What I Read Online - 03/23/2012 (a.m.)

• Brothers, Love Your Wife More Than Seminary – Justin Taylor

  • Be tender during theological discussion with your wife. If she’s not as robust a student as you, she’ll likely not find the same things interesting. In conversation, she’ll likely not go as deep as you, and she may even contradict what you have just learned in class. Yet, gently affirm her knowledge of Christ. You are the pastor of your home; shepherd your wife, making the most of your theological education. Do everything you can to ensure that she feels safe expressing her heart regarding your study habits, ministry or projected graduation date. Always be grateful for a wife who knows Christ.

• On Cars, Vows and the Slow Death of the Church – Reformation21 Blog

  • Of course, membership vows are as solemn and as binding as ordination vows.  The average member is no less bound by them to the church than I am as a minister.  But the car makes them seem so much more negotiable.  We have come to believe that even God can be dodged when we are behind the wheel.
  • the church has never really come to terms with the invention of the internal  combustion engine

• Antinomianism and Reformation Confessions – White Horse Inn Blog

  • third use”: “..that after they are regenerate and [much of] the flesh notwithstanding cleaves to them, they might on this account have a fixed rule according to which they are to regulate and direct their whole life…” (VI.1)
  • Thus the Law is and remains both to the penitent and impenitent, both to regenerate and unregenerate men, one [and the same] Law, namely, the immutable will of God; and the difference, so far as concerns obedience, is alone in man, inasmuch as one who is not yet regenerate does for the Law out of constraint and unwillingly what it requires of him (as also the regenerate do according to the flesh); but the believer, so far as he is regenerate, does without constraint and with a willing spirit that which no threatenings [however severe] of the Law could ever extort from him (VI.7).

  • The Heidelberg Catechism begins its “Gratitude” section by asking why we should still do good works if we are justified by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone. We do so “because Christ by his Spirit is also renewing us to be like himself, so that in all our living we may show that we are thankful to God for all he has done for us, and so that he may be praised through us. And we do good so that we may be assured of our faith by its fruits, and so that by our godly living our neighbors may be won over to Christ” (Q. 86)
  • Christ, “by his Word and Spirit,” destroys the dominion of sin, weakening and mortifying its desires while quickening and strengthening the new creature in “the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (13.1). Though “imperfect in this life,” there arises “a continual and irreconcilable war, the flesh lusting against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh.” Nevertheless, by God’s grace the saints will prevail (13.2-3). The Spirit brings us to repentance through the law and the gospel (15.1-2). We do not rest on repentance “as any satisfaction for sin,” but it evangelical repentance is always present with true faith as the gift of God (15.3).
  • It can be as difficult for their followers as for prominent preachers and theologians themselves to submit to the consensus of a whole body rather than to promote their own distinctive teachings, emphases, and corrections. Those who were raised in more legalistic and Arminian backgrounds may be prone to confuse every call to obedience as a threat to newly discovered doctrines of grace. The zeal of those who are converted from a life of debauchery or perhaps from a liberal denomination may boil over into legalistic fervor. As in the Jerusalem Council, representatives came to Nicea, Chalcedon, Torgau, Dort, and Westminster with idiosyncrasies. Yet they had to make their case, participate in restrained debate, and talk to each other in a deliberative assembly rather than about each other on blogs and in conversations with their circle of followers. Muting personal idiosyncrasies in favor of a consensus on the teaching of God’s Word, these assemblies give us an enduring testimony for our own time. Nothing has changed with respect to how sinners are justified and sanctified. There has been no alteration of God’s covenantal law or gospel.
  • On the other hand, Christ founded a church, not an association or a website. He gave authority to churches, subordinate to his Word, to guard the apostolic deposit entrusted to them. This ministerial authority is lodged in the offices of pastor and elder, in local and broader assemblies. And yet, even in churches officially committed to this form of mutual fellowship and admonition, one discerns a growing tendency to gather into parties rather than presbyteries. Can we imagine Paul blogging about Peter rather than confronting him face to face? Are controversies to be decided by pastors and elders or by posts and emails?

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

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