Octavius Winslow: Jesus is the Great Burden-Bearer of His People

“Jesus is the great Burden-Bearer of His people. No other arm, and no other heart, in heaven or upon earth, were strong enough, or loving enough, to bear these burdens but His! He who bore the weight of our sin and curse and shame in His obedience and death — bore it along all the avenues of His weary pilgrimage, from Bethlehem to Calvary — is He who now stretches forth His Divine arm, and makes bare a Brother’s heart to take your burden of care and of grief, dear saint of God, upon Himself.” via OFI

The Story of Christmas

 HT: JT

Happy Thanksgiving

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,

for his steadfast love endures forever! -Psalm 107:1

To Undertand Grace & Mercy We Must Understand What We Deserve

As much as we may dislike the doctrine of original sin and its consequences - it must be explored if we are ever to come to an understanding of the grace of God. 
      
Mercy says that we are not given what we deserve. So, if that is the case, then we can all agree that we all actually don't deserve justification for our sins, we deserve hell - every last one of us. Nuns deserve hell. Pedophiles deserve hell. Preachers deserve hell. Murderers deserve hell. Politicians deserve hell. I deserve Hell. You deserve hell. 
      
If we can't come to terms with this fact, then we will never fully understand mercy & grace. If we struggle with how a loving God could elect and save some people and not elect and save others, then we are missing point. No one deserves to be elected and saved. Should God decide, based on His pleasure, to save one soul - that is grace; He is going beyond what is required. Should he decide not to save anyone - that is justice. 

Paul Zahl: When Grace Comes

Grace . . . is at the bottom of the house of cards that is human identity.  It is the ground floor of our striving after love.  When grace comes in, when it rewrites the script, when its light shines in the basement of the house that is ourselves, unbuilt to God, grace demolishes and creates.  It does what it promises.  Unlike the law, which produces the opposite of what it demands, grace succeeds.  It produces the fruit, to use the New Testament metaphor, of a law-congruent life.

We Are the Problem

This is a powerful, gospel-centered short film; a message that all of us need to hear today.

Michael Horton: The Purpose of the Law

We must not think that the law drives us to Christ in the beginning and then Christ drives us back to the law for our acceptance before God in sanctification. Rather, the law continues to provide us with the soundest guidance available but apart from Christ and the indicative announcement of what he has done for us, it can only lead us to either despair or self-righteousness.No less than when we first believed, we must always attribute to the gospel the power that fills our sails with gratitude, and to the law the proper course that such gratitude takes.

116: Man Up ft. Lecrae, Trip Lee, Pro, Tedashii, KB, Sho, and C-Lite

Charles Spurgeon on what we call 'Calvinism'

I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else.

I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus. Such a gospel I abhor.

Robert Farrar Capon: He Forgave You Before You Repented

He forgave you before you repented. That’s crucial. See, that is why it is so outrageous. The gospel is really vulgar, crass and immoral because it says God forgives the world before it repents. In the gospel, repent is always repent and believe. It means turn yourself around from not trusting the forgiveness and trust it. That’s it. It doesn’t mean that you earn it by repenting. You had it before.

If you do something to me and you are wrong and I am right, you can repent all you want but until I forgive you, it’s not going to do you a bit of good. It only helps when I have already forgiven you and you can enter into the restored relationship and turn again to me. Only I can decide to forgive you and God for His own ... reasons decided to absolve the world. He really did. It’s outrageous. HT: Mockingbird

He Has Sent Redemption

HT: Challies

Hope For the Child of God

“If you are God’s child, you can have hope in the middle of all the tough things you face because in all those moments God is with you, but also because the cross of Jesus guarantees you that all that is broken will be made new forever. 

You can live today knowing that you have a future that is beyond the boundaries of your wildest imagination. If you are God’s child, you have hope because God is hope, and you have a hope that will last forever because he has defeated the one thing that stands between you and forever: death.” - Paul David Tripp via OFI

Free will ? Why should not Jesus Christ have the right to choose his own bride? - Spurgeon