R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 57

The Time to Come

Here’s an excerpt from The Time to Come, William Boekestein's contribution to the September issue of Tabletalk:

For the first time in my life, people around me are tracking death rates daily. Global pandemics make us think about death and make eternity seem less distant. Former hallmarks of stability—a growing economy, predictable routines—have been undermined. New or previously deferred questions arise. Is there more than this present age? What is life about? And does the Bible’s teaching on eternity have any bearing on my life here and now?

Continue reading The Time to Come, or begin receiving Tabletalk magazine by signing up for a free 3-month trial.

For a limited time, the new TabletalkMagazine.com allows everyone to browse and read the growing library of back issues, including this month’s issue.

Always Ready: Free Online Event for Students

How you answer the tough questions makes all the difference in the world. What will you say when your friends ask about your faith? Do you have the confidence to defend the hope you have in Christ?

Mark your calendar for October 3, 2020, and join us at 1:00–3:00 p.m. for Always Ready, a special livestream created to help students aged twelve to eighteen share their faith and stand firm for the truth of God’s Word. This online event is free, and no registration is required.

Is the Bible still relevant? Since God is good, why do we suffer? Is Jesus the only way to salvation? Eric Bancroft, Nathan W. Bingham, Joel Kim, Stephen Nichols, and Burk Parsons will help equip you to better answer these important questions and more. This livestream has been designed for Christian students, but everyone is welcome. Make sure you tell your friends about this online event.

Livestream Sessions:

Why Apologetics? by Nathan W. Bingham
Is Christ Really the Only Way? by Stephen Nichols
How Can a Loving God Allow Evil? by Burk Parsons
Is the Bible Still Relevant? by Joel Kim
What Is Truth? by Eric Bancroft
Questions & Answers

This online event will be streamed right here on the blog, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

ADD TO CALENDAR

 

 

What Did Jesus Mean When He Said, "I Am the Resurrection"?

When Jesus ministered to Martha beside her brother’s grave, He said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). From one of our Ask R.C. events, R.C. Sproul summarizes the comforting and encouraging truths contained in these words.

Just ask Ligonier to get clear and trustworthy answers to your biblical and theological questions.

Read the Transcript

Regeneration Is Monergistic

There may be no truth in the Bible more deeply loved and greatly cherished than the subject of the new birth. Here is the grace-centered message of a new beginning for those whose lives have been ruined by sin. Here is the life-changing truth that sinful men can be made new. When the new birth is caused by God, old things pass away—old practices, old cravings, old habits, old addictions, and old associations. Behold, new things come—new desires, new pursuits, and new passions. An entirely new life begins. Nothing could be more positive than this. It is no wonder that the truth of the new birth is so beloved.

Yet despite its great appeal, the new birth may be the most misunderstood doctrine in Scripture. Most people naively imagine that there is something they can do to cause themselves to be born again. They hear a well-meaning person say, “Believe and be born again,” and suppose that they can. So they try to effect their own regeneration. But this they cannot do. In attempting it, they are like someone who imagines he caused himself to be born physically. Did he meet with his parents and ask to be born? Did he initiate his own birth? Of course not. The truth is, the initiative in birth lies outside of the one being born. He is merely part of a process that started long before he came into being. His parents acted, then God acted. And as a result, that individual was brought into the world. He did not cause his own birth to happen.

The same is true regarding spiritual birth. If you have experienced the new birth, it is not because you initiated it. Rather, it was an event that God brought about in you. More specifically, you were not born again because you exercised faith. In truth, the new birth preceded your faith and produced it. Saving faith is the fruit of regeneration, not the root of it. The biblically correct order of salvation—known in theological language as the ordo salutis—is not “Believe and be born again,” but the very opposite: “Be born again and believe.” The living God must act upon the spiritually dead soul and cause it to be born again. The new birth is by divine choice and sovereign initiative. God’s will affects the human will, not vice versa. Scripture intentionally uses the imagery of birth to underscore this essential truth of the sovereignty of God in regeneration.

John Murray, one of the foremost theologians of the twentieth century, affirmed the divine initiative in the new birth when he wrote:

"For entrance into the kingdom of God we are wholly dependent upon the action of the Holy Spirit, an action … which is compared to that on the part of our parents by which we were born into the world. We are as dependent upon the Holy Spirit as we are upon the action of our parents in connection with our natural birth. We were not begotten by our father because we decided to be. And we were not born of our mother because we decided to be. We were simply begotten and we were born. We did not decide to be born…. If this privilege is ours it is because the Holy Spirit willed it and here all rests upon the Holy Spirit’s decision and action. He begets or bears when and where He pleases."

Murray goes on to write, “Regeneration is the act of God and of God alone.”  In other words, regeneration is monergistic, meaning that “the grace of God is the only efficient cause in beginning and effecting conversion.”  The key word here is only. God is the only cause behind the new birth. The opposite of monergism is synergism. This latter word is derived from the Greek word synergos, meaning “working together.” According to the theory of synergistic regeneration, both the divine and human wills are active, and each must cooperate with the other. But what does the Scripture teach? According to James 1:18, “Of his own will he brought us forth”—an unmistakably monergistic statement. John 1:12–13 reads, “All who did receive him, who believed in his name … were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” This view of the new birth could not be more monergistic. John 3:8 says, “‘The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’” Man does not effect the movement of the Spirit—God does. First Peter 1:3 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Clearly, regeneration is monergistic, the activity of only one will—namely, the divine will.

In the latter epistles of the New Testament, this truth of regeneration appears with intentional regularity (James 1:18; 1 John 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 4, 18). This is a fundamental teaching within the doctrines of grace. It reveals that God must implant new life within your soul. God must effect a spiritual conception within you. God must impregnate your heart. In short, God must cause you to be born again.

This excerpt is adapted from Foundations of Grace by Steven Lawson.

How Are We Made Right with God? Many “Evangelicals” Don’t Know.

What do U.S. evangelicals believe about salvation? The results are now available from our 2020 State of Theology survey, conducted in partnership with Lifeway Research.

The gospel of Jesus Christ delivers the definitive answer to one of life’s ultimate questions: How can we, as sinful people, be reconciled to a holy God? Deriving their name from the evangel, the Greek word for “gospel,” evangelicals should have great concern for the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. Sadly, though, it seems that many are confused about the content of the gospel message they profess.

Our 2020 survey results reveal that only 84 percent of U.S. evangelicals* agree with the following statement: “God counts a person as righteous not because of one’s works but only because of one’s faith in Jesus Christ.” In 2018, 91 percent of evangelicals* agreed with this clear definition of the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. This shows that there has been an alarming decrease in the percentage of evangelicals who express clear views on how sinful man can be justified in the sight of God.

Ligonier Teaching Fellow Dr. Stephen Nichols recently responded to these survey findings. Watch below.

Given the centrality of the doctrine of justification in the Bible, the 2020 State of Theology survey results reinforce the need for clear teaching about the gospel and the doctrine of justification in local churches. One of the reasons why this survey exists is to provide Christians with insights for discipleship. We hope that as error and falsehood are exposed in both the culture and the church, Christians will be better prepared to present the truth of God’s Word clearly and boldly.

* Evangelicals were defined by this survey as people who strongly agreed with the following four statements:

The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.
It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.
Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.
Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.

Who Is the Great Prophet of the Old Testament?

Who was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets? Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah? In this brief clip, R.C. Sproul makes his case for a figure that might surprise us.

Transcript:

Sometimes I like to torment my seminary students by asking them a question that tends to drive them to distraction. I ask the question, “In your opinion, who would you say is the greatest prophet in the Old Testament?” And that will usually start a debate. Some will say Elijah, some will say Jeremiah, some will say Isaiah, and people will mention their favorite. Then I say, “Well, I think that the most important prophet in the Old Testament is John the Baptist.” And then they look at me with consternation and say, “Well that’s—how can that be? John the Baptist is in the New Testament.” And I’ll say, “Yes, John the Baptist is mentioned and recorded in the pages of the book called the New Testament. But in terms of redemptive history, he belongs to the period of the Old Testament—that is, to that period in redemptive history when all of the procedures of the old covenant are still in place.” Jesus says that the law and the prophets ruled until John, and the little word there, “until,” means “up to and including” John. And Jesus also said of John the Baptist, “Of all of those who are born of woman, there is none greater than John the Baptist. Yet,” He said, “he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than John.”

That’s an extremely enigmatic statement. Is Jesus saying, for example, that I’m greater than John the Baptist? I certainly qualify for being least in the kingdom. So, if I’m least in the kingdom, that must make me greater than John the Baptist. What Jesus is obviously saying here is that John still belongs to that period of preparation for the breakthrough of the kingdom of God. But anybody who lives on this side of the coming kingdom of Christ enjoys a greater state of blessedness and felicity than any of the figures in the Old Testament. Now, I have to say that of all of the figures that we meet in the pages of the New Testament, perhaps the most underrated and underestimated figure is John the Baptist. And I really don’t understand why it is that Christians today seem to give such little attention to this man, particularly in light of to the degree of attention that is afforded him in the pages of the New Testament. It’s interesting to me that in the four Gospels, only two of the four Gospels tell us about the birth of Jesus. All four gospels begin with some communication about John the Baptist.

Traditionally, scholars have argued that the first gospel written was the gospel of Mark. And Mark, oddly enough, does not give us any information about the birth of Jesus, but Mark begins his gospel with these words: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets.” That’s how—that’s how Mark begins his gospel: he says, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” And then, the next thing he says is, “As it is written in the prophets: ‘Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, who will prepare Your way before You. The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight.’” Then, in the very next line, we read, “John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” And then what follows is a brief description and account of John’s ministry.

When We Pray, Should We Only Pray to the Father?

Is it ever appropriate to pray directly to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, or should we only pray to the Father? From one of our Ask Ligonier events, Derek Thomas gives biblical direction for our prayers to the triune God.

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

Read the Transcript

In the Beginning...

The first sentence of sacred Scripture sets forth the affirmation upon which everything else is established: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Three fundamental points are affirmed in that first sentence of Scripture: (1) there was a beginning; (2) there is a God; and, (3) there is a creation. One would think that if the first point can be established firmly, the other two would follow by logical necessity. In other words, if there was indeed a beginning to the universe, then there must be something or someone responsible for that beginning; and if there was a beginning, there must be some kind of creation.

For the most part, although not universally, those who adopt secularism acknowledge that the universe had a beginning in time. Advocates of the big bang theory, for example, say that fifteen to eighteen billion years ago, the universe began as a result of a gigantic explosion. However, if the universe exploded into being, what did it explode out of? Did it explode from nonbeing? That is an absurd idea. It is ironic that most secularists grant that the universe had a beginning yet reject the idea of creation and the existence of God.

Virtually all agree that there is such a thing as a universe. Some may plead the case that the universe or external reality—even our self-consciousness—is nothing but an illusion, yet only the most recalcitrant solipsist tries to argue that nothing exists. One must exist in order to make the argument that nothing exists. Given the truth that something exists and that there is a universe, philosophers and theologians historically have asked, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” That is perhaps the oldest of all philosophical questions. Those who have sought to answer it have realized that there are only three basic options to explain reality as we encounter it in our lives.

The first option is that the universe is self-existent and eternal. We have already noted that the overwhelming majority of secularists believe that the universe did have a beginning and is not eternal. The second option is that the material world is self-existent and eternal, and there are those who, in the past and even today, have made this argument. These options have one important common element: both argue that something is self-existent and eternal.

The third option is that the universe was self-created. Those who hold to this option believe that the universe came into being suddenly and dramatically by its own power, although proponents of this view do not use the language of self-creation because they understand that this concept is a logical absurdity. In order for anything to create itself, it must be its own creator, which means that it would have to exist before it was, which means it would have to be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship. That violates the most fundamental law of reason—the law of noncontradiction. Therefore, the concept of self-creation is manifestly absurd, contradictory, and irrational. To hold to such a view is bad theology and equally bad philosophy and science, because both philosophy and science rest upon the ironclad laws of reason.

One of the main aspects of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was the assumption that “the God hypothesis” had become an unnecessary way to explain the presence of the external universe. Up until that time, the church had enjoyed respect in the philosophical realm. Throughout the Middle Ages, philosophers had not been able to gainsay the rational necessity of an eternal first cause, but by the time of the Enlightenment, science had advanced to such a degree that an alternative explanation could be used to explain the presence of the universe without an appeal to a transcendent, self-existent, eternal first cause or to God.

The theory was spontaneous generation—the idea that the world popped into existence on its own. There is no difference between this and the self-contradictory language of self-creation, however, so when spontaneous generation was reduced to absurdity in the scientific world, alternative concepts arose. An essay by a Nobel Prize–winning physicist acknowledged that while spontaneous generation is a philosophical impossibility, that is not the case with gradual spontaneous generation. He theorized that given enough time, nothingness can somehow work up the power to bring something into being.

The term usually used in place of self-creation is chance creation, and here another logical fallacy is brought into play—the fallacy of equivocation. The fallacy of equivocation happens when, sometimes very subtly, the key words in an argument change their meaning. This happened with the word chance. The term chance is useful in scientific investigations because it describes mathematical possibilities. If there are fifty thousand flies in a closed room, statistical odds can be used to show the likelihood of a certain number of flies being in any given square inch of that room at any given time. So in the effort to predict things scientifically, working out complex equations of possibility quotients is an important and legitimate vocation.

However, it is one thing to use the term chance to describe a mathematical possibility and quite another to shift the usage of the term to refer to something that has actual creative power. For chance to have any effect on anything in the world, it would have to be a thing that possesses power, but chance is not a thing. Chance is simply an intellectual concept that describes mathematical possibilities. Since it has no being, it has no power. Therefore, to say that the universe came into being by chance—that chance exercised some power to bring the universe into being—merely takes us back to the idea of self-creation, because chance is nothing.

If we can eliminate this concept altogether, and reason demands that we do so, then we are left with one of the first two options: that the universe is self-existent and eternal or that the material world is self-existent and eternal. Both of those options, as we mentioned, agree that if anything exists now, then something somewhere must be self-existent. If that were not the case, nothing could exist at the present time. An absolute law of science is ex nihilo nihil fit, which means “out of nothing, nothing comes.” If all we have is nothing, that is all we will ever have, because nothing cannot produce something. If there ever was a time when there was absolutely nothing, then we could be absolutely certain that today, at this very moment, there would still be absolutely nothing. Something has to be self-existent; something must have the power of being within it for anything to exist at all.

Both of these options pose many problems. As we have noted, nearly everyone agrees that the universe has not existed eternally, so the first option is not viable. Likewise, since virtually everything we examine in the material world manifests contingency and mutation, philosophers are loath to assert that this aspect of the universe is self-existent and eternal, because that which is self-existent and eternal is not given to mutation or change. So the argument is made that somewhere in the depths of the universe lies a hidden, pulsating core or power supply that is self-existent and eternal, and everything else in the universe owes its origin to that thing. At this point, materialists argue that there is no need for a transcendent God to explain the material universe because the eternal, pulsating core of existence can be found inside the universe rather than out there in the great beyond.

That is the point at which a linguistic error is made. When the Bible speaks of God as transcendent, it is not describing God’s location. It is not saying that God lives “up there” or “out there” somewhere. When we say that God is above and beyond the universe, we are saying that He is above and beyond the universe in terms of His being. He is ontologically transcendent. Anything that has the power of being within itself and is self-existent must be distinguished from anything that is derived and dependent. So if there is something self-existent at the core of the universe, it transcends everything else by its very nature. We do not care where God lives. We are concerned about His nature, His eternal being, and the dependence of everything else in the universe upon Him.

The classical Christian view of creation is that God created the world ex nihilo, “out of nothing,” which seems to contradict the absolute law of ex nihilo nihil fit, “out of nothing, nothing comes.” People have argued against creation ex nihilo on those very grounds. However, when Christian theologians say that God created the world ex nihilo, it is not the same as saying that once there was nothing and then, out of that nothing, something came. The Christian view is, “In the beginning, God…” God is not nothing. God is something. God is self-existent and eternal in His being, and He alone has the ability to create things out of nothing. God can call worlds into existence. This is the power of creativity in its absolute sense, and only God has it. He alone has the ability to create matter, not merely reshape it from some preexisting material.

An artist can take a square block of marble and form it into a beautiful statue or take a plain canvas and transform it by arranging paint pigments into a beautiful pattern, but that is not how God created the universe. God called the world into being, and His creation was absolute in the sense that He did not simply reshape things that already existed. Scripture gives us only the briefest description of how He did it. We find therein the “divine imperative” or the “divine fiat,” whereby God created by the power and authority of His command. God said, “Let there be…,” and there was. That is the divine imperative. Nothing can resist the command of God, who brought the world and everything in it into being.

This excerpt is from Everyone's A Theologian by R.C. Sproul

$5 Friday (And More): The Great Commission, Martin Luther, & the Doctrines of Grace

It’s time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week’s resources include such topics as the Great Commission, Martin Luther, the doctrines of grace, preaching, parenting, the church, reformed theology, and more.

Plus, several bonus resources are also available for more than $5. These have been significantly discounted from their original price. This week’s bonus resources include:

Saints of Zion , CD $15 $8
The Whole Christ with Sinclair Ferguson, DVD $48 $15
The Whole Christ with Sinclair Ferguson, Study Guide $15 $8
Marks of a Healthy Church , DVD $54 $12
Marks of a Healthy Church , Study Guide $15 $8
Christian Ethics with R.C. Sproul, CD $38 $12
The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon by Steven Lawson, Audio Book $19 $12
The Gospel: 2016 National Conference , DVD $75 $15
Transforming Homosexuality: What the Bible Says about Sexual Orientation , Paperback Book $10 $7
The Promises of God by R.C. Sproul, Hardcover Book $20 $12
, Hardcover Book $35 $18
Rejoicing in Christ by Michael Reeves, Paperback Book $16 $10
Getting the Gospel Right by R.C. Sproul, Paperback Book $18 $9
Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation by Stephen Nichols, Paperback Book $20 $14
Jonathan Edwards’ Resolutions and Advice to Young Converts , Paperback Book $4 $2.5
How Should I Think about Money? by R.C. Sproul, Paperback Book $2 $1
What Is Faith? by R.C. Sproul, Paperback Book $2 $1
Loving Our Neighbors: March 2018 Tabletalk , Magazine $3 $1
The Ordinary Christian Life: August 2014 Tabletalk , Magazine $3 $1
The Blessing of Discipline: August 2013 Tabletalk , Magazine $3 $1

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

View today’s $5 Friday sale items.

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Time and the Individual

Here’s an excerpt from Time and the Individual, Joe Holland's contribution to the September issue of Tabletalk:

I have to imagine that they were terrified—thankful, but terrified.

The long-forgotten God, revealed to Moses through the most unusual kindling, had just put the world’s biggest military on the bottom of the sea while providing a way for His ragtag people to scurry to safety through two towering walls of water. Who was this God? What is He like? What does He require from the people who are called by His name? Will that people, could that people, ever end up on the bottom of a large body of water? These must have been the questions that were on the Israelites’ minds—these and the giddy gratitude of being free people for the first time in their lives.

Continue reading Time and the Individual, or begin receiving Tabletalk magazine by signing up for a free 3-month trial.

For a limited time, the new TabletalkMagazine.com allows everyone to browse and read the growing library of back issues, including this month’s issue.

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