R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 123

Destroy Doctrine

Here’s an excerpt from Destroy Doctrine, Stephen Nichols’ contribution to the September issue of Tabletalk:

octrine is essential to the church—but you must never let the church know that. Doctrine is the key to unity in the church. Only a church united around doctrine can survive the winds of time and change—but you must never let them know that. Doctrine is essential to the Christian’s love for God and love for others. Doctrine is very simply knowing the Enemy, and the more Christians know the Enemy, the more they will love the Enemy and love others—but you must never let them know that. Instead, teach them that doctrine is dangerous, that doctrine divides, that doctrine is deadly.

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The Whole of the Christian Life Is Repentance

We don't just repent once. In this brief clip, Sinclair Ferguson explains that the Christian life requires daily repentance and submission to the authority of Jesus Christ.

Transcript

Most of you know the story of Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. The first of these theses was this: When our Lord Jesus said “repent.” He meant that the whole of the Christian life should be repentance. You ever heard somebody say, well I repented twenty years ago, thirty years ago, ten years ago, it’s done and dusted. No it’s not done and dusted for Jesus. It is the whole of the Christian life. This transformation, this newness, this difference that is the Christian life, takes place only when we find ourselves bowing down to the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What Came Before God?

People may argue that if every effect has a cause, then God must have a cause. They may therefore ask, What was there before God? But the eternal God is not an effect. There never was a time when He was not. God’s being is derived from nothing outside of Himself, nor is He dependent on anything outside of Himself. Nothing differentiates God from the creature more dramatically than this, because the creature, by definition, is dependent, contingent, and derived and lacks the power of being in and of himself. God requires nothing; He exists from all eternity.

Eternality goes in the other direction as well. There will never be a time in the future when God will cease to be. His being remains self-existent for all eternity. If anything exists, then something has always existed. If there ever was absolutely nothing, then nothing could possibly be now, because you cannot get something out of nothing. Conversely, if there is something now, then that in itself demonstrates that there always was something. And that which always is exists in and of itself. That is the One who has the power of being within Himself, the living God. So His eternality is another attribute that should incite our souls to adoration and praise: we are made by One who has the very power of being in Himself eternally. Imagine the greatness of a being like that.

His eternality, perhaps more than anything else, sets God apart from us. His holiness refers not only to His purity but also to His otherness or transcendence—the sense in which He is different from us. One thing we human beings have in common is that we are creatures, who by nature are temporal. At the end of a person’s life, when he is buried, his grave is marked by a tombstone on which are inscribed his name and the dates of his birth and death. We live on this earth between those two dates: birth and death. There are no such dates for God. He is infinite not only with respect to space but also with respect to time. There never was a time when God was not. He is from everlasting to everlasting. God’s eternality is inseparably related to His self-existence, His aseity. Yet the word aseity is virtually absent from the average Christian’s vocabulary. Aseity means “to have being or existence within oneself.”

The mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell, in Why I Am Not a Christian, spelled out the reasons for his unbelief. Until he was a teenager, Russell had been convinced that there had to be a God to explain the universe. Then he read John Stuart Mill, who disputed the traditional cosmological argument for God’s existence, which reasons from the presence of things that are now in existence back to a first cause. This reasoning is based on the law of causality, which says that every effect must have an antecedent cause. Mill asserted that if everything must have an antecedent cause, then God Himself must have one as well. But if God has an antecedent cause, then He is a creature like everyone else. When he read this in his late teens, Russell decided that the classical argument for God’s existence is fallacious. Russell maintained that position until his death, failing to realize that it was built on a faulty definition of the law of causality.

The law of causality teaches that every effect must have a cause, not that everything must have a cause. Effects, by definition, are caused by something outside of themselves. However, we need not assume that everything is an effect—temporal, finite, dependent, and derived. There is nothing irrational about the idea of a self-existent, eternal being who has the power of being within Himself. In fact, such a concept is not only logically possible but (as Thomas Aquinas demonstrated) logically necessary. For anything to exist, something somewhere, somehow, must have the power of being, for without the power of being, nothing could possibly be. That which has the power of being in and of itself, and is not dependent on anything outside of itself, must have the power of being from all eternity. This is what distinguishes God from us. We recall the first sentence of the Old Testament: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Everything in the cosmos, apart from God, is creaturely. Everything in creation—in the universe—has a beginning in time. God alone is from everlasting to everlasting and possesses the attribute of eternality. That majestic aspect of God’s nature so far transcends anything that we have ever conceived of in this world that it alone should be enough to move our souls to praise and adore Him. He alone has the power of being in and of Himself. We do not think about these things often enough. If we reflect on a being who is eternal, who generates the power for everything else that exists, including ourselves, we should be moved to worship Him.

This excerpt is adapted from Truths We Confess by R.C. Sproul. In Truths We Confess, now thoroughly revised and available in a single, accessible volume, Dr. Sproul introduces readers to this remarkable confession, explaining its insights and applying them to modern life. Preorder the hardcover book today.

Demonize Church Discipline

Here’s an excerpt from Demonize Church Discipline, Burk Parsons’ contribution to the September issue of Tabletalk:

n our striving to destroy the church, it is imperative that you first understand what true churches are. You must not waste your time among those so-called churches where our master has been thus far successful in blinding the eyes of the shepherds and thus the sheep. In those so-called churches, after many decades of our tireless work, they have done away with the pure preaching of the Word of our Enemy, the right administration of the sacraments, and church discipline, which we have long known are the marks of the true church. Wherever we see these marks of the church practiced, it is there where we must level our most savage attack using every weapon in our arsenal.

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What Do You Think About Emotional Sensationalism in the Modern Church?

Our feelings aren’t the standard for truth. God’s Word is. From one of our live Ask Ligonier events, Stephen Nichols warns us not to be carried away by our emotions.

To get real-time answers to your biblical and theological questions, just Ask.Ligonier.org.

Read the Transcript

The Great Exchanges of Romans

When the wonder of the gospel breaks into your life, you feel as though you are the first person to discover its power and glory. Where has Christ been hidden all these years? He seems so fresh, so new, so full of grace. Then comes a second discovery—it is you who have been blind, but now you have experienced exactly the same as countless others before you. You compare notes. Sure enough, you are not the first! Thankfully you will not be the last.

If my own experience is anything by which to judge, discovering Romans can be a similar experience. I still remember, as a Christian teenager, the slow dawning of this thought in my mind: all Scripture is God-breathed and useful to me, but it also seems to have a shape and structure, a center and circumference. If that is so, then some biblical books may be foundational; these should be mastered first.

Then came the realization that (alongside systematic theologies) biblical commentaries must be the foundation of my book collection. Blessed in the Scotland of those days with free tuition and a student allowance, I purchased the wonderful studies of Romans by Robert Haldane and John Murray. (Only later did it strike me that a certain ethnic prejudice may have been present in me, since both were Scots!)

As I studied Romans, wrestling with some of its great truths, struggling with some of its tough passages (surely it is to them that 2 Peter 3:14–16 refers!), it became clear that countless feet had walked this way before. I had only just begun to join them in discovering the mind-renewing, life-changing power of what Paul calls “the gospel of God” (Rom. 1:1; 15:16), “the gospel of Christ” (Rom. 1:16; 15:19), and “my gospel” (Rom. 2:16; 16:25). Soon it became clear why Martin Luther called Romans “the clearest gospel of all.” The gospel of Romans can be summarized in one word: exchange. In fact, as Paul summarizes the teaching of Romans 1:18–5:11, he concludes that Christians “rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation” (Rom. 5:11, emphasis added). The root meaning of the Greek word katallagē, translated “reconciliation,” is a change (or exchange) taking place. Paul’s gospel is the story of a series of exchanges.

Exchange number one is described in 1:18–32: knowing the clearly revealed Creator God who has displayed His glory in the universe He has made, humanity has “[ex]changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image … exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator … exchanged the natural use for what is against nature” (1:23–26, emphasis added)—all variations on the same root.

Exchange number two is the direct, divinely ordained consequence of this: God exchanged the privilege of man’s communion-knowledge of Him for His righteous wrath against man (Rom. 1:18ff). Instead of knowing, trusting, and lovingly glorifying God, mankind by its ungodliness and unrighteousness (the order is significant) drew forth God’s judgment.

Thus, communion with God was exchanged for condemnation by God. Neither is this merely eschatological, far off in the future; it is invasive in a contemporary way. Men and women give God up and flaunt their pretended autonomy in His face. They think, “We despise His laws and break them freely, yet no threatened thunderbolt of judgment touches us.” In fact, however, they are judicially blinded and hardened. They cannot see that the conscience-hardening and body-destroying effects of their rebellion are the judgment of God. His judgments are righteous—if we will have ungodliness, then the punishment will come through the very instruments of our crime against Him. In the end, we have exchanged the light of His presence for present inner darkness and future outer darkness.

Exchange number three is the gracious, unmerited (in fact, demerited) exchange that God provided in Christ. Without compromise of His righteousness revealed in wrath, God righteously justifies sinners through the redemption He provided in Christ’s blood-propitiation for our sins. This Paul states in the rich and tightly-packed words of Romans 3:21–26.

It is only later in the letter that he gives us a different, and in some ways more fundamental, way of looking at this: the Son of God took our nature and came “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3) in order to exchange places with Adam, so that His obedience and righteousness might for our sakes be exchanged for Adam’s (and our) disobedience and sin (Rom. 5:12–21).

Exchange number four is that which is offered to sinners in the gospel: righteousness and justification instead of unrighteousness and condemnation. Moreover, this Christ-shaped righteousness was constituted by His entire life of obedience and His wrath-embracing sacrifice on the cross, where He was made a sin offering (He came, says Paul in Rom. 8:3, “on account of sin,” or “to be a sin offering”; NIV).

In addition to insisting on the fact that this divine exchange is consistent with the absolute righteousness of God (Rom. 3:21, 22, 25, 26), Paul stresses that this way of salvation is consistent with the teaching of the Old Testament (“being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,” v. 21; cf. 1:1–4). He also insists that we contribute nothing to our salvation. It is all of grace. The sheer genius of the divine strategy is simply breathtaking.

Exchange number five emerges here. In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, when John Calvin moves from Book II (on the work of Christ) to Book III (on the application of redemption), he writes:

We must now examine this question. How do we receive those benefits which the Father bestowed on his only-begotten Son—not for Christ’s own private use, but that he might enrich poor and needy men? First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value to us … we obtain this by faith.

In response to the great exchange that has been accomplished for us in Christ, there is an exchange accomplished in us by the Spirit: unbelief gives way to faith, rebellion is exchanged for trust. Justification—our being declared righteous and constituted in a righteous relationship with God—is not made ours by works, ceremonial or otherwise, but by the exercise of faith in Christ.

This excerpt is adapted from In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life by Sinclair Ferguson.

The Donation of Constantine

In this brief clip from his teaching series A Survey of Church History, W. Robert Godfrey examines a historical document supposedly prepared by Constantine that helped legitimate the Pope's authority in the West. Watch this entire message for free.

Transcript

Who's in charge in Western Christendom? We can see this tension in a number of different ways. We've already talked about coronation of Charlemagne in the year 800 on Christmas Day. I always say to students, you should be very thankful to Charlemagne that he got crowned in the year relatively easy to remember, the year 800. And he was crowned by the Pope. He wasn't very happy about being crowned by the Pope because he didn't want to leave the impression that he had received the empire from the hands of the Pope. But that was exactly the impression that the Pope wanted to give. The pope was already operating on the basis of the document, known to history as “The Donation of Constantine.”

The Donation of Constantine, a document supposedly prepared by the Emperor Constantine in the early 4th century in which Constantine said “I have this vast empire that the Lord has given to me and it's difficult to rule this whole empire and therefore I give the western half of my empire to the Pope.” What a guy that Constantine was. What a generous fellow. Now it's still a little bit awkward from the Pope's point of view because even with that document, the pope had to grant that he had received this authority in the West from the Emperor. But it was all right because it seemed to legitimate the Pope's claimed that he could rule over Western Europe. And the truth is of course that that was not a document written by Constantine himself but a document that was forged in Constantine’s name around 750. So just at the time that the Pope comes to crown Charlemagne, his action is supported by this apparent document giving him control of the west and from that time on, there would be recurring tensions over this.

How Should We Evangelize Someone Who Claims They Aren't Elect?

Practically speaking, we should hope every person we evangelize is numbered among the elect. From one of our Ask R.C. events, R.C. Sproul helps us respond to nonbelievers who assume God has not chosen them for salvation.

To get real-time answers to your biblical and theological questions, just Ask.Ligonier.org.

Read the Transcript

Since God Is Sovereign, How Are Humans Free?

God is most free; that is, His freedom is unlimited. He is sovereign. The most frequent objection to His sovereignty is that if God is truly sovereign, then man cannot be free. Scripture uses the term freedom to describe our human condition in two distinct ways: freedom from coercion, whereby man is free to make choices without coercion, and moral freedom, which we lost in the fall, leaving us slaves to the evil impulses of our flesh. Humanists believe that man can make choices not only without coercion but also without any natural inclination toward evil. We Christians must be on guard against this humanist or pagan view of human freedom.

The Christian view is that God creates us with wills, with a capacity to choose. We are volitional beings. But the freedom given in creation is limited. What ultimately limits our freedom is God’s freedom. This is where we run into the conflict between divine sovereignty and human freedom. Some say that God’s sovereignty is limited by human freedom. If that is the case, then man is sovereign, not God. The Reformed faith teaches that human freedom is real but limited by God’s sovereignty. We cannot overrule the sovereign decisions of God with our freedom, because God’s freedom is greater than ours.

Human family relationships provide an analogy. Parents exercise authority over the child. The child has freedom, but the parents have more. The child’s freedom does not limit the parents’ freedom in the way that the parents’ freedom limits the child’s. When we come to the attributes of God, we must understand that God is most free.

When we say that God is sovereign, we are saying something about His freedom, although we tend to think that sovereignty means something quite different from freedom. God is a volitional being; He has a will and makes decisions. When making decisions and exercising His will, He does so sovereignly as the ultimate authority. His freedom is most free. He alone has supreme autonomy; He is a law unto Himself.

Humans seek autonomy, unlimited freedom, desiring to be accountable to no one. In a real sense, that is what happened in the fall. Satan enticed Adam and Eve to reach for autonomy, to become like God, to do whatever they wanted with impunity. Satan was introducing a liberation movement in the garden to free human beings from culpability, from accountability to God. But He alone has autonomy.

This excerpt is adapted from Truths We Confess by R.C. Sproul. In Truths We Confess, now thoroughly revised and available in a single, accessible volume, Dr. Sproul introduces readers to this remarkable confession, explaining its insights and applying them to modern life. Preorder the hardcover book today.

$5 Friday: Preaching, Worship, & the Psalms

It’s time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week’s resources include such topics as the Lord’s Prayer, preaching, the Psalms, Martin Luther, worship, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the doctrine of grace, and more.

Sale runs through 12:01 a.m. — 11:59 p.m. Friday ET.

View today’s $5 Friday sale items.