R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 515

Love That Is Patient and Kind

Here's an excerpt from Love That Is Patient and Kind, R.C. Sproul's contribution to the September issue of Tabletalk.

First Corinthians 13 is one of the most famous passages in all of Scripture, for in it the Apostle Paul gives us a marvelous exposition of the character of godly love. He starts by showing the importance of love, writing that if we have all kinds of gifts, abilities, and achievements but lack love, we are nothing (vv. 1–3). Then, in verse 4, he begins to describe what godly love looks like, saying, "Love is patient and kind," or, in the wording of a more traditional translation, "Love suffers long and is kind" (NKJV). I find myself intrigued by this pairing— patience and kindness. Why did Paul place these traits first in his description of love, and why did he pair them?

Paul tells us that love is patient, that it "suffers long." I like this more traditional translation because it conveys the idea that loving others can be difficult. Loving people means we do not write them off the first time they offend us. In our relationships, we tend to be far more patient with some people than with others...

Continue reading Love That Is Patient and Kind.

When Your Dad Is a Wandering Aramean

By the time we get to Deuteronomy 26, Moses has covered significant literary ground and is now giving instructions for corporate worship and specifically how the Israelites were to offer their first fruits and tithes. God, through Moses, is describing what worship in the land will look like and how it is to be done correctly. There is a give and take that occurred between the worshiper and the priest that introduced this segment of worship. And then the Israelites were instructed to repeat an unsettling liturgy:

"And you shall make response before the LORD your God, 'A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.'" (Deut. 26:5)

Really? A Wandering Aramean?

This portion of Israelite worship began in earnest with an unnerving confession of genealogical lore. What a strange title for Abraham. After all, Abraham was the beneficiary of the covenant promise. He was the father of the people of God—a nation by ethnicity and a covenant people by faith (Gal 3:29). He would be the one through whom the Davidic dynasty would be built. He would be a physical progenitor of the long awaited messiah.

Of all the titles that could be justly and in a God glorifying manner be applied to Abraham, why did God choose this one? A wandering Aramean? There is little there to take pride in and little there to build any kind of positive identity.

Or is there?

The Principle - The Humility Requisite for Worship

It is difficult to escape the conclusion from a brief study of Deuteronomy 26:5 that God has explicitly commanded the liturgy of biblical worship to be founded on a deep humility. It is an important principle to remember. As John Calvin insightfully comments in the opening of his Institutes,

"It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself."

There is an aggressive self-scrutiny demanded by God when he commands his people to begin their worship by mentioning a hero of Redemptive History with a less than flattering nickname—a wandering Aramean.

But that is just what we as worshipers both forget and therefore need to remember. There must be a humbling self-scrutiny about our worship that challenges the location of our identity. Our faithful God knew that his people would be prone to stake their identity on a thousand different things not the least of which would be their lineage from Abraham rather than on God's grace and mercy (John 8:39). It would not be enough to simply proclaim that God was great and had done amazing things. His people would also need to simultaneously confess that they were not great and had committed open and serial rebellion against their God. As church history has shown us, we cannot confess God's ultimate glory and simultaneously deny our total depravity.

It is that confession of lack, inability, and a checkered family history that keeps the people of God looking for a savior in some location other than their own spiritual accomplishments. A deep recognition of rampant inability guards against self-worship and reserves for God the right to be called solely and only—the Savior of sinners. Humility is the personal posture of the worshiping people of God exactly because honor, glory, and unapproachable awe is the personal posture of our worshiped God.

A Name In Which to Boast

The worship we see prescribed in Deuteronomy would find its partial fulfillment in the reigns of David and Solomon. Solomon's apostasy (1 Kings 11) marked a sometimes slow and sometimes free-fall decent into a double exile out of which Israel never really recovered. It is into that depressing scene that Jesus, the God-man, entered into human history. His law-fulfilling life, justice-satisfying death, and redemption-declaring resurrection would be the final answer to the question unresolved from Deuteronomy 26:5,

If we can't look to Abraham for our identity, then is there no man in whom we are to boast?

The wandering Aramean gave way to the Son of God. The man of faith gave way to the man in whom we place our faith. The beneficiary of the covenant gave way to the Mediator of the Covenant. The point of Deuteronomy 26:5 is not that there is no man in whom we might place our faith. The point is that our faith must firmly rest in Jesus, the only God and only mediator between God and men (1 Tim 2:5).

It is the work of Jesus that would finally solidify for the worshiping people of God an eternal humility (1 Cor 1:29). And so the people of God continue to open worship with an unnerving pronouncement about our spiritual heritage, a self-indicting and humility-producing liturgical device, a statement that declares simultaneously the profound exposure of our failings and the radiant mercy, power, and justice of God. It is said every Sunday in a dozen different forms. Put simply it goes like this:

"Welcome to worship in the name of Jesus Christ, Savior of sinners."

RBC Preview Weekend and Conference

Ligonier Ministries will host its Fall Conference at Reformation Bible College on September 21-22 in Sanford, Florida. Coinciding with the conference RBC welcomes prospective college students from all over the country to take part in our annual preview weekend. If you are a prospective college student, you're invited to register for a lunch with RBC faculty and staff during the conference. Those who register and attend the lunch will receive FREE conference admission for the entire weekend.

Register Today

This is an excellent opportunity for you to fellowship with faculty, attend our conference on Surprised by God and see our beautiful campus. Additionally, you may have the opportunity to observe one or more of our classes before the start of the conference. Attending a class is optional, but is encouraged. We have a select number of classes and space is limited. Please let us know when registering which class you would like to attend and we will do our best to accommodate you.

Registration is required to receive free conference admission and reserve a seat in one of our classes. Family members can also receive free admission. We look forward to welcoming you to our campus.

For more information or to register click here.

Jesus and His Active Obedience

In this excerpt from his teaching series, What Did Jesus Do?, Dr. R.C. Sproul explains what is meant by the active obedience of Jesus.

Transcript

I don't think there's any more important text in all the New Testament that defines the work of Jesus than this one. That Jesus was sent to fulfill all righteousness. And what that meant to the Jew was to obey every jot and tittle of the Law. Because now Jesus is not acting in His baptism for Himself, but for His people. And if His people are required to keep the Ten Commandments, He keeps the Ten Commandments. If His people are now required to submit to this baptismal ritual, He submits to it in their behalf. Because the redemption that is brought by Christ is not restricted to His death on the cross.

We've seen that in the work of redemption God didn't send Jesus to earth on Good Friday and say, "Die for the sins of your people and that will take care of it." No. Jesus not only had to die for our sins, but He had to live for our righteousness. If all Jesus did was die for your sins, that would remove all of your guilt, and that would leave you sinless in the sight of God, but not righteous. You would be innocent, but not righteous because you haven't done anything to obey the Law of God which is what righteousness requires.

So we have a doctrine in theology that refers to the active obedience of Jesus, as distinguished from the passive obedience of Jesus. And this doctrine is in great dispute right now particularly among dispensational thinkers, which I find extremely, extremely unsettling. The passive obedience of Christ refers to His willingness to submit to the pain that is inflicted upon Him by the Father on the cross in the atonement. He passively receives the curse of God there. The active obedience refers to His whole life of obeying the Law of God whereby He qualifies to be the Savior. He qualifies to be the Lamb without blemish. He qualifies for the song, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain," through His total righteousness. He fulfills the Law's demands, and if you remember the covenant with Moses, everybody who fulfills the Law receives the blessing, those who disobey the Law receive the curse.

What does Jesus do? He obeys the Law perfectly, receives the blessing, and not the curse. But there's a double imputation that we will look at later at the cross, where my sin is transferred to His account, my sin is carried over and laid upon Him in the cross. But in our redemption, His righteousness is imputed to us—which righteousness He wouldn't have if He didn't live this life of perfect obedience. So what I'm saying to you is that His life of perfect obedience is just as necessary for our salvation as His perfect atonement on the cross. Because there's double imputation. My sin to Him, His righteousness to me. So that, that is what the scripture is getting at when it says Jesus is our righteousness.

Gospel Footprints

Here's an excerpt from Gospel Footprints, Erik Raymond's contribution to the August issue of Tabletalk.

One of the cultural plagues of the twenty-first century is our historical illiteracy. The comedian Jay Leno capitalizes on this when he asks random questions to people. Leno's "Jaywalking" skits demonstrate that regular Americans are not up to speed with the basics of U.S. and world history. In one memorable scene, Leno asked someone to name one of the Ten Commandments. The reply: "Freedom of speech." Enough said.

I wonder how well church members would do if someone asked them questions about church history. Would they know the key players, dates, and issues? Does it even matter?

Church history does matter for Christians today. In particular, it matters with respect to false teaching. In this article, I want to highlight four reminders from church history that serve us today.

Continue reading Gospel Footprints.

Columns from Tabletalk Magazine, September 2012

The September edition of Tabletalk is out. This issue features articles examining the twelfth century as it relates to the church and its constituents. The church witnessed a surprising number of developments in the twelfth century, both within its own walls and without. From the rise of Islam throughout the Western world to the influx of heresies in continental Europe, the twelfth century proved a dynamic time of change. Altough many different individiuals, such as Peter Abeland and Bernard of Clairvaux, helped produce these changes, they all contributed to the momentum in the church that led to the Reformation.

Contributors include R.C. Sproul along with Nicholas R. Needham, Gregg R. Allison, W. Andrew Hoffecker, Stephen J. Nichols, W. Robert Godfrey, Erik Raymond, R.C. Sproul Jr., Eric J. Alexander, Anthony T. Selvaggio, Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Carl Trueman.

We do not post all of the feature articles or the daily devotionals from the issue, so you'll have to subscribe to get those. But for now, here are links to several free columns and articles from this month:

Love that is Patient and Kind by R.C. Sproul
The Dawn of Reformation by Burk Parsons
Knowledge Without Zeal by R.C. Sproul Jr.
Gospel Footprints by Erik Raymond
The Christian's GPS by Anthony Selvaggio
Discerning the News by Sarah Bailey
Understanding the Times: An Interview with Carl Trueman
Keep On by Eric Alexander

If you have not yet subscribed to Tabletalk, now is the perfect time. For those living in the U.S. and Canada it's only $23 for 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). We offer special discounts for churches or businesses who want multiple copies of each issue.

Get your subscription to Tabletalk today by calling one of Ligonier Ministries' resource consultants at 800-435-4343 or by subscribing online. You can also get free shipping on individual 2012 issues of Tabletalk.

Twitter Highlights (9/2/12)

Here are highlights from our various Twitter accounts over the past week.

We're supposed to be able to not only tell the world what it is we believe but also why we believe it. —R.C. Sproul

— Ligonier Ministries (@Ligonier) August 27, 2012

Those that never had a sense of their own vileness, were always destitute of a sense of God's holiness (S. Charnock).

— Ligonier Academy (@LigonierAcademy) August 27, 2012

Register for the NEW @ligonierconnect course, Economics for Everybody taught by R.C. Sproul, Jr.bit.ly/PmTRa3

— Ligonier Connect (@LigonierConnect) August 27, 2012

The quest for God doesn’t begin until conversion. —R.C. Sproul bit.ly/kB50XT

— Reformation Trust (@RefTrust) August 28, 2012

Our religion will be unprofitable if it does not change our heart, pervade our manners, and transform us into new creatures (Calvin).

— Tabletalk Magazine (@Tabletalk) August 29, 2012

What God reveals in nature can never contradict what he reveals in Scripture. —R.C. Sproul

— Ligonier Ministries (@Ligonier) August 29, 2012

You do not need to hate Jesus to waste your life. You only need to be okay with how you are. —@rayortlund ligm.in/SnDQ44

— Ligonier Ministries (@Ligonier) August 31, 2012

You can also find our various ministries on Facebook:

Ligonier Ministries | Ligonier Academy | Ligonier Connect | RefNet
Reformation Bible College | Reformation Trust | Tabletalk Magazine

Silencing the Devil

How easily, because of his craftiness, we confuse Satan and Santa. Their names are indeed anagrams of each other, and they both were obviously told by someone, somewhere along the way that they look good in red. We tend to think, however, that just as Santa carries about a giant bag of goodies, so the devil carries around a giant bag of temptations, that his principle weapon is to tempt us toward illicit pleasures. Truth be told Satan's name is derived from the word for Accuser. He is far more interested in pointing out our past failures than he is enticing us to new ones.

This in turn serves a number of his other goals. Several years ago I went through a rather unpleasant ecclesiastical tussle. Part of the root of the tussle was sin on my part. Part of the fruit of the tussle was that I found myself needing to repent for those sins. That's a good thing. It hurt at first, but God forgives sinners like me because Jesus died for sinners like me. Though I have miles to go before I sleep, humiliation can be a difficult but potent means to the glorious end producing the fruit of humility.

One bad fruit, however, was that my remaining pride pushed me to an unhealthy silence. I found myself reluctant to speak up virtually anywhere on the world wide web for fear that my critics would show up, and parade my dirty laundry for all to see. Sometimes disgrace, or fear thereof, rather than discretion, is the better part of valor. I sat on the sidelines, thinking every point I would make would sooner or later be rebutted with, "Don't listen to him. Don't you know what he did?"

In God's grace most of my critics eventually grew weary of beating the dead horse that was my reputation, and moved on to fresh game. And slowly I began to come out of my shell. Every now and again, however, someone still shows up to accuse. And therein comes the second reason for the devil's stratagem- discouragement. Every time there is another comment I sigh, shake my head, and wonder if, no, fear that these things will never be behind me. Like Pilgrim before me I once again feel the weight on my back, slowing me down on my journey to the Celestial City. I once again feel myself sinking into the Slough of Despond.

Which is a good thing. The Good News, of course, is that Jesus has already overcome the devil. I need not be silent as a teacher and writer, because He is not silent before the Father, but rather calls me His own. I need not either despair, because He has removed my sins as far from me as the east is from the west. There is only one perspective on me that matters in the least, and His says of me today and every day, "You are My son. I love you and will never forsake you." The pangs that come with the accusations of the devil and his minions are more than salved by the balm of Gilead. They instead become the very savor, the very joy of my salvation. "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief" (I Timothy 1:15).

Proverbs: Wisdom that Works

So far, half of the Bible's sixty-six books have been covered in Crossway's Preaching the Word series of commentaries. The commentaries are all written by pastors, and the chapters read like sermons—good sermons, that is. Typically, each of these commentaries works systematically through a book of the Bible in sermon-length chapters. Each chapter explains the text, points out the message to its original audience, demonstrates how it fits into the overall story of God's work of redemption, and centers around Christ. In faithful pastoral fashion, each chapter also draws at least one application for today's audience from the text and builds a natural bridge from the text to the gospel.

In Proverbs: Wisdom that Works, Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr. has a bit of a challenge. Anyone who has ever read Proverbs understands why. Many chapters of Proverbs are made up of one stand-alone saying after another. The sayings are usually only two lines in length. How would you preach a series of sermons on Proverbs?

Ortlund does it like this: where he can (Proverbs 1-9), he moves through the book in the typical, systematic fashion an expositional preacher would use to preach through any book. These first nine chapters of Proverbs are introductory and written in paragraphs. They stress the value of wisdom and the character required to pursue it with diligence. They warn of the devastation sure to come in the end for anyone who chooses folly. From chapter 10 on, the Proverbs are those wonderfully pithy wise sayings, sometimes arranged loosely by topic, but not very often. So after finishing with the first nine chapters, Ortlund chooses seven of the main themes addressed by Proverbs, themes he had not yet discussed at length, and writes a chapter for each. The seven themes he chooses are the tongue, humility, family, emotions, friendship, money, and life and death.

At the outset, Ortlund announces that "the book of Proverbs is a gospel book, because it is part of the Bible." All the way through, he shows us how Proverbs and the gospel are inextricably tied together. The proverbs are intended as instructions of a loving Father to his children. If we aren't God's children through faith in Christ, we won't be able to follow those instructions. If we are God's children, we will hunger to do just that.

Ortlund clues us in, through non-technical prose, on literary matters that enhance our understanding of the author's message. For example, most children growing up in homes where the Scriptures are taught know about the six things God hates, described in Proverbs 6. What I had not realized until reading Proverbs: Wisdom that Works is this: the six things in verses 16-19 build on the description of "the worthless man" in verses 12-15. The climax of the worthless man's description comes in this: he is "continually sowing discord." Verses 16-19 go on to explain why the man who sows discord will come to a disastrous end: God hates what he's doing. Ortlund explains that a literary device is being used in this list. When writing "there are six things the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him," the author is drawing attention to that seventh thing as the most important. What's the seventh thing in the list? "One who sows discord among brothers." The other six things simply show ways in which he sows that discord. Therefore, rather than this passage being a description of a certain kind of bad character ("the worthless man"), followed by a list of random things God objects to, it's actually a powerful passage stressing the importance to God of unity among his people.

Ortlund points out that two kinds of persons continually mentioned or addressed in Proverbs are the scoffer or the fool, and the simple or the naive. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge," Proverbs tells us early on, "but fools despise instruction." This is key, Ortlund says. The person for whom there is no hope is the fool who despises instruction, the scoffer who believes no one can tell him anything he needs to know, the one who will not bend the knee to Christ and acknowledge his need. The simple, on the other hand, may end up as a scoffer, but, at the moment, there is still hope for him. The simple person is the one who has not committed himself to wisdom. Ortlund writes that the word is related to a Hebrew word meaning "to be open." But, he warns, with the same urgency that Lady Wisdom uses when calling to the simple, we cannot remain uncommitted and go on in the way of wisdom. Over and over through his commentary, the author urges us to commit ourselves without reserve to the gospel, to "walking further with Jesus than we've ever gone before..."

Time and again, I found myself convicted of my lack of seriousness in my pursuit of Christ as I read Proverbs: Wisdom that Works. Each day, we must begin anew in our pursuit of wisdom, in our attachment to Christ. "We feel disqualified," Ortlund writes, "and we are. But that is not a deal-breaker for God. With him, there is only one deal-breaker: 'The complacency of fools destroys them' (Proverbs 1:32). You do not need to hate Jesus to waste your life. You only need to be okay with how you are."

Starr Meade teaches classes for home school students in her home and is the author of several books for children and families, including Mighty Acts of God and the forthcoming Wondrous Works of God .

$5 Friday: Theology, Calvinism, & The Holy Spirit

It's Friday again and that means it's time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week's resources cover such topics as theology, assurance, the Holy Spirit, abortion, Calvinism, apologetics, the love of God, and more.

We also thank Reformation Heritage Books for their partnership this week.

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

View today's $5 Friday sale items.