What I Read Online - 12/24/2011 (p.m.)

• Are We Required to Attend Church on Sunday? – White Horse Inn Blog

  • The very fact that we have to address this question, even in evangelical circles, demonstrates the true measure of the church’s worldliness. It is not a superstitious attachment to days, but respect for the Lord’s generous service to us, that gives us one day in seven to be swept into the drama of redemption. When the holy day is reabsorbed into the common week, the church is bound to be reabsorbed into the world’s bloodstream.
  • Both reformers argue that while the moral obligation continues, the ceremonial aspect of the commandment, including the rigorous restricts attached to it, are abolished in the new covenant. Like Luther, Calvin emphasized that every day believers receive Christ as he is given in his Word and that we would attend daily services if we were not so sluggish. Knowing our weakness, God sets aside one day for the ministry of Word and sacrament.
  • The key to a Christian use of the Lord’s Day is not drawing up a list of what can and cannot be done, but to give the whole day to basking in God’s Word, loading ourselves up with the treasures of Christ. Churches themselves are making this more difficult, as they trim down the public worship to a single service of an hour or so. Some churches suspend worship on “Superbowl Sunday”; others incorporate the new holy day into the service. Yet even in “rightly ordered” churches, the question has to be asked, especially by pastors and elders: Are we preparing a feast each week or are we contributing to the trivializing of the Lord’s Day and then blaming the people for not taking it seriously enough?
  • The Puritans called Sunday “the market-day of the soul.”
  • There are Ten Commandments, not Nine. The ceremonial and civil laws attached to the moral law are no longer binding, but the moral law itself remains in effect forever. We can no more reject or treat lightly the fourth commandment because of legalistic distortions than we can dismiss the other commandments against murder, adultery, theft, and so forth.

• The New Calvinism considered #4 Conclusions and counsels « The Wanderer

  • be Calvinists. Don’t be New Calvinists or Old Calvinists, whatever those distinctions really mean. Live before God rather than before men. You do not need to capitulate and ride the current of the moment. There is no need to jump on the bandwagon just because it is going past at speed, glowing with the power of the newest technology and applauded by adoring fans. You do not need to panic and circle the wagons, eminently suspicious of everyone who may not be “one of us.” You do not need to lash out, making your wagons in chariots of war in which to ride down and trample upon the enemy.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.