Friday, March 29, 2013

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Tullian Tchividjian: Grace & Men



Perhaps messages like this are too much. Maybe the critics are right when they say that the "grace folks" have taken things too far. Sometimes I wonder if those men and women, whom I have great  respect for, who call for "balance" are correct.

All I can say is that I love preaching like this! The gospel message, not the "be better" or "try harder" message, gets me through the day. The message of God's radical grace in Christ for sinners is nourishment to my hungry soul.

Honestly, the "balanced" preachers and their masterful expositions bore me to tears. I unsubscribe. 

I will admit that I am an addict. I need grace, grace, and more grace - gospel, gospel, and more gospel - Jesus, Jesus, and more Jesus. 

We all have our proof texts. My "balanced" friends make good arguments from Scripture for what they believe, and I appreciate their call to caution.

I will just say that the whole of Scripture seems to clearly state that men are wicked as hell, yet God's love for them in Christ trumps that wickedness. He is faithful even though they (we) are faithless.

Praise God for Jesus! 

William Beveridge: Depravity

"I cannot pray, except I sin; I cannot preach, but I sin; I cannot administer or receive the holy sacrament, but I sin. My very repentance needs to be repented of; and the tears I shed need washing in the blood of Christ."

With an understanding of sin such as that, I have a strong suspicion that Mr. Beveridge was a lover of grace. 

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Victor Hugo: Grace in Old Age

"When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age."

George Whitefield: Self Righteousness or Peace with God

[To have peace with God]:

"...You must be troubled for the sins of your best duties and performances. You must be brought to see that God may damn you for the best prayer you ever put up.  Our best duties are so many splendid sins.  There must be a deep conviction before you can be brought out of your self-righteousness; it is the last idol taken out of the heart.”

[via]

Monday, March 25, 2013

Elyse Fitzpatrick: Where Grace is Found

"The only place you can find grace is when you say 'nothing in my hand I bring simply to thy cross I cling'... when you throw yourself at the mercy of God."

[via]

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Gerhard Forde: It is Finished!

[In the cross], “God has stormed the last bastion of the self, the last presumption that you really were going to do something for him…He has died in your place! He has done it. He made it. It is all over, finished, between you and God! 

He died in your place that death which you must die; he has done it in such a way as to save you. He has borne the whole thing! The fact that there is nothing left for you to do is the death of self and the birth of the new creature.”


[via]

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Tullian Tchividjian: Imputed Righteousness

"As everything, he became nothing so that you, as nothing, could have everything. You bring nothing to the table except the unrighteousness that makes Christ’s righteousness necessary. 

The perfect righteousness of Christ has been freely credited to your bankrupt account forever (what theologians call “imputation”). 

The gospel is good news for those who have finally been crushed under the weight of trying to make “righteousness” happen on their own."

[via]

Friday, March 22, 2013

Dave Harvey: Sin & Grace in Marriage

“The cross makes a stunning statement about husbands and wives: we are sinners and our only hope is grace... Once I know that I am indeed the worst of sinners, then my spouse is no longer my biggest problem: I am.  

And when I find myself walking in the shoes of the worst of sinners, I will make every effort to grant my spouse the same lavish grace that God has granted me.”

[via]

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Ravi Zacharias: Jesus Among Other Gods

This is a fantastic message:

B. B. Warfield: Christ, Not Faith, Saves Us

“It is not faith that saves, but faith in Jesus Christ… It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. 

The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or in the nature of faith, but in the object of faith.”

[via]

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Grace on Twitter

"The only way we'll find grace to give others when they fail is when we've found it for ourselves in the love of Christ when we fail." - Elyse Fitzpatrick

"Look not to yourselves. You are by nature wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. Look simply unto Jesus." - J.C. Ryle via Tullian

“If the Gospel is about anything, it is about a God who meets us where we are, not where we ought to be.” - Robert Farrar Capon

Jack Miller: What is the Gospel?

"Herein is the Gospel and only herein.  

Everything in Scripture may be the truth of God. But only in the proclaimed finished work of Jesus Christ revealed in God's Word do we hear and receive the unique Good News of God, the power of God unto salvation unto everyone that believeth.[via]

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

This is Jesus Christ

"Born as a son,
led forth as a lamb,
sacrificed as a sheep,
buried as a man,
he rose from the dead as a God,
for he was by nature God and man.

He is all things:
he judges, and so he is Law;
he teaches, and so he is Wisdom;
he saves, and so he is Grace;
he suffers, and so he is sacrifice;
he is buried, and so he is man;
he rises again, and so he is God.

This is Jesus Christ,
to whom belongs glory for all ages."

- Melito, bishop of Sardis (d. 180) [via]

Monday, March 18, 2013

John Piper: Grace in Christ

Here's a grace nugget to feast upon as you go about your Monday:

"Grace was given to you, Christian, before the universe was made. And it was given to you in Jesus Christ."

[via]

D. G. Barnhouse: The Righteousness of God

"God is righteousness, God demands righteousness, and God provides righteousness. 

If those three statements are understood, then the whole gospel will be understood. If those three statements are not understood, then the gospel can never be understood. 

Wherever there is heresy, men have departed from the idea that God is righteousness, and that therefore He must demand that righteousness of all His creatures; and, that since none can have it apart from Him, because His nature is also love, He provides His righteousness in His way."

[via]

Thursday, March 14, 2013

David Zahl: Grace and (Social) Media

David Zahl is one of those guys who has helped a lot of people (like myself) better understand human identity and self-justification, and he does so in a culturally-savvy yet gospel-saturated manner. 

You will enjoy his message from this year's LIBERATE conference.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

“The gospel is not ‘God loves us,’ but ‘God loves us at the cost of his Son.’” - Derek Thomas

Monday, March 11, 2013

Rich Mullins: Of First Importance?

“I have attended church regularly since I was less than a week old. I’ve listened to sermons about virtue, sermons against vice. I have heard about money, time management, tithing, abstinence, and generosity. I’ve listened to thousands of sermons. But I could count on one hand the number of sermons that were a simple proclamation of the gospel of Christ.” 

[via]

Friday, March 8, 2013

"I wish I could say that Jesus fully satisfies me, but I can't. What I can say is that Jesus fully satisfied God for me." - Tullian Tchividjian
"Even our tears of repentance need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb." 
- Author Unknown

Thursday, March 7, 2013

R.C. Sproul: Helpless Sinners Can Survive Only By Grace

"When we understand the character of God, when we grasp something of His holiness, then we begin to understand the radical character of our sin and hopelessness. 

Helpless sinners can survive only by grace. 

Our strength is futile in itself; we are spiritually impotent without the assistance of a merciful God. We may dislike giving our attention to God's wrath and justice, but until we incline ourselves to these aspects of God's nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace."

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Tim Keller: The Only Secure Love

"God does not love us because we are serviceable; He loves us simply because He loves us. This is the only kind of love we can ever be secure in, of course, since it is the only kind of love we cannot possibly lose."

[via]

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The Good Stuff

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus...

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?...

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Harvey Turner: Law and Gospel Goodness

This comes from Harvey Turner over at the Resurgence blog

“To be at peace with God, we have need of a far better mediator than Moses and the law.” –Martin Luther

Jesus ain’t Moses.

Moses shows us God’s law; Jesus shows us God’s grace. Moses went up a mountain and brought down the law on stone tablets (Exod. 19:1–25), but Jesus went up a mountain, showed how deep this law really is (Matt. 5:1–7:29), then went up another mountain to die on the cross because we couldn’t keep it (Luke 23:33–49). On this mountain, Jesus brought down God’s grace.

If you confuse law and gospel—meaning that you believe that your obedience to God’s commandments secures your salvation from your sins—you make Christianity like every other religion in the world. This confusion can plague everyone from the recent convert to the seasoned pastor. To quote Luther again, “The person who can rightly divide law and gospel has reason to thank God. He is a true theologian.”

The law

The law consists of God’s commandments from Genesis to Revelation, and is summarized in the Ten Commandments. The purpose of the law is to reveal God’s holiness and our sin, but it cannot make us holy. The law is a diagnostic tool to show us that we need Jesus (Rom. 7:7–25). There is nothing wrong with Moses and the law—they’re great—they just can’t save you. As Paul says, “If righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal. 2:21).

The gospel

The Bible is the tale of a hero—but that hero isn’t you. It’s Jesus. The gospel is that God has promised salvation to us solely through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:8–9).

Grace is one-way love.

So when we look at the cross we see God’s law (the one we cannot keep) being fulfilled by Jesus, the one who will not let us go. It is Jesus’ righteousness that forms our identity, not our observance of the law.

This simple message of the gospel fits within the whole story of the Bible. God consistently comes after sinners with grace. Grace is one-way love, so the Bible is a one-way love story of God and his people.

Paul hammers this point into our brains three times in Galatians 2:16. Why? Because we’re dense. He basically says, “It’s grace alone, it’s grace alone, and, in case you didn’t get that, it’s grace alone.” The Christian life is one of continually returning to this.

So let me be clear again: Jesus ain’t Moses. As Luther explicitly states, Jesus is “no lawgiver, no tyrant, but the mediator for sins, the giver of grace and life.”

The response

What keeps us from understanding the gospel? It’s not the sins of vice so much as it’s the damnable righteousness that we think we have. We think we are good enough to contribute to our salvation.

If you confuse Jesus and Moses, you will think that Christianity is a miserable life of rules and regulations. You will see that your performance can never measure up. You can never be free until you understand the difference between law and gospel.

So here is a question for you: When you picture Jesus reaching his hands out to you, do you see stone tablets or nail holes?

Your answer is the most important thing about you.

“There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 1 Timothy 2:5

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Resting in the Glorious Fact that We are Loved

“If we are to change we must be regularly preaching the gospel to ourselves and believing it. We must be continually showing ourselves, and those we counsel, the depths and greatness of God’s love for them. We must stop wasting our time trying to convince ourselves that we are lovable, and instead rest in the glorious fact that we are loved. It is this message which God uses to change us at the motivational level.”

Redeemer Presbyterian Church [via]

Friday, March 1, 2013

Lane Lareau: Hope Amidst Despair

"Life is hard. There are so many days when we just want to throw in the towel. We can’t take our sin any longer. We grow weary in dealing with others around us. We are discouraged at every news post. But the call of the gospel beckons us to be patient. Christ is risen. And just as his sufferings preceded glory, we can wait with patience for such a hope to be revealed to us as well...

The realities of the gospel and the presence of the Holy Spirit do not free us from or sterilize the effects of suffering and pain. Rather, the realities of the gospel and the presence of the Holy Spirit give us hope amidst the suffering and joy in spite of the pain."