R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 28

Our Unchanging Ethic

Here’s an excerpt from Our Unchanging Ethic, Burk Parsons' contribution to the March issue of Tabletalk:

The church’s standard doesn’t change because God’s Word doesn’t change, and His Word doesn’t change because He doesn’t change. Nevertheless, many professing Christians and many churches, both throughout history and today, so want to obtain seeming influence in the world that they push the world’s agenda of compromise and tolerance within the church.

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God Has Done, and Will Do, Great Things in Christ

Can true Christians lose their salvation? Only if the Savior can fail. In this brief clip, H.B. Charles Jr. shows that God’s past faithfulness to His people gives them assurance of His promise for the future.

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Transcript:

Can one lose their salvation? It all depends on what saved you. If you're saved by your own works, that is not going to save you. But we are saved forever by the blood of an eternal covenant. Do you hear the Lord Jesus in John 10:28–30 declaring, “I will give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one can pluck them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all, and no one can pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one.” And so, this benediction assures us that we can trust God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, because God has already done great things for us in Christ. And it's as if He says His faithfulness in the past is His résumé for the future. God has done great things for us in Christ, verse 20. And then verse 21 teaches that God will do great things for us in Christ. Verse 20 is the subject. “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant...” Verse 21 is the predicate of the sentence: "May that God in all of His goodness, greatness, and glory equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."

 

We Cannot Love God if We Do Not Love His Word

Emil Brunner, the twentieth-century Swiss theologian and one of the fathers of neoorthodox theology, wrote a little book titled Truth as Encounter. His thesis was that when we study the things of God, we are not studying truth in the abstract. We want to understand theology not merely so that we can make an A on a theology exam. We want to understand the doctrine of God so that we can understand God, so that we can meet the living God in His Word and deepen our personal relationship with Him. But we cannot deepen a relationship with someone if we do not know anything about him. So, the propositions of Scripture are not an end in themselves but a means to an end. However, they are a necessary means to the end. Thus, to say Christianity is not about propositions but about relationships is to establish an extremely dangerous false dichotomy. It is to insult the Spirit of truth, whose propositions they are. These propositions should be our very meat and drink, for they define the Christian life.

Recently I read some letters to the editor of a Christian magazine. One of them disparaged Christian scholars with advanced degrees. The letter writer charged that such men would enjoy digging into word studies of Christ's teachings in the ancient languages in order to demonstrate that He did not really say what He seems to say in our English Bibles. Obviously there was a negative attitude toward any serious study of the Word of God. Of course, there are scholars who are like this, who study a word in six different languages and still end up missing its meaning, but that does not mean we must not engage in any serious study of the Word of God lest we end up like these ungodly scholars. Another letter writer expressed the view that people who engage in the study of doctrine are not concerned about the pain people experience in this world. In my experience, however, it is virtually impossible to experience pain and not ask questions about truth. We all want to know the truth about suffering, and specifically, where is God in our pain. That is a theological concern. The answer comes to us from the Scriptures, which reveal the mind of God Himself through the agency of the Holy Spirit, who is called the Spirit of truth. We cannot love God at all if we do not love His truth.

It is very sad to me that in today's sophisticated Western culture, people are more familiar with the twelve signs of the Zodiac than with the twelve tribes of Israel or the twelve Apostles. Our world likes to see itself as sophisticated and technological, but it remains filled with superstition. Christians are not immune to this. We, too, can succumb to the new-age desire for the power to manipulate our environment. We do not have to go as far as accepting the foolish idea that the courses of the stars determine our destinies, our prosperity, our achievements, and our successes. However, it is equally superstitious to equate our feelings and inclinations with the leading of the Holy Spirit. It seems so much more exciting to live with a freewheeling openness to the leading of the Holy Spirit rather than practicing the laborious discipline of mastering His Word. This is exceedingly dangerous ground. If we want to do the will of the Father, we need to study the Word of the Father—and leave the magic to the astrologers.

This excerpt is from R.C. Sproul's Crucial Questions booklet Who Is the Holy Spirit? Download this ebook and the rest of the series for free here.

Columns from Tabletalk Magazine, March 2021

The March issue of Tabletalk addresses the Christian ethic. We are living through a great upheaval in Western society that is leading people to call the very idea of ethical truth into question. Past generations of Christians could take for granted that they shared a common understanding of basic moral principles with the wider culture. However, changes in the culture have led to great disagreement even among professing Christians as to what constitutes right and wrong. Sadly, many churches have failed to provide deep instruction in the ethical teachings of Scripture and God’s natural law, making it difficult for laypeople to think about ethical matters in a manner that is consistently faithful to the moral law. This contributes to confusion in the church, a lack of sound moral formation among Christians, and a failure in the visible body of Christ to embody a distinctive ethical lifestyle as a witness to the world. This issue seeks to help believers understand various issues related to the Christian ethic, think more biblically, and gain confidence that there is a distinctive Christian ethic that is true and necessary for healthy communities.

You can purchase the issue or subscribe to get the print issue every month.

Our Unchanging Ethic by Burk ParsonsOur Authoritative Standard by David B. GarnerThe Image of God and Christian Ethics by J.V. FeskoChristian Living and the Ethical Mandate by Cory BrockApplying the Christian Ethic to Specific Issues by James N. AndersonConsistent Christianity by Joel KimProclaiming the Christian Ethic by Steven LawsonCompassionate Conviction by Lowell A. IveyWhen My Soul Is Downcast and Despairing by James FarisThe Comfort of Church Discipline and Restoration by Rhett P. DodsonDo Not Fear Persecution by Matthias LohmannThe Church in the Digital Age by Joe Holland

Subscribe to Tabletalk today for only $23 a year, and $20 to renew. You save even more if you get a 2- or 3-year subscription (as little as $1.36 per issue). Get your subscription to Tabletalk today by calling one of Ligonier Ministries’ resource consultants at 800-435-4343 or by subscribing online.

 

What Are the Signs, or Marks, of the True Church?

How can we identify a local congregation as a true church? From one of our Ask Ligonier events, Sinclair Ferguson outlines several signs we should look for in the life and worship of the churches we encounter.

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God Used R.C., and He Is Using Friends like You

You and I, if we know the Lord, are stories of God’s grace. When God brings a sinner to faith in Christ, it is always by the sovereign and irresistible power of His saving mercy.

Dr. R.C. Sproul proclaimed God’s sovereign holiness and mercy throughout his life and ministry. Your support allows Ligonier Ministries to continue sharing this teaching to people around the world. To thank you for your gift of any amount this month, we will send you a copy of R.C. Sproul: A Life, the new biography of our beloved founder by Dr. Stephen Nichols.

One of the many things I learned from Dr. Sproul is that regeneration precedes faith. Whether a person is raised in a Christian home or is brought to faith from a background of godlessness, every conversion to Christ is caused by God’s initiative. When the Lord by His omnipotent grace draws us to His Son, we cannot help but come (John 6:37, 39, 44).

Believers look for assurance and confidence in the Christian life, and it comes from embracing the truth that the grace of God always achieves its purpose. If the Lord has made you a story of His grace by bringing you to faith in Christ, He will complete that good work in you (Phil. 1:6). He will not fail to bring you all the way home to heaven.

This biblical teaching on God’s sovereign mercy and grace forms one of Ligonier Ministries’ core emphases. We proclaim it loudly and unashamedly because it is from our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and because it is the key to bold Christian witness and faithful Christian living. This has always been Ligonier’s message, and we diligently pray it will continue to be so until the Lord returns.

Dr. Sproul was also a story of God’s grace. Like so many of us, he wasn’t looking for Jesus, but when the Lord called him, R.C. had to come. His conversion began a life of service that God continues to utilize in awakening people to His sovereign holiness and mercy even today.

With R.C., God took a boy from Pittsburgh and made him into one of the most gifted communicators of biblical Christianity in the past century. You may be reading this ministry update because you’ve been ministered to in some way by Ligonier Ministries, the work that R.C. founded fifty years ago and that the Lord is bringing to bear in remarkable ways today.

I’ve said in the past that I wish I could meet with you personally to tell you the things I hear from people around the world about the amazing impact of R.C. and Ligonier. I could mention Mindy, whose cancer diagnosis left her with many questions. As she found trusted answers in Dr. Sproul’s teaching, the Lord brought her to faith in Christ. Or consider Pel and Linda. Ever since they received a copy of Tabletalk magazine from a friend, they have been avid students driven by a desire to deepen their knowledge of God and His Word. Then there’s Brian, who listened to Renewing Your Mind broadcasts in prison. Although he has since been released, it was while he was incarcerated that he was granted true freedom in Christ. In the Lord’s providence, Kilisitina from Tonga was introduced to Ligonier when her uncle visited with a copy of R.C.’s classic series The Holiness of God. Decades later, she continues to use our teaching series in her regular study.

The Lord has graciously used R.C. and Ligonier to write many other stories of His grace, and He continues doing so today. I want you to see some of this history, so I’ve asked the Ligonier team to send you a copy of Dr. Nichols’ new biography of R.C. when you give a gift of any amount to Ligonier this month. I learned new things in every chapter, and I’m sure you will find it captivating as well.

God used R.C. during his lifetime and continues to use him and many others today through the outreach of Ligonier Ministries. And the Lord uses your prayers and financial support to write other stories of His grace, as millions of people are awakened to the holiness and grace of God.

Thank you for standing with Ligonier this month.

 

Sin Is Cosmic Treason

"The sinfulness of sin" sounds like a vacuous redundancy that adds no information to the subject under discussion. However, the necessity of speaking of the sinfulness of sin has been thrust upon us by a culture and even a church that has diminished the significance of sin itself. Sin is communicated in our day in terms of making mistakes or of making poor choices. When I take an examination or a spelling test,if I make a mistake, I miss a particular word. It is one thing to make a mistake. It is another to look at my neighbor's paper and copy his answers in order to make a good grade. In this case, my mistake has risen to the level of a moral transgression. Though sin may be involved in making mistakes as a result of slothfulness in preparation, nevertheless, the act of cheating takes the exercise to a more serious level. Calling sin "making poor choices" is true, but it is also a euphemism that can discount the severity of the action. The decision to sin is indeed a poor one, but once again, it is more than a mistake. It is an act of moral transgression.

In my book The Truth of the Cross I spend an entire chapter discussing this notion of the sinfulness of sin. I begin that chapter by using the anecdote of my utter incredulity when I received a recent edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Though I was happy to receive this free issue, I was puzzled as to why anyone would send it to me. As I leafed through the pages of quotations that included statements from Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and others, to my complete astonishment I came upon a quotation from me. That I was quoted in such a learned collection definitely surprised me. I was puzzled by what I could have said that merited inclusion in such an anthology, and the answer was found in a simple statement attributed to me: "Sin is cosmic treason." What I meant by that statement was that even the slightest sin that a creature commits against his Creator does violence to the Creator's holiness, His glory, and His righteousness. Every sin, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is an act of rebellion against the sovereign God who reigns and rules over us and as such is an act of treason against the cosmic King.

Cosmic treason is one way to characterize the notion of sin, but when we look at the ways in which the Scriptures describe sin, we see three that stand out in importance. First, sin is a debt; second, it is an expression of enmity; third, it is depicted as a crime. In the first instance, we who are sinners are described by Scripture as debtors who cannot pay their debts. In this sense, we are talking not about financial indebtedness but a moral indebtedness. God has the sovereign right to impose obligations upon His creatures. When we fail to keep these obligations, we are debtors to our Lord. This debt represents a failure to keep a moral obligation.

The second way in which sin is described biblically is as an expression of enmity. In this regard, sin is not restricted merely to an external action that transgresses a divine law. Rather, it represents an internal motive, a motive that is driven by an inherent hostility toward the God of the universe. It is rarely discussed in the church or in the world that the biblical description of human fallenness includes an indictment that we are by nature enemies of God. In our enmity toward Him, we do not want to have Him even in our thinking, and this attitude is one of hostility toward the very fact that God commands us to obey His will. It is because of this concept of enmity that the New Testament so often describes our redemption in terms of reconciliation. One of the necessary conditions for reconciliation is that there must be some previous enmity between at least two parties. This enmity is what is presupposed by the redeeming work of our Mediator, Jesus Christ, who overcomes this dimension of enmity.

The third way in which the Bible speaks of sin is in terms of transgression of law. The Westminster Shorter Catechism answers the fourteenth question, "What is sin?" by the response, "Sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God." Here we see sin described both in terms of passive and active disobedience. We speak of sins of commission and sins of omission. When we fail to do what God requires, we see this lack of conformity to His will. But not only are we guilty of failing to do what God requires, we also actively do what God prohibits. Thus, sin is a transgression against the law of God.

When people violate the laws of men in a serious way, we speak of their actions not merely as misdemeanors but, in the final analysis, as crimes. In the same regard, our actions of rebellion and transgression of the law of God are not seen by Him as mere misdemeanors; rather, they are felonious. They are criminal in their impact. If we take the reality of sin seriously in our lives, we see that we commit crimes against a holy God and against His kingdom. Our crimes are not virtues; they are vices, and any transgression of a holy God is vicious by definition. It is not until we understand who God is that we gain any real understanding of the seriousness of our sin. Because we live in the midst of sinful people where the standards of human behavior are set by the patterns of the culture around us, we are not moved by the seriousness of our transgressions. We are indeed at ease in Zion. But when God's character is made clear to us and we are able to measure our actions not in relative terms with respect to other humans but in absolute terms with respect to God, His character, and His law, then we begin to be awakened to the egregious character of our rebellion.

Not until we take God seriously will we ever take sin seriously. But if we acknowledge the righteous character of God, then we, like the saints of old, will cover our mouths with our hands and repent in dust and ashes before Him.

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

Above All, Be People of the Truth

What should be our top priority as the people of God? In this brief clip, R.C. Sproul analyzes the surprising answer that the Apostle James gives to this question.

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Transcript:

Now, I’ve often said, if we were to have the opportunity to ask Jesus to boil down the essence of the faith that He delivered to His church and asked Him to give us the top priorities of our behavior: “Jesus, what should we do more than anything else? What should we be concerned about?” I wonder what Jesus would say? We don’t know, because He never said that this is the one thing that it all comes down to. But the next best thing would be to have the brother of Jesus come to us, and we say to the brother of Jesus, “What’s the most significant thing that we should be doing as believers to be pleasing God?” And, of course, the answer that James gives to that question is extraordinary. Few people guess it. But at the end of his epistle, after he’s given all of these exhortations and all these admonitions, he says, “And above all—above all, let your yea be yea and your nay be nay.” And then he says the essence of true religion is the care of widows and orphans. Do you see how practical James is in his concern and in his orientation? Who would imagine that any Apostle would say that above all, first and foremost, let your yea be yea and your nay be nay. And yet, it’s reminiscent not only of what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, but it’s reminiscent of His words before Pontius Pilate when Pilate asked Him if He was a king. And Jesus dodged that question and said, “For this purpose I came into this world: to bear witness to the truth,” because to the Jew of the Old Testament, speaking the truth included keeping your word. In fact, the thing that makes God so truthful is not only that what He says agrees with reality and corresponds to real states of affair. But when God says yes, He means yes. And when God says no, He means no. And that when God makes a promise, He keeps it. When God makes a covenant, He fulfills it. And so, it’s not really surprising when we analyze how central it is to the sinful life of the breaking of promises and of the violation of our words that we find the manifestation of sin. And then it shouldn’t surprise us that he says, “Above all, we are to be people of truth,” people whose word can be trusted, people who are keepers of the covenant we have with God rather than breakers of it. Or, as James says, to “be doers of the Word and not hearers only.”

 

How Do I Know I Am Truly a Christian When I Constantly Struggle with Sin?

As we struggle daily with sin, our assurance of salvation can waver, and we might even question if we truly belong to the Lord. From an online youth conference hosted by Reformation Bible College, Stephen Nichols reminds us where to find true assurance in the fight for faith.

If you have a biblical or theological question, just visit ask.Ligonier.org to ask your question live online.

Read the Transcript

 

The Holy One of God

The title "Holy One of God" means that Jesus is infinitely and absolutely holy, fully and perfectly divine. He is transcendent and majestic. He came down from above to save sinners, yet He is set apart from sinners in that He is completely sinless, without any moral blemish, perfect in all of His ways. His being is holy. His character is holy. His mind is holy. His motives are holy. His words are holy. His actions are holy. His ways are holy. His judgments are holy. From the top of His head to the bottom of His feet, every inch, every ounce, the totality, the sum and the substance of the second person of the Godhead is equally holy with God the Father.

What is the holiness of God? First, it has to do with "apart-ness" or "other-ness." The idea of holiness speaks to the profound difference between Him and us. Holiness encompasses His transcendent majesty, His august superiority. He is distinctly set apart from us. As one infinitely above us, He alone is worthy of our worship and our adoration. Moses asked: "Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?" (Ex. 15:11). This is the holiness that the demon recognized; he knew that Jesus is the high, lifted up, supreme being of heaven and earth.

Second, it speaks to His untainted purity, His sinless perfection. God is morally flawless, blameless in all of His ways. The prophet Isaiah stressed this aspect of His character through repeated use of a formal title for God, "the Holy One of Israel." It has been well said that the book of Isaiah is divided into two halves, the first thirty-nine chapters and the last twenty-seven chapters. In the first thirty-nine chapters, this title is found twelve times in reference to God. In the last twenty-seven chapters, this title is found seventeen times. Twenty-nine times in the book of Isaiah, God is identified as "the Holy One of Israel." Some examples include: "They have despised the Holy One of Israel" (1:4); "For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel" (12:6); and "Your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel" (41:14).

No doubt Isaiah’s use of this title flowed out of his encounter with the living God, recorded in Isaiah 6, when he went into the temple and saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and the seraphim surrounding the throne, crying out to one another day and night, "Holy, holy, holy," declaring by their repetition that God is the holiest being, supreme in His holiness in the entire created order. Given that experience, it is no surprise that Isaiah so frequently identified God as the "the Holy One of Israel." Franz Delitzsch, the great Old Testament commentator, writes that this title "forms an essential part of Isaiah's prophetic signature." In other words, this is the unique imprint of Isaiah, stamped on the pages of his book, identifying God as holy again and again.

When the demon in Mark 1 used a title that was very similar to Isaiah's—"the Holy One of God"—he left no question as to the identification he was making. Let us think about the meaning of this title as applied to the Lord Jesus.

First, it is a title of deity. We have already seen how similar this title is to the title Isaiah assigned to God. In a similar way, God calls Himself "I AM WHO I AM" in Exodus 3:14, then Jesus takes that title to Himself and says, "I am the bread of life" (John 6:48), "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12), and "I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25, emphasis added in all references). He takes the divine title of the Old Testament for Himself to show that He is equal to God. Something similar is happening here, though in this case the title for Jesus is voiced by a demon.

The title "Holy One of God" is found in only one other place in the New Testament. When some of Jesus' disciples decided to stop following Him, Jesus asked the Twelve, "Do you want to go away as well?" (John 6:66-67). Peter replied: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God" (vv. 68-69). With these words, Peter accurately identified their Master as God incarnate, for that is what this title signifies.

Second, it is a title of humble humanity. It acknowledges that the holy God, who is enthroned in the heavens, has come down to be among unholy men. It speaks of the fact that the transcendent, majestic, regal God of heaven has taken on human flesh, yet without sin. Jesus Himself said, "I have come down from heaven" (John 6:38). Jesus was holy God in human form.

Third, it is a title of sinless perfection. If He is God, even though He is a man, Jesus is infinitely pure. Scripture affirms this repeatedly: "In him there is no sin" (1 John 3:5); "He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth" (1 Peter 2:22); "him … who knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21). Likewise, Jesus said: "The ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me" (John 14:30). The Lord was saying here: "There is no point of access that Satan has gained into My being. He has established no beachhead. There are no satanic strongholds in which he has hatched the poison of hell within Me.” He steadfastly resisted every temptation. Jesus could say to His enemies, "Which one of you convicts me of sin?" (John 8:46) because He had no sin.

At Calvary, all of our sins were laid on the sinless Lamb of God, and He gave to us His pure, sinless, perfect obedience to the law of God. This is the great exchange of Calvary: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus had to come as He did, born of a virgin, in order to be what He was, sinless and perfect, in order to do what He, the Holy One, did—die on the cross as the sinless Lamb of God, in order to become sin for us.

Through death, the Bible says, Jesus destroyed the one who has the power of death, the Devil (Heb. 2:14). He bound the strong man, plundered his house at the cross, and set the captives free (Matt. 12:29; Eph. 4:8). His victory shows that "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4). Therefore, we ought to cry out, "Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15:57).

This excerpt is adapted from Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God.