The Inexpressible Gift

The Inexpressible Gift
from Of First Importance by fredeaton

“What we see at the cross is the white-hot revelation of the character of God, of his love providing the price that holiness requires. The cross was his means of redeeming lost sinners and reconciling them to himself, but it was also a profound disclosure of his mercy. It is, in Paul’s words, an ‘inexpressible gift’ that leads us to wonder and worship, to praise and adore the God who has given himself to us in this way.”

- David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant

holiness must only be seen through grace

“Biblical holiness begins with the Holy. But the holy, by its very nature, can be approached only when we come as sinners. He is never accessible to us as consumers. We come in sackcloth and ashes, not as buyers. Indeed, we cannot approach the Holy at all on our own terms. We must see that the Holy has first approached us in Christ and, through him, reconciled us to himself.

The revelation of the Holy would be unbearable were we to see it in any other way than from within Christ. In Christ, what we are seeing is God’s holiness in its action on our sin. Without Christ we would have to bear that judgment in ourselves What we see instead is holiness coming down in grace and, in Christ, going forth against our sin in triumph.”

- David F. Wells

The stone will be rolled away for each of us

“He came back.

After that brutal Friday, and that long, quiet Saturday, he came back.

And that one intake of breath in the tomb changes everything. It changes the very reason I drew breath today and the way I move about in this world because I believe he’s coming back again. The world has gone on for more than two millennia since Jesus’ feet tread the earth he made. What would they have said back then if someone had told them that some two thousand years later we’d still be waiting? They would’ve thought back to that long Saturday and said, ‘Two thousand years will seem like a breath to you when you finally lay your crown at his feet. We don’t even remember what we were doing on that Saturday, but let me tell you about Sunday morning. Now that was something.’

These many years of waiting will only be a sentence in the story. This long day will come to an end, and I believe it will end in glory, when we will shine like suns and stride the green hills with those we love and the One who loves. We will look with our new eyes and speak with our new tongues and turn to each other and say, ‘Do you remember the waiting? The long years, the bitter pain, the gnawing doubt, the relentless ache?’ And like Mary at the tomb, we will say: ‘I remember only the light, and the voice calling my name, and the overwhelming joy that the waiting was finally over.’

The stone will be rolled away for each of us. May we wait with faithful hearts.”

—Andrew Peterson, CD liner notes for Resurrection Letters Volume II (Centricity Music: 2008)

HT: - First Importance by Bart

2 great quotes on grace

“Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride.

Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair.

Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.”

- Blaise Pascal

“When our depravity meets his divinity it is a beautiful collision.”

—David Crowder

The Wrong Righteousness

“Before you can ever make a clean and unamended confession of your sin, you have to first begin by confessing your righteousness. It’s not just your sin that separates you from God; your righteousness does as well. Because, when you are convinced you are righteous, you don’t seek the forgiving, rescuing, and restoring mercy that can be found only in Jesus Christ.”

- Paul David Tripp

from Of First Importance by fredeaton

Confession

by R.C. Sproul

Confession
After expressing adoration, we must come with hearts of confession. Remember that we have no right to come before God at all, apart from the finished work of Christ. We can make no claim, in and of ourselves, to the ear of God. We have no intrinsic right to his presence. The Scriptures tell us that God is too holy to even look at sin. God delights in the prayers of the righteous, but we are not very righteous in our daily lives. Nevertheless, the God we serve invites us into his presence in spite of our sin.

The blessing of Christ’s kingly office for us

“The happiness promised us in Christ does not consist in outward advantages—such as leading a joyous and peaceful life, having rich possessions, being safe from all harm, and abounding with delights such as the flesh commonly longs after. No, our happiness belongs to the heavenly life.

Christ enriches his people with all things necessary for the eternal salvation of souls and fortifies them with courage to stand unconquerable against all the assaults of spiritual enemies. From this we infer that he rules—inwardly and outwardly—more for our own sake than his.

Thus it is that we may patiently pass through this life with its misery, hunger, cold, contempt, reproaches, and other troubles—content with this one thing: that our King will never leave us destitute, but will provide for our needs until, our warfare ended, we are called to triumph.”

—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion,
from Of First Importance

Prop-egg-anda

laughing baby

So cute.

gospel-motivated love

“When my mind is fixed on the gospel, I have ample stimulation to show God’s love to other people. For I am always willing to show love to others when I am freshly mindful of the love that God has shown me. Also, the gospel gives me the wherewithal to give forgiving grace to those who have wronged me, for it reminds me daily of the forgiving grace that God is showing me.

Doing good and showing love to those who have wronged me is always the opposite of what my sinful flesh wants me to do. Nonetheless, when I remind myself of my sins against God and of His forgiveness and generous grace toward me, I give the gospel an opportunity to reshape my perspective and to put me in a frame of mind wherein I actually desire to give this same grace to those who have wronged me.”

- Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians

all are guilty and all are forgiven

“Jesus shocked the established authorities by being a friend to all—not only to the destitute and hungry, but also to those rich extortioners, the tax-collectors, whom all decent people ostracized … The shocking thing was not that he sided with the poor against the rich but that he met everyone equally with the same unlimited mercy and the same unconditioned demand for total loyalty.

If we look at the end of his earthly ministry, at the cross, it is clear that Jesus was rejected by all—rich and poor, rulers and people—alike. Before the cross of Jesus there are no innocent parties. The cross is not for some and against others. It is the place where all are guilty and all are forgiven.”

—Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
from: http://firstimportance.org/

The Devil's Condemnation vs. The Spirit's Conviction

When you belong to the King, how can you discern the difference between the Devil's condemnation and the Spirit's conviction? How can you determine if you are in the bogus courtroom or the real one?

In the real courtroom:

* you know your good deeds are not enough
* your hope is in Christ alone for your deliverance
* when convicted of sins, you are pointed past your sins and on to Christ
* the last word is always hope.

In the Devil's courtroom:

* the attention is all on your sins
* you stand and fall on your own behavior
* you are alone without an advocate
* questions are raised about the extent of God's forgiveness.

- Ed Welch
from Buzzard Blog

What is the church in a nutshell?

The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness, and sanctification center, where flawed people place their trust in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he has designed. The church is messy and inefficient, but it is God's wonderful mess -- the place where he radically transforms hearts and lives.

- Paul Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands

True Repentance

“Repentance has nothing to do with what man has done. Rather it is man’s coming undone in respect to all human righteousness, followed by his going outside himself in faith to Christ alone for salvation.”

- C. John Miller, Repentance and 21st Century Man

The Spirit and the Cross

“Truly to grasp that the eternal God, our Maker and Judge, has out of inexpressible grace sent his Son to die the odious death of an abominated criminal in order that we might be forgiven and reconciled to him; that this wise plan was effected by sinful leaders who thought they were controlling events and who were operating out of selfish expediency, while in fact God was bringing about his own good, redemptive purposes; that our only hope of life in the presence of this holy and loving God lies in casting ourselves without reserve on his mercy, receiving in faith the gift of forgiveness purchased at inestimable cost — none of this is possible apart from the work of the Spirit.”

- D. A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Books, 2003), 66. originally posted by http://firstimportance.org/

What is "Evangelicalism"?

...quick question, long answer. D.A. Carson does a great job attempting to answer this huge and important question.

He addresses some of the issues involved with defining evangelicalism in the western world. LISTEN HERE

Donald A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. Dr. Carson has written or edited more than 45 books, including The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Zondervan 1996), which won the 1997 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association Gold Medallion Award in the category "theology and doctrine." He coauthored An Introduction to the New Testament (Zondervan 1991) and other works.

know Jesus

by Charles Spurgeon
“Know Jesus. Sit as His feet. Consider His nature, HIs works, His sufferings, His glory. Rejoice in HIs presence; commune with Him day to day. To know Christ, is to understand the most excellent of all sciences. You cannot fail to be wise if you commune with Incarnate Wisdom; you cannot lack strength if you have constant fellowship with God.”

Eph 4:11-13 ESV
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ

"Reformed and Evangelical" by R. Scott Clark

Clark makes a helpful comparison: "Perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish between being “evangelical” and being “an evangelical”? I am the former but not the latter.

"Reformed confessionalists are evangelical. We do long to see the true gospel preached truly to everyone and we do expect Christ to operate sovereignly and graciously through his gospel to call his elect from every tribe and tongue. We do long to see Christ’s church full. We long to see sinners coming to a knowledge of their sin and to a saving knowledge of Christ. We long to see those sinners growing in the grace of discipleship but, if I can presume to speak for confessionalists, we don’t have much confidence that contemporary evangelicalism is in any shape to do most of that." Read the whole thing

Responses to “Reformed and Evangelical” by Irons

Lee Irons elaborates and responds to critics of his first post:

"Sure, our differences on TULIP, the covenants, the sacraments, and so on, are important, but if you hold to the white-hot core of the gospel, then I embrace you as a brother in Christ and I want to be identified with whatever label will work to make sure that this embrace is clear. Of course, I will worship at my own Reformed church on Sunday and you will go to your dispensational Bible-church or Baptist church or what have you, but we can do so without either one adopting an attitude of superiority or exceptionalism since we recognize one another as brothers based on the common bond that we have in Christ. read the whole post here

"I consider myself to be a Christian first..."

Reformed and Evangelical
by Lee Irons

It’s good to see that there are still some Reformed people these days who embrace the label “evangelical” (see the posts by Stephen Nichols and Sean Lucas on the Ref21 site). I don’t sympathize with the Reformed trend that utterly scorns and detests the label. I have no desire to set myself apart as a “Reformed Confessionalist” who has nothing in common with evangelicalism. This separatist attitude is wrong for several reasons:

(1) It smacks of spiritual pride and elitism. I consider myself to be a Christian first, then a Protestant, then an evangelical, and only then Reformed. To exalt ”Reformed” über alles is to downplay our central identity as Christians. To exalt the Reformed confessions is to downplay the primary New Testament confession that “Jesus is Lord.” I’m not a Reformed person who happens to be a Christian. I’m a blood-bought Christian who happens to believe in the Reformed understanding of the gospel. And I do not view myself as a superior Christian for having this belief. It is only by the grace of God that I understand what I do of the grace of God, and even then I betray it all too often in my practice.
read the whole thing