my burg

Here's an older article in Modern Reformation by Rod Rosenbladt in on how some views of sanctification destroy confidence in our once-for-all salvation by grace... What should the Christian do if he is reading the law and says, "This is not yet true of me: I don't love God with all my heart, and I certainly don't love my neighbor as I love myself. In fact, just today I failed to help a poor man on the side of the road who was having car trouble. I must not yet be a Christian." The answer of the Higher Life movement to the struggling Christian is, "Surrender more!" or, "What are you holding back from the Lord?"  The Reformation answer is different: "You hurry back to the second use of the law and flee to Christ where sanctification is truly, completely, and perfectly located." After this experience, the believer will feel a greater sense of freedom to obey (thus fulfilling the third use of the law), and this is the only way that o...

My friend Don shared this quote the other day at lunch... "By no means does He [God] guarantee an easy life.  But He does promise to spare us the bitter results of going our own way.  His way may be harder  for  us, but it is easier  on  us.  The cost of non-commitment far exceeds the cost of commitment, for self-rule ultimately brings self-ruin."   --Warren & Ruth Myers,  Praise: A Door to God's Presence , p. 82

Courtesy of Credo House .   

“Luther taught that every time you insist that I am a sinner, just so often do you call me to remember the benefit of Christ my Redeemer, upon whose shoulders, and not upon mine, lie all my sins. So, when you say that I am a sinner, you do not terrify, but comfort me immeasurably.”   --Thomas Oden, The Justification Reader (Eerdmans, 2002)

Reading again (and profiting again!) from Francis Schaeffer's True Spirituality .  Schaeffer, like Keller today, does such a great job integrating justification by faith with an active faith of sanctification.   Some recent highlights... Only one is self-sufficient in himself, and he is God. But now as Christians we are introduced to the great reality: our calling is to be creatures in this high, tremendous, and glorious way, not because we must be, but by choice.  ...the scriptural teaching [about faith] is not mere resignation. I am a creature, it is true, but I have a calling to be the creature glorified. I must be the creature, but I do not have to be the creature like the clod in the field, the cabbage that is rotting in the field as the snows melt. I am called to be a creature by choice, on the basis of Christ’s finished work, by faith: the creature glorified. Justification is once for all. At one moment my guilt is declared gone forever, but this [spir...