or he brings it about himself." Philip Hughes said, "Under God, however, all things are without exception fully controlled— despite all appearances to the contrary." Nothing is too large or small to escape God's governing hand. The spider building its web in the corner and Napoleon marching his army across Europe are both under God's control."

~ Jerry Bridges, Trusting God: Even When Life

Election

"But, after all, is the doctrine of Election plainly stated in Scripture? This is the whole question which an honest Christian has to do with. If it is not in the Book of God, let it be forever discarded, refused, and rejected by man, no matter who propounds it. If it is there, let us receive it with reverence, as a part of Divine revelation, and humbly believe, even where we are not able to understand completely or explain fully. What then is written in the Scriptures? "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." (Isaiah. viii. 20.) Is Election in the Bible, or is it not? Does the Bible speak of certain persons as God's Elect, or not?
Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ says: —
"For the Elect's sake the days shall be shortened." (Matt. xxiv. 22.)
"If it were possible they should deceive even the Elect." (Mark xiii. 22.)
"He shall send His angels, and they shall gather together His Elect." (Matt. xxiv. 31.)
"Shall not God avenge His own Elect?" (Luke xviii. 7.). -   J. C.  Ryle

A Genuine Christian

"A genuine Christian would be horrified at giving place to the delusion that the redemption of Christ is imperfect and inadequate, that His atoning blood is not sufficient to cleanse from sin, that it must be plussed with something from the creature.

And ought he not to be equally horrified at calling into question the reality and efficacy of the Spirit's work in regeneration, supposing it is not to be credited unless it is regularly confirmed by certain feelings of which we are the subjects?

Is it any less a sin to deny or even doubt the work of the Holy Spirit than it is to deny or doubt the sufficiency of the finished work of Christ?"
                   -  A. W. Pink