R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 67

Is "Fundamentalist" a Bad Word?

Is "fundamentalist" a bad word? In this brief clip from his series A Survey of Church History, W. Robert Godfrey considers how the fundamentalist movement came to be perceived in an increasingly negative light in the 20th century.

Transcript:

From originally being a scholarly, cultured, influential group defending orthodox Christianity, they had emerged as a group seen to be bitter, intolerant, negative, and uneducated. Regrettably, fundamentalism in the 1930s did take on a number of those features. In almost all of the denominations, the mainline denominations, the fundamentalists lost the battle. Many of them separated to form new denominations, and in many of those new denominations, there was a measure of bitterness about what had been done to them. There was, in some circles, a reaction against education as not really so important. As dispensationalism became more influential in some of those groups - not so much amongst the orthodox Presbyterians - but in many of the other denominational groups, there was such a pessimism about the future, such a sense that Christ must surely be coming soon that there was a sense, "Why bother with education? There is no time for that! Let's just get the gospel out." It's a period in which there is the rise of a lot of Bible institutes. You don't need a liberal arts degree, you don't need a seminary education; just go to a Bible institute, find the basic things to preach, and get out on the field, whether it is at home or abroad, and preach. So, fundamentalism does take on a kind of different sociological character. It does move out from places of influence. In Dr. Machen's day, what happened at Princeton Seminary was regularly reported on the front page of the New York Times. It was important stuff. But now, fundamentalists increasingly were marginalized, and things really did change. They became very separatistic, many of them, in their own mentality, not wanting to cooperate with anybody, lest they take the first step down the slippery slope to liberalism. Today, we find the word "fundamentalist" used in all sorts of ways, and I think - usually, it annoys me as a historian - I think very unfairly. We have to remember that the history of the word "fundamentalism" was a people who wanted to maintain the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

How Can Christians Express the Truth of Human Dignity during a Global Crisis?

In a world that often rejects the value of human life, COVID-19 gives Christians the opportunity to express the dignity of all of God’s image-bearers. From our livestream event Made in the Image of God, John MacArthur points out how believers can respond to our confused culture.

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

There Are No Shortcuts to Growth

Editor’s Note: Originally published in December, 2016.

I’m still amazed whenever I see the bumper sticker that reads, “Visualize world peace.” The idea is that if I, and enough other people, create the right mental picture of peace, it will soon come to pass. It’s astounding that some people actually believe that silly technique will bring about such a desirable goal.

Then, there’s the popular “Coexist” bumper sticker. You may have seen it, the one spelled out with the symbols of different religions—the Islamic crescent forming the C, the Christian cross forming the T, and so on. The idea seems to be that if we religious people would just stop focusing on our differences, we could achieve world harmony. If we understood that our beliefs are all ultimately the same, all of the problems of war and strife would go away.

The funny thing is, we’ll reject such sentiments when they appear on a bumper sticker, but we’ll accept them elsewhere. How many business seminars promise increased profit if we only focus on the positive or visualize a goal? Eastern mysticism, where much of the bumper-sticker theology we’re talking about finds its ultimate origin, dresses it up with more acceptable religious practices. Meditate regularly, repeating a mantra as you visualize the oneness of all things, and the human race will move toward unity. But there’s also a version sold to us as the Christian key for victorious living. Speak your desire, claim it’s yours in Jesus’ name, visualize it will happen, and then it will be yours. Your healing, wealth, relationship success, happy family, improved marriage will come as soon as you name it and claim it or practice the power of positive thinking.

We’re looking for the right technique, the secret that will turn our wishes into reality. We laugh at the world’s spiritual magic, only to baptize it and practice it ourselves. We’ll read Scripture hoping to find the shortcut to spiritual growth while missing the true but non-shortcut answer—the key is not in the Bible; it is the Bible.

One reason we look for spiritual shortcuts is related to our modern age where shortcuts and rapid results abound. We can quickly relieve pain with medicine, find our way to restaurants with our smartphones, and get immediate answers to our questions online. These aren’t inherently bad things, but they tend to foster false expectations. If technology can relieve our illnesses and make our jobs easier, it surely can give rest to our souls, right?

We assume the answer is yes, and there are all too many “experts” out there who’ll encourage that assumption. Just look at the self-help section at your local bookstore, even at your local Christian bookstore. Book after book promises to hold the key to our happiness in twelve steps or less. The fact that none of the promises pan out doesn’t deter people from buying those books or new authors from repackaging old, ineffective answers in fancier dress.

But we can’t ultimately blame our search for shortcuts on modern technology. Our innate desire since the fall for autonomy, to be masters of our own fates, drives us to search out soul-building techniques that will improve us. We see our faith not as an end in itself but as a means to greater fulfillment. Evangelists routinely implore people to come to Christ, saying that He will make them happier, more confident in themselves, and more spiritual. Jesus becomes a means to improve our marriages and finances while releasing us from all manner of compulsions and negative character traits.

Can Christ do all those things? Of course He can. But Jesus is not a means to other ends—He is the end, the goal of our lives. He doesn’t come into our lives to give us special techniques to make our lives better; He works in and through us, changing us for the sake of His glory. He provides believers no mystic secrets to take them to a higher plane of spirituality. There’s no hidden truth available to only a few, no method that guarantees quick maturity in Him as long as we master it.

We’re saved by grace alone and justified by faith alone, but having been saved, we don’t just wait around to die. Christianity is about spiritual growth as well, and spiritual growth involves effort—the hard work of sanctification. We manifestly don’t work for our regeneration or our justification. Both acts are monergistic, accomplished by God alone. Only the Holy Spirit can change our hearts. Only the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness of the Son of God secured by His perfect obedience to the Father, can secure our right standing before God. Sanctification, however, includes our efforts. We say it is synergistic because both God and we are doing something. Yet, we aren’t equal partners. God wills and works in us according to His good pleasure so that we progress in holiness (Phil. 2:12–13). But as God works in us, we work as well, pursuing Him in prayer, relying on the means of grace—the preached Word and the sacraments—seeking to be reconciled to those we have offended. There’s no shortcut for sanctification. It’s a process, and one that all too often seems overly plodding, with progress taking years to discern.

God’s work is easy for Him. He doesn’t look for shortcuts because He never grows weary. We get tired and frustrated, however. We’re tempted to look for the simple path, the quick answer, the effortless way forward. But there is none. Sanctification requires diligently attending to the means God has given us. The growth may be slow, almost imperceptible at times, but it is sure.

No technique of the devil’s can stop the process of Christ making us into His image. Those whom He calls He sanctifies.

Casually attending to the things of the Lord will not result in our nurture. Visualizing or seeking a secret formula won’t help. We must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that Christ, by His Spirit, is working in us.

Dr. R.C. Sproul was founder of Ligonier Ministries, founding pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., and first president of Reformation Bible College. He was author of more than one hundred books, including The Holiness of God. This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

$5 Friday (And More): Grace, The Psalms, & Calvinism

It’s time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week’s resources include such topics as grace, the Psalms, Calvinism, the Reformation, John Owens, Charles Spurgeon, 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:

Pillars of Grace by Steven Lawson, Audiobook Download $30 $12
Learning to Love the Psalms by W. Robert Godfrey, Audiobook Download $15 $7
Faith Alone by R.C. Sproul, Audiobook Download $15 $7
God’s Love: How the Infinite God Cares for His Children by R.C. Sproul, Audiobook Download $15 $7
The Legacy of Luther by Various Authors, Audiobook Download $15 $7
The Life and Theology of Paul by Guy Waters, Audiobook Download $15 $7
The Affectionate Theology of Richard Sibbes by Mark Dever, Audiobook Download $15 $7
Truths We Confess by R.C. Sproul, eBook Download $12 $7
Matthew: An Expositional Commentary by R.C. Sproul, eBook Download $12 $7
Mark: An Expositional Commentary by R.C. Sproul, eBook Download $9 $6
1–2 Peter: An Expositional Commentary by R.C. Sproul, eBook $9 $6
Saving the Reformation: The Pastoral Theology of the Canons of Dort by W. Robert Godfrey, eBook Download $9 $6
Surprised by Suffering by R.C. Sproul, eBook Download $9 $6

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

View today’s $5 Friday sale items.

The State of Grace

Here’s an excerpt from The State of Grace, Cornelis P. Venema's contribution to the July issue of Tabletalk:

Though readers of Tabletalk are not likely to glean their theology from bumper stickers, undoubtedly many of you have noticed the one that reads, “I am not perfect, just forgiven!” While this bumper sticker purports to capture the truth about our state as sinners who are saved through God’s gracious forgiveness in Christ, it falls short of the mark.

Undoubtedly, Christians are not perfect. However, this does not tell the whole story of what God’s saving grace in Christ grants them in this life. It accents one of the principal blessings of Christ’s saving work—forgiveness. But it leaves unmentioned several inseparable blessings that are also imparted to believers who are united to Christ by faith. When Christ by His Spirit and Word imparts the manifold blessings of His saving work as Mediator, these blessings include not only forgiveness but also deliverance from the dominion of sin and renewal by the sanctifying power of His Spirit.

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Only in Christ Can the Image of God Be Restored

Humanity’s only hope of wholeness is in Jesus Christ. In this brief clip from our online event Made in the Image of God, Michael Reeves describes how Christ alone brings true healing and restoration to the corrupted human race.

Transcript:

One of the great heroes of the faith was the mighty fourth-century theologian, Athanasius. His name means "immortal." And it's quite appropriate. Athanasius had a lovely image to help us get how Christ is the image of God and how He restored the image of God in humanity. He said, "Adam was like a beautiful portrait painting. On him, the image of God was drawn.” And what happened at the fall was that the portrait was utterly wrecked. Adam was no longer anything like God. He'd become vicious, selfish, horribly unholy. And so the image, the painting was ruined. So, how could this precious portrait be restored? And the problem was, there was nobody who knew what the portrait had once looked like. They couldn't restore it. To restore it, you had to know God. You had to know what He's like. Otherwise, you could never know what the image of God should look like. There was only one hope. The original subject of the portrait had to come and have His likeness redrawn on the canvas of humanity. Only the One whose likeness was originally drawn on Adam could restore and renew it. And so, the image of God Himself came. He took humanity to renew His image in it. He came and showed us the image of God in the flesh. And in Christ alone could humanity be restored from what Athanasius called all this "dehumanizing of mankind." Only He, the image of God Himself, could rehumanize us. Only in Him could we, as Paul puts it in Colossians 3:10, "put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator." Friends, no wonder our society is crawling with identity issues. With the image of God ruined in Adam, sinners don't know what they're for. So, we seek to mend ourselves, but we don't know what “mended” looks like. Sensing our brokenness, we try to restore ourselves with morality or with authenticity, but we're fumbling in the dark, trying to redraw a portrait when we have no idea what it should even look like. All we can come up with are monstrous aberrations. Our only hope of wholeness is in Christ, the image of God. Humanity can be mended nowhere else.

The Most Dangerous Place On Earth

There is no more dangerous place to be than where the direct, straightforward teaching of the Word of God confronts dead religion. As long as dead religion is allowed to sleep the sleep of death, all continues placidly and peaceably. But when the truth of Scripture challenges empty religion, a cataclysmic collision is sure to result. This is because whenever the Word is taught in houses of worship that are devoid of gospel truth, hell is aggravated. As soon as the light of holiness and truth shines into the kingdom of darkness, sin is exposed, unclean spirits are angered, and Satan is provoked. Satan has no greater strongholds than houses of worship where the truth is suppressed. Nowhere is he more deeply entrenched in the lives of people than among those who are religious but who have no supernatural light of holiness and truth. But there is no greater threat to Satan's kingdom than the penetrating light of holiness and truth as it invades these fortresses of demons.

And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, saying, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God." (Mark 1:21-24)

It was in such a dangerous place that Jesus found Himself one day in Capernaum. The synagogue there was a place where Satan had gained a foothold. It was a place that had religion but no repentance; ritual but no regeneration; rules but no relationship with the living God through His holy Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Make no mistake, it was a ruthlessly religious crowd that most opposed Christ. They attributed His works to the Devil, accused Him of being born out of wedlock, maligned Him, slandered Him, and ultimately nailed Him to a cross. When Jesus fearlessly advanced with the truth into this bastion of demonic religion, He met the Devil head on. What followed was a clash between light and darkness, truth and error, heaven and hell, and holiness and un-holiness.

This excerpt is taken from Steven Lawson's contribution in Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God.

The State of Nature

Here’s an excerpt from The State of Nature, William VanDoodewaard's contribution to the July issue of Tabletalk:

Life in Eden was marvelous. Our first parents experienced complete vitality in the best of a pristine, beautiful creation. It was a world without suffering or death. Everything was very good, and at the center of it all, Adam and Eve enjoyed perfect fellowship with God and with each other in their state of innocence.

After the joy of Eve’s marriage to Adam in Genesis 2, the serpent, “who was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made” (Gen. 3:1), appeared in Eden. We know from other places in Scripture that God, who is sovereign over all in perfect holiness, is not and cannot be the author of evil (Deut. 32:4; Job 34:10; Isa. 6:3). Genesis does not reveal why God allowed Satan to rebel, slander, and deceive; nor is it fully revealed why God purposed that man be allowed to sin against Him. But, as in the book of Job, what we need to know is revealed to us. The events in Genesis 3 are according to the counsel of God’s holy will, ultimately serving to reveal His glory and work together for good for His people.

Continue reading The State of Nature, 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.

How Can I Obtain Assurance of Salvation?

It is not the perfection of a Christian’s life, but the direction of his life that demonstrates his conversion. From one of our Ask Ligonier events, John MacArthur explains how the evidence of salvation manifests itself in a believer’s life. Ask your biblical and theological questions live online at ask.Ligonier.org.

Read the Transcript

Do You Love the Church?

Paul gives great attention to ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, in his letter to the Ephesians. In fact, we could say Ephesians answers this question: What is the church? In Ephesians 2:19–22, the chief metaphor Paul uses is that of a building—the household of God. Christians are part of the household in the sense that they have been adopted into the family of God, which is another image that Scripture uses to describe the church. But here the accent is not so much on the family of the household as it is on the house of the household: "[We] are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets" (vv. 19–20a).

Paul says the foundation of this building called the church is made up of the prophets and the Apostles, that is, the Old Testament prophets and New Testament Apostles. Why? It's because the prophets and Apostles are the agents of revelation by whom God speaks to His people. They delivered the Word of God. Another way of saying this is that the foundation of the church is the Word of God.

That's why we must pay close attention to our doctrine of Scripture. The attacks launched against the integrity, authority, sufficiency, and trustworthiness of Scripture are attacks not upon a side alcove of this building. They don't put a dent in the roof of the church. They're attacks on the church's very foundation. To have a church without Apostolic authority, without the Word of God as its foundation, is to build a church on sand rather than on rock. The foundation of the prophets and the Apostles is necessary for the entire edifice of the church to stand securely.

Paul continues the building metaphor in 2:20b: "Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone." Christ is the cornerstone, the point that holds the foundation together. Take out the cornerstone, and everything falls apart. "In [Christ] the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit" (vv. 21–22). The church is a new temple built in Christ, by Christ, and for Christ. Obviously, Paul isn't saying the church is a building made out of mortar and brick, but that we are the stones, the living stones, as 1 Peter 2:5 tells us. Each believer is part of this church just as each stone is part of a building. The church, the new temple, is still under construction. Every day, new stones are added. This new temple will not be finished until Jesus returns to consummate His kingdom. Christ is still building His church, not by adding cement but by adding people who are the stones that hold together in Him.

Paul continues in Ephesians 3:14–19,

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The Apostle Paul explains the doctrine of the church so that we might understand what God has done and so that we may understand who we are. And in calling us to understand who we are and what we're called to do, Paul says that we're the church. We're the church that God ordained from the foundation of the world. We're His people; we're His household, so let the church be the church.

We're living in a time of crisis. Many Christians are decrying the decadence of American culture and complaining about the government and its value system. I understand that, but if we want to be concerned for our nation and culture, our priority must be the renewal of the church. We are the light of the world.

Government merely reflects and echoes the customs embraced by the people in a given generation. In a real sense, our government is exactly what we want it to be, or it wouldn't be there. Change in culture doesn't always come from the top down. It often comes from the bottom up. The change we need to work for, chiefly, is renewal within the church. As the church becomes the fellowship of citizens of heaven who manifest what it means to be the household of Christ, and when the church walks according to the power of the Holy Spirit—then the people of God will shine as the light of the world. When people see that light, they will give glory to God (Matt. 5:16). This will change the world. But Paul says, first of all, let the church be the church. We must remember who we are, who the foundation is, who the cornerstone is, who the head of our building is, who the Lord of the church is.

Do we love the church? I doubt if there have been many times in our history when there has been as much anger, hostility, disappointment, and disillusionment with the institutional church as there is today. It's hard not to be critical of the church because in many ways the church has failed us. But if the church has failed, that means we have failed. We are called to serve the church in the power of God the Holy Spirit.

We, the church, have been made for this task by the indwelling presence and power of God's Spirit. Yet, we are called not so much to rise up but to bow down. And if we bow down to our Lord, as Paul says in Ephesians 3:14, the church will be the church, and our light will pierce the darkness.

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.