R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 61

$5 Friday (And More): The Attributes of God, Scripture, & Grace

It’s time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week’s resources include such topics as the attributes of God, scripture, grace, assurance, discipleship, Martin Luther, 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:

Love Divine II , CD $15 $10
Developing Christian Character , DVD $60 $15
Developing Christian Character , Study Guide $15 $10
The Attributes of God , DVD $37 $15
The Attributes of God , Study Guide $15 $8
God’s Technology , Study Guide $15 $8
Knowing Scripture , Audiobook MP3 CD $15 $10
The Invisible Hand: 2004 San Diego Conference , CD $30 $15
The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths , Paperback $9 $6
Note to Self: The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself , Paperback $12 $8
Now, That’s a Good Question! , Paperback $18 $12
Now, That’s a Good Question! , Paperback (Spanish) $17 $12
The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert , Paperback $13 $19
The Heroic Boldness of Martin Luther , Paperback (Spanish) $9 $6
A Little Book on the Christian Life , Paperback (Spanish) $6 $4
Can I Lose My Salvation? , Paperback $2 $2
Discipleship: June 2018 Tabletalk , Magazine $3 $1
Doubt and Assurance: July 2016 Tabletalk , Magazine $3 $1
Out of the Abundance of the Heart: July 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.

Crucial Questions: 35 Free eBooks from R.C. Sproul

To further help Christians know what they believe, why they believe it, how to live it, and how to share it, in May 2013 we made the ebook editions of R.C. Sproul's Crucial Questions series free forever. We continue to publish new ebooks in this series and this year have added What Is the Gospel?, What Is Biblical Wisdom?, and How Can I Live by Faith?

 

Here is a complete list of the free ebooks in the Crucial Questions series

Are People Basically Good? (Kindle) (iBooks) 
Are These the Last Days? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
Can I Be Sure I'm Saved? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
Can I Have Joy in My Life? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
Can I Know God's Will? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
Can I Lose My Salvation? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
Can I Trust the Bible? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
Does God Control Everything? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
Does Prayer Change Things? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
How Can I Be Blessed? (Kindle) (iBooks) 
How Can I Develop a Christian Conscience? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
How Can I Be Right with God? (Kindle) (iBooks) 
How Should I Live in this World? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle)
How Should I Think about Money? (Kindle) (iBooks) 
What Can I Do with My Guilt? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
What Can We Know about God? (Kindle) (iBooks) 
What Do Jesus’ Parables Mean? (Kindle) (iBooks) 
What Does It Mean to be Born Again?  (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
What Is Baptism? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
What Is Faith? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
What Is the Great Commission? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle)
What Is Repentance? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle)
What Is the Church? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
What Is the Lord's Supper? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle)
What Is the Relationship between Church and State? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
What Is the Trinity? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kinde) (Español iBooks)
Who Is Jesus? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
Who Is the Holy Spirit? (Kindle) (iBooks) (Español Kindle) (Español iBooks)
Does God Exist? (Kindle)
How Does God’s Law Apply to Me? (Kindle)
What Is Predestination? (Kindle)
Why Should I Join a Church? (Kindle)
What Is the Gospel? (Kindle) New
What Is Biblical Wisdom? (Kindle) New
How Can I Live by Faith? (Kindle) New

You can also download the free collection from Logos.

Please share these resources with your church, family, and friends. Not sure how to download an eBook? Please see our FAQ section.

Congregational Discourse

Here’s an excerpt from Congregational Discourse, Mark E. Ross' contribution to the August issue of Tabletalk:

When your congregation gathers on the Lord’s Day, is there a “buzz” among the people? Is that same “buzz” found when you join in singing? Paul says it should be so, and Colossians 3:16 tells us what it is: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” We will see his meaning more clearly if we break down the basic command in this sentence before considering its outworking in the explanatory clauses that follow.

Continue reading Congregational Discourse, 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.

The Church's One Foundation

More than forty years ago, Los Angeles experienced a terrible earthquake, one of the worst in the city’s history. I remember the event because just before the earthquake, I had driven a friend of mine to the airport so that he could catch a flight to Los Angeles, where he was a pastor. The earthquake affected his church, and he later told me that at first everything seemed to be fine with the sanctuary building. Although there was no visible damage of any significance, a later inspection revealed that the foundation of the church had shifted to such a degree that they had to close the church and rebuild the sanctuary because it was no longer safe. To any casual observer, it seemed like the sanctuary was stable. However, in reality it was unfit for use, and it had to be demolished and rebuilt upon a sure foundation.

In Psalm 11:3, David asks the question, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” David draws on an analogy in the physical realm to depict a particular spiritual concern that he had. If the failure of a building’s physical foundation spells the end for the entire building, the failure of God’s people to maintain the foundation of truth means disaster for their spiritual health and well-being.

We can apply this idea to the church. If the foundation of the church is shaken, can the church survive? No. But what is the foundation of the church? Answering that question correctly will help us guard the foundation and preserve His truth.

I’ve often taught on this subject—the foundation of the church—in my years of ministry. I’ve often pointed out that while the author of the line, “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord,” had his heart in the right place when he was writing his hymn, the line itself is a conduit of misinformation. With respect to the foundation of the church, Scripture does speak of Jesus as the foundation: “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). However, that is not all that the New Testament says about the church’s foundation. Paul says in Ephesians 2:20 that Jesus is actually “the cornerstone.” Jesus is called the foundation because He is the linchpin, as it were, for the entire foundation. But there are other stones in this foundation.

What, then, is the rest of the foundation? The foundation, Paul tells us, consists of the prophets and the Apostles (Eph. 2:18-21). In Revelation 21, we read of the magnificent vision of the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city that comes down from above. Verse 14 tells us that “the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” Even the heavenly Jerusalem is based upon the foundation of the apostles.

Historically, the Christian church is, in its very essence, Apostolic. The term Apostle comes from the Greek word apostolos, which means “one who is sent.” In the ancient Greek culture, an apostolos was first of all a messenger, an ambassador, or an emissary. But he wasn’t just a page. He was an emissary who was authorized by the king to represent the king in his absence, and he bore the king’s authority.

The first Apostle in the New Testament was actually Jesus, for He was sent by His Father into the world. We get the fullest picture of what it is to be an Apostle by looking at what He says in the New Testament about this role of His. Jesus said, “I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me” (John 8:28). Christ told His disciples, “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak” (12:49). He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18). Jesus was granted authority by God the Father to speak on behalf of the Father and to deliver His Father’s Word, so Jesus’ teaching had God’s authority.

The Apostles spoke with a transferred authority from Christ to deliver His teachings. The Apostles taught with the authority of Jesus, who taught with the authority of God. Therefore, as the church father Irenaeus argued long ago, to reject Apostolic authority is to reject the authority of Jesus. And in the final analysis, to reject the authority of Jesus is to reject the authority of God.

What we have here in the concept of Apostolic authority is of vital importance to the Christian faith. But how do we recognize Apostolic authority? By submitting to the Apostolic tradition. In 1 Corinthians 15:3 Paul tells us, “I delivered to you, first of all, that which I also received,” and he uses the term paradosis, which is the Greek term we translate as “tradition.” Paradosis literally means “a giving over, a transfer,” and that’s what the New Testament is. It is the Apostolic tradition that the church has received. The church received it from the Apostles, who received it from Christ, who received it from God. That’s why when we reject the teaching of the Apostles—the Apostolic tradition of the New Testament—we’re rejecting the very authority of God.

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

Discourse with Enemies

Here’s an excerpt from Discourse with Enemies, Lee Gatiss' contribution to the August issue of Tabletalk:

The lack of civility in public life these days is regularly commented on. The often vicious rhetoric that opposing sides in current national debates fling at each other ought to be a cause for profound concern. God’s people, finding themselves “in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation,” are meant to “shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life” (Phil. 2:15–16). However, we are often tempted to justify the kind of toxic engagement that we so deplore in the secular culture. If we in the church want to critique the way that public engagement happens in our national life, we must make sure that as we do so we are living by our own professed biblical standards. One of the key things that we need to consider in this regard is Jesus’ teaching on this subject in Luke 6:28. The Lord said, “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

Continue reading Discourse with Enemies, 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.

Why Is It Important to Understand Penal Substitutionary Atonement?

Unless we understand the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, we will not understand why Christ died. From one of our Ask Ligonier events, John MacArthur explains why the cross stands at the very heart of the Christian faith.

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

Read the Transcript

Are You Shaped By the World or By the Word?

There’s a section in department stores these days called “shapewear.” It’s in both women’s and men’s clothing. These stores are banking on our concern with the shape of our bodies and our willingness to invest in garments that promise to give us the shape we’re looking for.

But when we read Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, we discover it’s not what is shaping our bodies that he is most concerned about. He’s concerned about what is shaping our perspective, our priorities, our pursuits, and our opinions. He writes:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom. 12:2)

His words force us to ask ourselves: What external forces are shaping my internal dialogue about what matters? What pressures me to make the choices I am making about how I spend my money, my time, and my energies? Am I self-aware enough to know?

Ever since we were born into this world, it has been working to press us into its mold.

Of course, we don’t like to think of ourselves as this impressionable. We like to think we are independent in our thinking. But the truth is, we are such products of the environment we live in that we often don’t recognize what is pressing in on us. Or perhaps we don’t feel the pressure because we simply give in to it. It makes no sense to Paul, however, for the lives of those who have been called and foreknown and predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son instead to be conformed to this world.

Instead of being conformed, Paul instructs us to be transformed. There’s a contrast here between something pressing in on us from the outside that causes us to be conformed and something taking place on the inside that causes us to be transformed. Where inside is this taking place? In our minds. And what is happening in our minds? They are being renewed. There’s a renovation project going on.

Have you ever renovated anything? The word used by Paul for the “renewal” of our minds literally means “to renovate”—to rip out the old and put in the new. The one doing the renovation work is the Holy Spirit. But there is something here for us to do. The tool the Holy Spirit uses is the Word. This means we must bring ourselves under the influence of the Word.

In his book Growing Your Faith, the late Jerry Bridges explains this process as similar to what we tell our son when he comes in from playing on the dirt pile: “Go take a shower.” It is the soap and water that will wash away the sweat and the dirt. But Tommy must bring himself under their cleansing action to become clean. So we say to him, “Go take a shower.”

Likewise, when Paul says to us: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” he’s instructing us to bring ourselves under the transforming influence of the Word of God. As the Word of God pours over us, the Spirit will use it to accomplish its cleansing, renewing, renovating work in our minds. Our minds will begin to work correctly. Our thoughts will align more closely to God’s thoughts. Our way of valuing things will align more closely to the way God values things. In this way, we will grow in our ability to know what God wants.

We won’t need to wait for some extrabiblical, supernatural word from God to be spoken into our subconscious thoughts to know what to do. We’ll be able to discern the wise course of action. God doesn’t decide for us and then transmit His decisions to us. Like a good father, He is teaching us to discern what is good and acceptable and perfect. How? He is renewing our minds as we come under His Word. He is giving us the mind of Christ.

The world around us is trying to press us into its highly individualistic mold. But the Word is transforming us into people whose identity flows out of being a bondservant to Jesus Christ and no longer a slave to our own independence or self-fulfillment.

The world around us is trying to press us into its consumer mold. Its advertising seeks to convince us that we cannot be content without whatever it’s selling. But the Word is transforming us into people who can say, “I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

The world around us is trying to press us into its mold of thinking the goal of this life is comfort and security. But the Word of God is renewing our minds so that we have very different aspirations from simply a comfortable life with a comfortable retirement. We want to expend ourselves for the gospel until the day we die. We so deeply believe that our heavenly Father is taking care of us and has secured a future for us in which we will gain everything, we just aren’t so concerned about losing out here. We are pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

The world around us seeks to press us into its mold. And we can simply relent. We can be shaped by the world around us. But we don’t have to be. We can resist. We can be shaped by the Word of God. As we take it in, think it through, and live it out, it is going to change us in profound and pleasant ways. We’re going to increasingly know how to live in the world around us.

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

The Collapse of the Ottoman Empire

With the end of the Ottoman Empire, the essential character of the Middle East changed in the 20th century. From his series A Survey of Church History, W. Robert Godfrey considers lingering anticipations in the Muslim world for a restored caliphate.

Transcript:

As the 19th century wore on, the Ottoman Empire, the empire of the Ottoman Turks, became a weaker and weaker empire. They were driven back. They lost territory. By the end of the 19th century, that Ottoman Empire was often referred to as "the weak man of Europe." It was a very much diminished empire in terms of energy and power and the ability to defend itself. After World War I, as many of the empires of Europe had collapsed, so it seemed that the Ottoman Empire would collapse. Indeed, in 1924, Kemal Ataturk, an important leader in Turkey, put an end to the Ottoman Empire and created Turkey as a modern secular state. Ataturk put an end to the caliphate; he said there will no longer be a caliphate. Since the Turks possessed the essential emblems, the robe of the “prophet” and the sword of the “prophet,” they were able to put those things in a museum and say there will be no more caliphate.

So, the essential character of much of the Near East was changed in the 20th century for Muslims. For centuries, really all the way back to Mohammed, there had been this caliphate that gave them a sense of center, of pride, of leadership, and of eschatological anticipation. We must never forget that Islam has a profound eschatological sense. We might almost say they're rather postmillennial. They have this confidence of ultimate success, and that will be led by the caliph. Therefore, the anticipation always was that someday the caliphate would be restored. And so, it is an eschatological statement that ISIS or ISIL, whatever we are calling them these days, now say they are going to restore the caliphate. This is not just a political observation. This is an eschatological fulfillment for many Muslims, and that is why it has a certain measure of attraction.

What Does It Mean in Romans 1 That God Gave People up to a Reprobate Mind?

Romans 1:28 reveals that “God gave them up to a debased mind…” Who is this describing, and what does it mean? From one of our Ask Ligonier events, Derek Thomas speaks on the dreadful effects of sin and the only way they can be undone.

Do you have another biblical or theological question? Ask Ligonier is your place for answers.

Read the Transcript

Can Unbelievers Do Good Deeds?

Imagine a circle that represents the character of mankind. Now imagine that if someone sins, a spot—a moral blemish of sorts—appears in the circle, marring the character of man. If other sins occur, more blemishes appear in the circle. Well, if sins continue to multiply, eventually the entire circle will be filled with spots and blemishes. But have things reached that point? Human character is clearly tainted by sin, but the debate is about the extent of that taint. The Roman Catholic Church holds the position that man’s character is not completely tainted, but that he retains a little island of righteousness. However, the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century affirmed that the sinful pollution and corruption of fallen man is complete, rendering us totally corrupt.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about just what the Reformers meant by that affirmation. The term that is often used for the human predicament in classical Reformed theology is total depravity. People have a tendency to wince whenever we use that term because there’s very widespread confusion between the concept of total depravity and the concept of utter depravity. Utter depravity would mean that man is as bad, as corrupt, as he possibly could be. I don’t think that there’s a human being in this world who is utterly corrupt, but that’s only by the grace of God and by the restraining power of His common grace. As many sins as we have committed individually, we could have done worse. We could have sinned more often. We could have committed sins that were more heinous. Or we could have committed a greater number of sins. Total depravity, then, does not mean that men are as bad as they conceivably could be.

When the Protestant Reformers talked about total depravity, they meant that sin—its power, its influence, its inclination—affects the whole person. Our bodies are fallen, our hearts are fallen, and our minds are fallen—there’s no part of us that escapes the ravages of our sinful human nature. Sin affects our behavior, our thought life, and even our conversation. The whole person is fallen. That is the true extent of our sinfulness when judged by the standard and the norm of God’s perfection and holiness.

To take it further, when the apostle Paul elaborates on this fallen human condition, he says, “‘There is none righteous, no, not one; … There is none who does good; no, not one’” (Rom. 3:10b-12). That’s a radical statement. Paul is saying that fallen man never, ever does a single good deed, but that flies in the face of our experience. When we look around us, we see numerous people who are not Christians who do things that we would applaud for their virtue. For instance, we see acts of self-sacrificial heroism among those who are not Christian, such as police officers and firefighters. Many people live quietly as law-abiding citizens, never defying the state. We hear regularly about acts of honesty and integrity, such as when a person returns a lost wallet rather than keeping it. John Calvin called this civil righteousness. But how can there be these deeds of apparent goodness when the Bible says that no one does good?

The reason for this problem is that when the Bible describes goodness or badness, it looks at it from two distinct perspectives. First, there is the measuring rod of the Law, which evaluates the external performance of human beings. For example, if God says you are not allowed to steal, and you go your whole life without stealing, from an external evaluation we could say that you have a good record. You’ve kept the Law externally.

But in addition to the external measuring rod, there is also the consideration of the heart, the internal motivation for our behavior. We’re told that man judges by outward appearances, but God looks on the heart. From a biblical perspective, to do a good deed in the fullest sense requires not only that the deed conform outwardly to the standards of God’s Law, but that it proceed from a heart that loves Him and wants to honor Him. You remember the great commandment: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind’” (Matt. 22:37). Is there anyone reading this book who has loved God with all of his or her heart for the past five minutes? No. Nobody loves God with all of his heart, not to mention his soul and mind.

One of the things I’m going to have to give account for on judgment day is the way in which I have wasted my mind in the pursuit of the knowledge of God. How many times have I been too lazy or slothful to apply myself to the fullest possible measure to know God? I have not loved God with all of my mind. If I loved God with all of my mind, there’d never be an impure thought in my head. But that’s not the way my head works.

If we consider human performance from this perspective, we can see why the apostle would come to his apparently radical conclusion that there is no one who does good, that there’s no goodness in the full sense of the word found among mankind. Even our finest works have a taint of sin mixed in. I have never done an act of charity, of sacrifice, or of heroism that came from a heart, a soul, and a mind that loved God completely. Externally, many virtuous acts are going on both among believers and unbelievers, but God considers both the external obedience and the motivation. Under that tight norm of judgment, we’re in trouble.

This excerpt is adapted from The Truth of the Cross by R.C. Sproul.