R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 11

Special Sale: 150+ Discounted Resources

Our largest $5 Friday (and More) sale of the summer is happening now. In addition to offering a wide variety of Ligonier resources for $5 each and significantly discounting other items, numerous resources are now available for as little as $1 in the Ligonier store.

More than 150 discipleship resources have been discounted for this special sale. Shop today and save on books for your summer reading, teaching series to share with a friend, study guides for your small group, and more.

Don’t miss this special $5 Friday (and More) sale—available today only. Browse the collection until 11:59 p.m. ET while supplies last.

VIEW TODAY'S $5 FRIDAY ITEMS

 

Announcing Our 2021 Always Ready Conference in Central Florida

Christian young people face constant attacks on the truth claims of their faith. It is vital that they’re prepared to give an answer for the hope within them (1 Pet. 3:15).

Mark your calendar for September 18, 2021, and join us on the campus of Reformation Bible College in Sanford, FL, for Always Ready, a one-day youth conference. Trusted teachers and gifted speakers will equip you with the Bible’s answers to some of the most common attacks raised against the Christian faith.

Designed for Christians ages twelve to eighteen, this event will help you defend the gospel and talk about your faith with non-Christian friends. Register today for $30, which includes a boxed lunch from Chick-fil-A and a commemorative conference T-shirt. Group discounts are also available.

SESSIONS:

Always Ready? by Nathan W. BinghamWho Am I? by Stephen NicholsCan I Trust the Bible? by Burk ParsonsInterview: Following Christ in a Digital Age with Nathan W. BinghamCan I Have Hope? by Eric BancroftPanel Discussion: How Do I Defend the Gospel? with Eric Bancroft, Nathan W. Bingham, and Stephen NicholsQ&A: Got Questions? with Stephen NicholsREGISTER TODAY

 

Why We’re Confessional

Here’s an excerpt from Why We're Confessional, Burk Parsons' contribution to the June issue of Tabletalk:

“I believe.” We hear these words every day of our lives. Whatever the context, we use these two simple words to express our thoughts about nearly everything. When we want to tell others what we are thinking or want to reveal the innermost affections of our hearts, we will often say, “I believe.” In His wisdom, God created us not only with the capacity to believe but also with an insatiable desire to explore, examine, and express our beliefs (Prov. 2; 1 Peter 1). We possess a God-given hunger deep within our souls that causes us to examine fundamental truths about everything God has revealed to us (Deut. 4; Matt. 22).

The mere fact that we believe in something doesn’t actually do anything for us. At the most basic level, a belief in something only provides us with the overwhelming sense that we’re not alone and that something exists beyond us. Everyone has a capacity to believe in something, and in fact everyone actually does believe something (Acts 17). Although the cynical skeptic might say, “I believe in nothing,” the simple point is that he does believe in something, and according to him that something is “nothing.” But even the convinced skeptic knows that it is impossible to believe in absolutely nothing. If someone claims to believe in nothing, the truth of the matter is that he actually believes in everything that begins and ends with himself as the source and object of his self-fashioned, self-centered faith. He has an open mind about everything, which, contrary to popular opinion, is not a good thing. Someone who has an open mind about everything will uncritically allow any and all data, no matter how absurd, to enter his mind because he has no filters—no criteria—to discern right from wrong, truth from falsehood, and even truth from half-truth (Prov. 1:22, 32). The open mind of everything is an undiscerning open space, filled only with perceptions and inclinations.

Continue reading Why We're Confessional, or begin receiving Tabletalk magazine by signing up for a free 3-month trial.

 

The Divine Mandate for Parents

I don't know how many times I've heard parents who are members of churches say to me:

I intentionally never discuss theology or religion with my children, because I want them to believe whatever they come to believe honestly and not because they've been indoctrinated by us in the home. I don't want them to be slaves to a parental tradition. I want them to experience reality on its own terms and come to whatever conclusion they are drawn from the evidence.

Such sentiments mystify me because they are at such odds with the teaching of Scripture. Just consider Deuteronomy 6:4–9:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

What I find remarkable about this text is how closely it places the mandate to teach our children to what Jesus calls the greatest commandment, namely, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (v. 5; see Matt. 22:36–40). There is no commandment more important than to love our Creator, but what's the very next command in Deuteronomy 6? That the law of God is to be on our hearts and taught to our children. The divine mandate is that parents should teach the Lord's commandments to their children. Not that the parents should send their children somewhere else to learn these things, but the responsibility is given to the parents.

Moreover, Deuteronomy 6 doesn't say that "you shall teach them casually, occasionally, once in a while to your children." No, it says,

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (vv. 7–9)

That is, these things are to be taught so diligently that they are going to be taught every single day, in every place, even in every room of our homes.

I don't think there's a mandate to be found in sacred Scripture that is more solemn than this one. That we are to teach our children the truth of God's Word is a sacred, holy responsibility that God gives to His people. And it's not something that is to be done only one day a week in Sunday school. We can't abdicate the responsibility to the church. The primary responsibility for the education of children according to Scripture is the family, the parents. And what is commanded is the passing on of tradition.

In our forward-looking age, many look upon tradition with scorn. It is seen as the province of reactionaries and conservatives who refuse to get with the times. But when we look at Scripture, we find it has much to say about tradition, some of it negative, some of it positive. One of the judgments of God upon the nation of Israel and upon the teachers of Israel was that they began to substitute human traditions for the Word of God, with the human traditions taking the place of Scripture. Because of that error, we may jump to the conclusion that we should, therefore, never communicate traditions.

Yet when we come to the New Testament, we find a distinction made between the traditions of men and the tradition of God. The Apostle Paul, for example, claims that he did not invent out of his own mind the message that he proclaimed to the churches and was passing on to the churches—the paradosis, the tradition, of God. Paradosis is the Greek word for "tradition," and it comes from the same root as the Greek term for "gift" as well as the prefix para-, which means "alongside of " or "passing on." Literally, the meaning of "tradition" in the Scriptures is the passing on of a gift. The gift that is to be passed on is the gift of the knowledge of God, of what He has revealed about Himself in His Word, of what He inspired the prophets and Apostles to tell us in sacred Scripture.

It's my responsibility as a parent and it's your responsibility as a parent to pass on that gift. If you aren't a parent, it's your responsibility to support the work of the church and those who are parents in passing on that gift. It is a great and glorious calling to lead our children into the truth of God's Word. Indeed, there is no more solemn mandate given to parents and adults in the church than to raise up covenant children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

The Garden of Eden, Legalism, and Antinomianism

Our hearts are bent toward two wrong responses to the gospel. Either we seek to earn God’s favor by our good behavior or we break His commandments to find satisfaction elsewhere. In this brief clip, Sinclair Ferguson outlines both errors in Genesis 3.

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Transcript

So here in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, there is a portrayal of Yahweh the Covenant God who reveals Himself to Moses, who Moses understands is the same covenant God. He uses the name Yahweh here in Genesis chapter 2—the same covenant, gracious, generous, God who has come in creation seeking fellowship with Adam and Eve. There’s a very interesting thing in these verses at the beginning of Genesis chapter 3; Satan never calls God Yahweh. So something else is taking place, a diversion away from the real character and covenant love of God, and then this very subtle twisting in which God is being turned into a God who will love you and will be generous to you if you meet the qualifications. And then do you see what happens? Satan comes in, and he says in verse 5 ‘God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like Him knowing good and evil.’ And you see this is further pressing on the same principle: God may say He’s good. God may say He’s generous, but He’s not really good and generous. He’s demeaning your life. He’s spoiling your life. He doesn’t want you to be like Him. He wants to keep you in your place until you’ve done enough to earn His pleasure. There are fathers like that. I’ve heard them in restaurants. I’ve seen them in life. ‘I will love you if…’ And such a child never grows to love his father.

Now why this is so important is because of what it produces in Eve, and it’s very important to notice what it produces. The first thing is it produces legalism: That God will love me and be generous to me only on the basis that I meet the qualifications. And then the second thing it produces is antinomianism: in order to be delivered from that bondage, she breaks the law that was given for her blessing, and she becomes an antinomian. There is then, put into the spiritual DNA of the whole human race, exactly the same reality of a spirit of legalism in relationship to God and, yes in relationship to His gospel, to which people will inevitably respond in one of two ways: either by seeking to pursue the legalism and do enough to earn His pleasure or to seek the blessing by breaking His commandments.

 

What Is Love?

How many people do you know that have made it to the hall of fame in music, art, literature, or sports because of their love? We elevate people to the status of heroes because of their gifts, their talents, and their power, but not because of their love. Yet, from God’s perspective, love is the chief of all virtues. But what is love?

Love is said to make the world go round, and romantic love certainly makes the culture go round in terms of advertising and entertainment. We never seem to tire of stories that focus on romance. But we’re not referring to romantic love when we speak of the Christian virtue of love. We’re talking about a much deeper dimension of love, a virtue so paramount that it is to distinguish Christians from all other people. Moreover, love is so important to the Bible’s teachings that John tells us, “God is love” (1 John 4:7–8). Whatever else we say about the Christian virtue of love, we must be clear that the love God commands is a love that imitates His own. The love of God is utterly perfect. And we are called to reflect and mirror that love to perfection, to be perfect as He is perfect (Matt. 5:48). Now, of course, none of us loves perfectly, which is why we must be covered with the perfect righteousness of Christ by faith in Him alone. Nevertheless, it’s important for us to return time and again to Scripture to find out what love is supposed to look like, for we’re so easily satisfied with a sentimental, maudlin, romantic, or superficial understanding of love.

First Corinthians 13 plumbs the depths of what love really means. It’s a measuring rod by which we can examine ourselves carefully to see whether this love resides in our hearts and is manifested in our lives. Given that truth, I’m surprised that 1 Corinthians 13 is one of the most popular passages in all of Scripture instead of being one of the most despised. I can’t think of any chapter in Scripture that more quickly reveals our sins than this chapter. It’s popularity may be due to its being one of the most misunderstood and least applied chapters in the Bible. There’s a sense in which we’re ambivalent toward it. We’re drawn to it because of the grandeur of its theme and the eloquence of its language, yet at the same time we’re repulsed by this chapter because it reveals our shortcomings. We want to keep some safe distance from it because it so clearly demonstrates to us our lack of real love.

This chapter is part of an Apostolic admonition to Christians who were torn apart by contentions in the church. They were behaving in an immature, fleshly manner, and at the heart of this ungodly behavior was a manifestation of certain talents, abilities, and gifts without the presence of love in their lives. In the opening verses, Paul speaks of love as the sine qua non of Christian virtue (1 Cor. 13:1–3). He’s speaking with hyperbole, intentionally exaggerating things to make his point. He starts off comparing love to the gift of tongues. Paul says, in effect, “I don’t care if you are fluent in fifty languages or if you have the gift to speak foreign languages miraculously. I don’t care if God has endowed you with the ability to speak the language of the heavenly host. If you don’t have love, the eloquence of your speech becomes noise. It becomes dissonance, an irritating and annoying racket.” He says here that if we speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, we become a sounding brass or a clanging symbol—mere noise. All the beauty of speech is lost when love is absent.

Paul then compares love to the gifts of prophecy and understanding, miraculous endowments that God gave to people during the Apostolic era. These tremendous gifts were nothing compared to love. The Apostle says that you can have a miraculous endowment, you can receive power from God the Holy Spirit, but it is to be used in the context of the grace of love. And without that love, the use of the divine power is a charade. Jesus had to warn even His own disciples about the danger of using a God-given gift without love. Jesus empowered His disciples to participate in His ministry of exorcism, and they went out on their mission and came back clicking their heels. They were so excited at the effectiveness of their ministry that they were rejoicing in the power Christ had given them. But what did Jesus say? Don’t rejoice because you have been given power over Satan, but rejoice that your names have been written in heaven (Luke 10:1–20). The disciples were caught up with the power instead of the grace that was underlying that power. They were intoxicated with the gift, and were forgetting the One who gave it.

The bottom line is that the gifts of God can be used without love. When that happens, their value is destroyed. The essence of love, 1 Corinthians 13 tells us, is to seek the welfare of others. A person who reflects God’s love is driven to give of himself for others, not to wield his power for his own benefit. But we are people who are more interested in power, in doing rather than being. We’re more concerned to seize the supernatural power that God can give rather than the supernatural love that is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). We have misplaced priorities. Thanks be to God that His love for us is greater than our love for Him. May He strengthen us to pursue love above all else, a love that reflects His love for us in Christ (5:8).

Dr. R.C. Sproul was founder of Ligonier Ministries, founding pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., and first president of Reformation Bible College. He was author of more than one hundred books, including The Holiness of God. This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

What must I do to be saved?

There is only one way to be saved from our sin and reconciled to God. Are you? From one of our Ask Ligonier events, W. Robert Godfrey plainly states how we receive the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ alone.

Message us for clear, concise, and trustworthy answers to your biblical and theological questions at ask.Ligonier.org.

Read the Transcript

 

Will You Pray for Awakening? Download Your Free Prayer Guide

We live in a world that needs awakening. Millions of people do not know Jesus Christ. The church itself needs renewed zeal for the truth, for spiritual growth, and for missions. Scripture reveals how this awakening comes about: by a powerful movement of the Spirit of God. It also tells us that when just two men—Paul and Silas—prayed, the earth itself shook (Acts 16:25–26). So we are dedicating the entire year of 2021 to pray for awakening, and we hope you will, too.

To help as many people as possible, we produced this free prayer guide. Download it today at PrayForAwakening.com, find it in the PrayerMate app, or order the prayer booklet in packs of ten to share with your loved ones.

To use the guide, find the prayer that corresponds to the current week. Each week of the month focuses on a different group to pray for, starting with you and your family and expanding to the world and the global church. You can also share your desire to #PrayForAwakening on social media.

JUNE PRAYER FOCUS:

Week 1: Pray that you and your family will gladly do what God wills, as is outlined in His Word. “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matt. 6:10)Week 2: Pray that you and your church will live holy lives before friends and neighbors so that your witness to the gospel will have a credible testimony. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Pet. 2:9)Week 3: Pray that your nation and city will praise God and not curse Him. “Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!” (Ps. 67:3)Week 4: Pray that the church around the world will not be content simply with making converts but will strive to make disciples. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matt. 28:19–20)Week 5: Pray that your church will remain discerning and will remain devoted to truth and not be deceived by the teachings of demons. “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” (1 Tim. 4:1)

We hope this prayer guide encourages you this year and in future years. Join us in praying fervently for a mighty movement of God’s Spirit today, thankful that He has graciously promised to hear us, and confident that He will answer our prayers according to His will.

DOWNLOAD NOW

Don’t Settle for an Immature Faith

The Lord calls us to have a childlike faith, but not a simplistic or ignorant faith. In this brief clip, R.C. Sproul shows how theologians such as Augustine and Anselm have underscored the importance of continually growing in our knowledge of God.

Today, watch the entire message for free.

Transcript:

Now, neither Augustine nor Anselm was ever satisfied with a blind faith, which they considered to be a form of credulity that was not in any way virtuous. But rather, though both subscribed to the idea that, in the final analysis, God is incomprehensible—namely that we cannot contain in our finite minds or our finite intellect a total comprehensive understanding of God—nevertheless, the God who is has revealed Himself to us with sufficient clarity, and particularly in the sacred Scriptures, to such a degree that we can at least have an apprehensive knowledge of Him. And those who put their trust in God and their faith in God and the things of God should never be satisfied with a childish, immature understanding of God. Now, I mention that because we live again in a time that is one of the most anti-intellectual periods in Western Christianity. That is, we are anti-mind, and it has become a virtue among Christians to embrace what is called a “childlike faith.” Now, of course, there is a point for a childlike faith insofar as a small child puts implicit trust in one who knows more than the child does—namely, the parent, while they are very young, at least. It doesn’t last too long, of course. What we as the children of God should have is an implicit trust in our heavenly father, just as a young child has that kind of implicit trust in their earthly parents. But this concept of a childlike faith has come to mean to many people today what I would call (and what Anselm would call and what Augustine would call) a childish faith. The childish faith says, “I don’t want to have to think about the content of my faith; that’s a destructive thing that scholars get into. I’m just going to keep it as simple as I possibly can and not be engaged in any serious study of theology or the Word of God or anything else. I’m just going to keep it simple.” Now, at that point, when we take that position, we sin. It’s so far from being a virtue. It is a vice according to the New Testament, because the New Testament commands that we are to be babes in evil, childlike in our sin—but in understanding, we are to be men; that is, we are to be adults. And as the author of Hebrews labors, it is a sin to be satisfied with the milk, and we are commanded as we seek maturity in Christ to the diet of the meatier things of the faith. Now, this is the kind of thing that both Augustine and Anselm were jealous to communicate: that the content that God has revealed in His Scripture is content that was designed to be understood by His people, and we must seek to gain as much understanding as we possibly can of that which God has provided for us.

 

Bring the Gospel to the Front Lines

A battle is raging for the souls of men and women in the military, and you can equip soldiers in the fight of faith.

As members of the armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting freedoms and pursuing peace, military chaplains are there to minister to the troops. Too often, however, chaplains lack the resources they require to meet soldiers’ spiritual needs, while many chaplains serve without the support and encouragement of other mature Christians. You can help.

Through your generous support, military chaplains are being equipped with custom care packages, including trustworthy books, teaching series, study Bibles, and more, so they can better minister to the men, women, and military families under their care.

This chaplain outreach is incredibly important to Ligonier Ministries, just as it was to R.C. Sproul. A few years ago, we spoke with Chaplain Jim Carter, a former seminary student of Dr. Sproul’s and a longtime friend of Ligonier, about how essential it is for the military to be well supplied and spiritually fed with the Word of God. Watch below.

In the last nine months alone, one hundred new chaplains have enrolled in the program. This need only continues to rise as more military chaplains seek out reliable teaching to help soldiers win their spiritual battles. One chaplain, Joe Salem, recently requested theological resources that could have a wide-reaching impact at his next station.

“I begin my next assignment as the Staff Chaplain of the Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss in late June. I will serve approximately 2,500 future Sergeants Major per year and approximately seventy-five staff personnel. Please know that any materials I receive from this ministry will not only help shape the souls of the senior enlisted leaders of the Army, but also the quality of their leadership with thousands of warfighters.” —CH (MAJ) JOE SALEM

Chaplain Jonathan Craig also reached out to Ligonier to express how the support of ministry friends such as you is providing a spiritual supply line for those on active duty and their families at home.

“I regularly stock our literature racks with the Crucial Questions booklets, and they are hard to keep on the shelves. Military and civilian personnel are eagerly snatching them up to gain a deeper appreciation for the truth of God’s Word.” —CH JONATHAN CRAIG

Most chaplains who partner with Ligonier are ministering to thousands of servicemen and women at a time, faced with the constant challenge of outfitting their soldiers with gospel resources. Because of the financial support of those who believe in this outreach and want it to expand, our partner chaplains currently serve an estimated 850,000 men and women in uniform, as well as their families.

“Ligonier has been a terrific support for me as a Navy chaplain. I am confident these materials are helping sailors grow in their faith and being used by our glorious God to fulfill His amazing purposes. Thank you, Ligonier, for being there for me and my sailors!” —CH BUSTER WILLIAMS

However, millions more on the front lines and the home front are still awaiting needed reinforcements in their battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. By God’s grace, your gift of $25, $50, or $100 can help renew minds and transform lives through this partnership, equipping soldiers in the knowledge of the Lord.

Thank you for ministering to the armed forces through your prayers and generosity. If you know a chaplain who would be interested in receiving our materials, please put them in contact with the team at chaplain@ligonier.org. We would be honored to serve them with you.

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