Newton and Double Imputation: "My breaches of the law are His, and His obedience mine."

Wow! what a great line from Newton's hymn, "Great God From Thee" that I can't get out of my head. "My breaches [a violation as of a law] of the law are His, and His obedience mine." We sang the musical setting in chapel this morning from "By Thy Mercy" -- a recent CD recorded by the guys at Indelible Grace Music http://www.igracemusic.com/

Here's Newton's text. It's Hymn No. 119 in Gadsby's Hymns [1834]. I'd encourage you to order a copy of Gadsby's Hymns and read it along with your Trinity hymnal. Here's the web address where you can order Gadsby's hymns http://www.graceandtruthbooks.com/listdetails.asp?ID=78

Hymn No. 119 Access to God in Christ-[Eph. 2:18; 3:12; Hebrews 10:19]
1. Great God! from thee there's nought concealed,
Thou seest my inward fraom;
To thee I always stand revealed
Exactly as I am!

2. Since I can hardly, therefore, bear
What in myself I see;
How vile and black must I appear,
Most holy God, to thee!

3. But since my Saviour stands between,
In garments dyed in blood,
'Tis he, instead of me, is seen,
When I appraoch to God.

4. Thus, though a sinner I am safe;
He pleads, before the throne,
His life and death on my behalf,
And calls my sins his own.

5. What wondrous love, what mysteries,
In this appointment shine!
My breaches of the law are his,
And his obedience mine.

Spurgeon, Total Depravity defined, a question, and how the doctrine changes us

Since in January GBC will begin exploring the Doctrines of Grace, I thought it might be helpful to begin early by asking and attempting to answer a question related to the first of these five doctrines, Total Depravity. First a classic quote on Calvinism from Charles Spurgeon:

"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."

What is Total Depravity?
[Genesis 6:5; Romans 1:18-3:21; Romans 7:18; 8:7-8; Romans 14:23; Ephesians 2:1-3]

Definition 1: "Total depravity means that our rebellion against God is total, everything we do in this rebellion is sin, our inability to submit to God or reform ourselves is total, and we are totally deserving of eternal punishment." TULIP: What We Believe About the Five Points of Calvinism

Definition 2: "Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and we in them, whereby death came upon all: all becoming dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body." The 1689 London Baptist Confession

Definition 3 "All people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin; without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform" The Canons of Dort [1619]

Question:
Can't unbelievers do good things?

"We recognize that the word 'good' has a broad range of meaning. We will use it in the restricted sense to refer to many actions of fallen people which in relation to God are in fact not good. For example, we will have to say that it is good that most unbelievers do not kill and that some unbelievers perform acts of benevolence. What we mean when we call such actions good is that they more or less conform to the external pattern of life that God has commanded in the Scripture. However, such outward conformity to the revealed will of God is not righteous in relation to God. It is not done out of reliance on him or for his glory. He is not trusted for the resources, though he gives them all. Nor is his honor exalted, even though that's his will in all things [I Corinthians 10:31]. Therefore even these 'good' acts are part of our rebellion and are not 'good' in the sense that really counts in the end -- in relation to God." TULIP: What We Believe About the Five Points of Calvinism

How does the doctrine of Total Depravity change us?

"''But surely we must not tell the sinner that he cannot respond unless God first does a work of regeneration in him!' someone argues. 'That will make him complacent, or even despairing.' On the contrary, that is exactly what the sinner needs to know. For it is only in such understanding that sinful human beings know how desperate their situation is, and how absolutely essential God's grace is. If we are hanging on to some confidence in our spiritual ability, no matter how small, we will never seriously worry about our condition. There will be no sense of urgency. There will be time to believe later on. But if we are truly dead in sin, as the Bible says we are, then we will find ourselves in near despair. We will see our state as hopeless apart from the supernatural and totally unmerited working of the grace of God . . . Far from keeping us away from Christ, the true knowledge of radical depravity helps us abandon ourselves to his grace."
James Montgomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace: Rediscovering the Evangelical Gospel

The Power Of Silence

The following is a post by Pastor Mark Dever, a good and faithful brother ministering in Washington D.C. He has authored a number of books which are well worth your time reading. I would love to hear your comments, so don't be afraid to respond.



Making Silence Together

by mdever

One of the most frequently commented upon aspects of the morning Lord's Day service here at Capitol Hill Baptist Church is nothing we do. Or rather, it is the nothing we do. It is our moments of silence.

There's silence between various aspects of the service. I encourage service leaders to NOT do the "no-dead-airspace" TV standard of busy-ness. We LIKE "dead air space." "Dead air space" gives us time to reflect. To collect our thoughts. To consider what we've just heard or read or sung. The silence amplifies the words or music we've just heard. It allows us time to take it all in, and to pray. We have silence to prepare ourselves. We have silence between the announcements and the scriptural call to worship. We even have a moment of silence AFTER the service! I pronounce the benediction from the end of II Corinthians, invite the congregation to be seated. And then, after about a minute of silence, the pianist begins quietly playing the last hymn that we had just sung. During those few moments, we reflect and prepare to speak to others and depart. We do business with God. We prepare ourselves for the week ahead.

I'm a sound addict. Even as I write about silence now, I've got Paganini blasting in my study! But yesterday morning in church during one of our silences, I became aware of how corporate a labor such public silence is. Everyone works to be quiet. People stop moving their bulletins or looking for something in their purse. There's no movement. We, together, hear the silence. It engulfs us. It enhances our unity. It is something we all do together. Together we consider what we've just heard. Together we contribute to each other's space to think.

Why has the church forgotten this? Our culture knows it. At the most solemn moments, we have a minute of silence. And everyone listens to the silence. And thinks about why we're being silent. Why don't we do this in the church.

In the last century, E. M. Forster, in A Passage to India, referred to "poor little talkative Christianity". Perhaps there was a day when all Christians did was gather to listen to the Bible read and preached, and to prayers. But that day is long gone in most evangelical churches. These days we gather more to watch than to listen. And to sing.

But in all the noise of our choirs, and drums, and electic guitars, and organs, and praise bands, where is the solemnity? Where is the dignity and majesty that is so often indicated in the Bible by a stupified silence, soaked in awe and covered with wonder?

Ecclesiastes 3:7 tells us that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent, but we seem to have forgotten today that there is a time for silence. God calls his people before Him in silence: "the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him," (Hab. 2:20).

Certainly as Christians we have much to rejoice over--loudly and joyfully and expectantly! But is no part of our regular assemblies to reflect the weightiness of our sinful selves before a holy God, the silence of conviction, even of sorrow? Furthermore, is no part of our regular assemblies to reflect the stunning weightiness of our forgiveness in Christ, the silence of marvel, and even the humility of some incomprehension?

We silence ourselves exactly because God has not kept silent. We silence ourselves in order to hear God speak in His Word (cf. Deut. 27:9) We silence ourselves to show our assent to God's charges against us (cf. Ps. 39:9). We silence ourselves to show respect and obedience and humility and restraint (cf. Zeph. 1:7;
I Cor. 14:34; I Tim. 2:12). We silence ourselves to search our hearts (cf. Ps. 4:4).

We silence ourselves in our own times of prayer, reading and meditation on God's Word. And we should also silence ourselves in our periods of corporate worship. Making silence together builds and unifies the church, witnesses to the majesty of God and tacitly proclaims His greatness to all who hear.

http://blog.9marks.org/2009/07/making-silence-together.html

The Best of John Calvin

This year the Christian church marks with joy the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birth in 1509. The mention of his name still calls forth strong sentiments among the faithful even today, some 500 years later. While most Christians probably only associate his name with "Calvinism" as we know it, there is much more to understand and learn about this giant of the Christian faith. In a previous post I mentioned that Calvin was no mere cold theologian,but he was first and foremost a pastor.

In the preface to Calvin's sermons on Ephesians the publisher notes: "Though he was a scientific theologian who intended, God helping him, to establish solid doctrinal foundations in the Reformed churches; and though he was a lecturer to the students who met in the College at Geneva, toiling to set before them the meaning of Scripture in the clearest light; nevertheless it was not to these activities so much as to the pulpit itself that was the major part of his time was given. His primary obligation was not to fellow-scholars, nor even to his students, but to the ordinary people - citizens of Geneva and exiles, shop-keepers and merchants, the young and the old - who crowded St. Peter's day by day to listen to his sermons in French."

Emile Doumergue, Calvin's foremost biographer would agree: " That is the Calvin who seems to me to be the real and authentic Calvin, the one who explains all the others: Calvin the preacher of Geneva..."

More later on the fascinating story of how his sermons were lost and then found. But till then, here is a taste of Calvin the preacher.

https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=717061313209