R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 82

Which of the Bible’s Teachings Do You Find Most Difficult to Accept?

Sometimes the truth is difficult to accept because it opposes our natural inclinations or cultural preferences. From one of our live events, R.C. Sproul and Derek Thomas discuss two doctrines that people in the 21st century sometimes struggle to embrace.

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Read the Transcript

What Makes It Possible for the Christian to Rejoice in the Midst of Pain and Anxiety?

In 1993, my wife and I were involved in an historic train wreck. The crash of the Sunset Limited into an inlet from Mobile Bay killed more passengers than any Amtrak accident in history. We survived that eerie accident but not without ongoing trauma. The wreck left my wife with an ongoing anxiety about being able to sleep on a train at night. The wreck left me with a back injury that took fifteen years of treatment and therapy to overcome. Nevertheless, with these scars from the trauma we both learned a profound lesson about the providence of God. Clearly, God’s providence in this case for us was one of benign benevolence. It also illustrated to us an unforgettable sense of the tender mercies of God. In as much as we are convinced that God’s providence is an expression of His absolute sovereignty over all things, I would think that a logical conclusion from such a conviction would be the end of all anxiety.

However, that is not always the case. Of course, our Lord Himself gave the instruction to be anxious for nothing to His disciples and, by extension, to the church. His awareness of human frailties expressed in our fears was manifested by His most common greeting to His friends: “Fear not.” Still, we are creatures who, in spite of our faith, are given to anxiety and at times even to melancholy.

As a young student and young Christian, I struggled with melancholy and sought the counsel of one of my mentors. As I related my struggles, he said, “You are experiencing the heavy hand of the Lord on your shoulder right now.” I had never considered God’s hand being one that gave downward pressure on my shoulder or that would cause me to struggle in this way. I was driven to prayer that the Lord would remove His heavy hand from my shoulder. In time, He did that and delivered me from melancholy and a large degree of anxiety.

On another occasion I was in a discussion with a friend, and I related to him some of the fears that were plaguing me. He said, “I thought you believed in the sovereignty of God.” “I do,” I said, “and that’s my problem.” He was puzzled by the answer, and I explained that I know enough about what the Bible teaches of God’s providence and of His sovereignty to know that sometimes God’s sovereign providence involves suffering and affliction for His people. That we are in the care of a sovereign God whose providence is benevolent does not exclude the possibility that He may send us into periods of trials and tribulations that can be excruciatingly painful. Though I trust God’s Word that in the midst of such experiences He will give to me the comfort of His presence and the certainty of my final deliverance into glory, in the meantime I know that the way of affliction and pain may be difficult to bear.

The comfort that I enjoy from knowing God’s providence is mixed at times with the knowledge that His providence may bring me pain. I don’t look forward to the experience of pain with a giddy anticipation; rather, there are times when it’s necessary for me and for others to grit our teeth and to bear the burdens of the day. Again, I have no question about the outcome of such affliction, and yet at the same time, I know that there are afflictions that will test me to the limits of my faith and endurance. That kind of experience and knowledge makes it easy to understand the tension between confidence in God’s sovereign providence and our own struggles with anxiety.

Romans 8:28, which is a favorite for many of us, states that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (NKJV). There’s no other text that demonstrates so clearly and magnificently the beauty of God’s sovereign providence than that one. The text does not say that everything that happens to us, considered in and of itself, is good; rather, it says that all things that happen are working together for our good. That is the master plan of God’s redemptive providence. He brings good out of evil. He brings glory out of suffering. He brings joy out of affliction. This is one of the most difficult truths of sacred Scripture for us to believe. I’ve said countless times that it is easy to believe in God but far more difficult to believe God. Faith involves living a life of trust in the Word of God.

As I live out the travail that follows life on this side of glory, hardly a day goes by that I am not forced to look at Romans 8:28 and remind myself that what I’m experiencing right now feels bad, tastes bad, is bad; nevertheless, the Lord is using this for my good. If God were not sovereign, I could never come to that comforting conclusion — I would be constantly subjected to fear and anxiety without any significant relief. The promise of God that all things work together for good to those who love God is something that has to get not only into our minds, but it has to get into our bloodstreams, so that it is a rock-solid principle by which life can be lived.

I believe this is the foundation upon which the fruit of the Spirit of joy is established. This is the foundation that makes it possible for the Christian to rejoice even while in the midst of pain and anxiety. We are not stoics who are called to keep a stiff upper lip out of some nebulous concept of fate; rather, we are those who are to rejoice because Christ has overcome the world. It is that truth and that certainty that gives relief to all of our anxieties.

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

$5 Friday (And More): John Calvin, Gratitude, Scripture, & More

It’s time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week’s resources include such topics as grace, John Calvin, gratitude, Scripture, theology, Calvinism, the arts, and more.

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Living Out a Healthy Fear of the Lord

Here’s an excerpt from Living Out a Healthy Fear of the Lord, Andrew Davis' contribution to the March issue of Tabletalk:

“There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom. 3:18). With those words, Paul finished his devastating summary of the wrath of God against the universal depravity of humanity (1:18–3:18). God is a “consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29), a phrase that summons the image of the sun. The sun is surrounded by a layer of plasma that reaches up to 5.4 million degrees Fahrenheit. Scripture reveals that God created the sun and sustains it every moment of its existence. Therefore, when Scripture says that God is a consuming fire, we must imagine that His wrath is hotter than the sun. God is more unapproachable than the sun (1 Tim. 6:16), for sinners cannot approach a holy God without being consumed by His wrath, unless God in His mercy extends the grace of the gospel in Christ.

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What Is a Benediction?

Many worship services conclude with the pastor announcing the blessing of God upon the congregation as they part from the corporate gathering. In this brief clip, H.B. Charles Jr. shares examples of these benedictions from Scripture.

Transcript:

Many Christian worship services end with a benediction. A benediction is simply a blessing. Pastors have the privilege of announcing, prayerfully, divine blessings on the people of God as they scatter from the place of corporate worship. The benediction is often announced simply by quoting the Scriptures. In my own pastoral practice, it is my custom to announce the benediction from Numbers 6:24–26: "The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious towards you; the LORD lift up His countenance unto you and grant you peace." But there are other passages that make wonderful benedictions, like Ephesians 3:20–21: "Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us..." Or Jude 24–25: "Now to Him who is able to keep us from stumbling and to present us blameless before His presence with great joy..." Or 2 Corinthians 13:14: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."

What Is the Prayer of Faith?

Years ago, the editor of a publishing company asked me to write a book on prayer. The theme is a vitally important one. The publishing house was well known. To be honest, I felt flattered. But in a moment of heaven-sent honesty, I told him that the author of such a book would need to be an older and more seasoned author (not to mention, alas, more prayerful) than I was. I mentioned one name and then another. My reaction seemed to encourage him to a moment of honesty, as well. He smiled. He had already asked the well-seasoned Christian leaders whose names I had just mentioned! They, too, had declined in similar terms. Wise men, I thought. Who can write or speak at any length easily on the mystery of prayer?

Yet in the past century and a half, much has been written and said particularly about "the prayer of faith." The focus has been on mountain-moving prayer by which we simply "claim" things from God with confidence that we will receive them because we believe that He will give them.

But what exactly is the prayer of faith?

Association with the Dramatic

Interestingly, it is in the letter of James (who has so much to say about works) that the term occurs. It climaxes the marvelous teaching on prayer that punctuates the entire letter (see 1:5–8; 4:2–3; 5:13–18).

What is even more striking is that the significance of the phrase seems to be illustrated by the experience of one individual, the prophet Elijah. In his case, the prayer of faith was instrumental in shutting the heavens. Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that the phrase has come to be associated largely, if not exclusively, with dramatic, miracle-like events—with the extraordinary rather than the daily.

Yet this misses the basic thrust of James's teaching. The reason Elijah is used as an example is not that he was an extraordinary man; James stresses that he was "a man with a nature like ours" (James 5:17). It is his ordinariness that is in view.

Elijah's praying is used as an example not because it produced miracle-like effects but because it gives us one of the clearest of all illustrations of what it means for anyone to pray with faith: it is believing God's revealed Word, taking hold of His covenant commitment to it, and asking Him to keep it.

The Prayer of a Righteous Person

Shutting up the heavens was not, after all, a novel idea that originated in the fertile mind of Elijah. In fact, it was the fulfillment of the promised curse of the covenant Lord: "If you do not obey the Lord your God . . . these curses will come upon you. . . . The Lord will strike you . . . with scorching heat and drought. . . . The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder" (Deut. 28:15, 22–24, NIV).

Like every "righteous man" (James 5:16), Elijah sought to align his life with God's covenant promises and threats (which is, essentially, what "righteousness" means in the Old Testament—to be rightly covenantally related to the Lord). He lived his life in the light of the covenant God had made, and so he held on to its threats of judgment in prayer, as well as to its promises of blessing.

This, then, is the prayer of faith: to ask God to accomplish what He has promised in His Word. That promise is the only ground for our confidence in asking. Such confidence is not "worked up" from within our emotional life; rather, it is given and supported by what God has said in Scripture.

Truly "righteous" men and women of faith know the value of their heavenly Father's promises. They go to Him, as children do to a loving human father. They know that if they can say to an earthly father, "But, father, you promised . . . ," they can both persist in asking and be confident that he will keep his word. How much more our heavenly Father, who has given His Son for our salvation! We have no other grounds of confidence that He hears our prayers. We need none.

Legitimate Prayer

Such appeal to God's promises constitutes what John Calvin, following Tertullian, calls "legitimate prayer."

Some Christians find this disappointing. It seems to remove the mystique from the prayer of faith. Are we not tying down our faith to ask only for what God already has promised? But such disappointment reveals a spiritual malaise: would we rather devise our own spirituality (preferably spectacular) than God's (frequently modest)?

The struggles we sometimes experience in prayer, then, are often part of the process by which God gradually brings us to ask for only what He has promised to give. The struggle is not our wrestling to bring Him to give us what we desire, but our wrestling with His Word until we are illuminated and subdued by it, saying, "Not my will, but Your will be done." Then, as Calvin again says, we learn "not to ask for more than God allows."

This is why true prayer can never be divorced from real holiness. The prayer of faith can be made only by the "righteous" man whose life is being more and more aligned with the covenant grace and purposes of God. In the realm of prayer, too (since it is a microcosm of the whole of the Christian life), faith (prayer to the covenant Lord) without works (obedience to the covenant Lord) is dead.

Excerpt from In Christ Alone by Sinclair Ferguson.

Sola Scriptura

Here’s an excerpt from Sola Scriptura, Chad Van Dixhoorn's contribution to the April issue of Tabletalk:

In 1546, the Council of Trent, a Roman Catholic gathering that met soon after Martin Luther’s death, issued two decrees regarding sacred Scripture. The first decree cursed those who did not receive the Scriptures. It also cursed those who “deliberately condemn” the church’s traditions. The second decree forbade twisted readings of “sacred Scripture” in doctrinal or moral matters. The council also condemned interpretations of “sacred Scripture contrary to . . . holy mother Church” or “contrary to the unanimous consent of the fathers,” and explained that it is the task of the church “to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures.”

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Why Is Expository Preaching so Important?

The way a man preaches reveals what he believes about the Bible. From one of our Ask Ligonier events, H.B. Charles Jr. underscores the importance of expository preaching.

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Suffering Well in Union with Christ

All Christians want to know how the past resurrection of Christ and our future resurrection in union with Him shape our everyday lives. We will never see how the resurrection changes our lives until we understand that all change happens by the power of the Holy Spirit. One of our greatest privileges as Christians is being indwelled by the third person of the Trinity. Therefore, the resurrection life is the Spirit-filled life (Acts 2:4; Rom. 8:4–7; Eph. 5:18).

This Spirit-filled life cannot be considered apart from another biblical doctrine: union with Christ. A quick read of the Apostle Paul’s letters reveals that his favorite expression to describe believers is not “Christians.” Instead, it’s a little two-word phrase: “in Christ.” A follower of Jesus is someone who is “in Christ.” To grasp what God is telling us, we need to take a brief detour and outline the basics of the biblical doctrine of union with Christ. Though this doctrine had fallen on hard times in evangelicalism, theologians and authors are paying more attention to it than they have at any time in recent memory. Despite renewed interest, it is still too often misunderstood. I certainly don’t promise to clear up all the confusion, but I want to sketch the doctrine’s basic contours and its relationship to the resurrection.

At the most basic level, union with Christ means that by faith alone, Christ is now our representative, whereas Adam was previously our representative. As many authors have put it, union with Christ means that what is true of Jesus is now true of us (in a creaturely way, of course) by faith alone. We are born united to Adam, meaning we are born guilty and sinful (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12–21). Adam’s sin was imputed, or counted, to us. As a result of his first transgression, every aspect of our humanity is fallen.

Central to the good news is the reversal of this situation. As one church father put it, “Where Adam failed, Christ prevailed.” Christ obeyed the law perfectly in our place (Rom. 5:12–21; 2 Cor. 5:17–21), and His obedience is imputed to us when we are united to Him by faith alone. So, the moment you put your faith in Jesus, God sees you through Christ. His account, as it were, is counted as yours.

This inseparable link between union with Christ and the resurrection is why Paul can write things like this: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5). How could we be united to Christ’s death and resurrection when we weren’t alive two thousand years ago? Because faith links us to Christ’s death and resurrection. Faith makes what He did true for us. Union with Christ teaches us that, in an important sense, we are already resurrected with Christ. That’s Paul’s point in Romans 6:5. Certainly, we are not resurrected bodily yet. But we have been raised, by union with Christ, to new life in Him (John 5:24–25; Col. 3:5).

Therefore, union with Christ changes our perspective on this life entirely. As one author explains, because of this union, we live from heaven to earth, not from earth to heaven, so to speak. This scholar is simply following Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 2:6, where he tells us that God “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Given the resurrection of Jesus, our position in the here and now is changed at the most fundamental level. This “positional reality,” as we’ll call it, has sweeping implications for all of life. Not only does union with Christ help us understand the resurrection, but it explains why this life is so hard.

Up to this point, we have only discussed how union with Christ assures us of glory and repositions us in God’s sight. These are magnificent truths, and we must celebrate them. But before we witness resurrection, either for Jesus or for us, we experience suffering. If we truly want to understand union with Christ, God, prayer, and the Christian life in general, we must grasp this frightful yet necessary truth. The irreversible pattern, both for Jesus and His followers, is suffering, then glory.

Jesus was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). He lived out His days on this earth misunderstood, maltreated, underhoused, unappreciated, scorned, mocked, and eventually murdered. By anyone’s standard, His life was miserable. Nonetheless, His daily sufferings had a point. They had a goal. They were for us, in two ways (Heb. 12:2). First, He lived like this as part of His work for our salvation. Second, He lived this way to show us what to expect in union with Him. This is why one of His core teachings was cross bearing. “And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’” (Luke 9:23). Here is Jesus’ template for the Christian life. Before we are resurrected to life in glory, we suffer here below.

To get our arms around this difficult prospect, we must not read our own definition of suffering into the New Testament’s use of the term. As one scholar explains, the word means something broader in the New Testament. He writes that suffering means not only martyrdom for one’s faith but also “the mundane frustrations and unspectacular difficulties of our everyday lives when they are endured for [Jesus’] sake.”

I love that description because all of us can relate to it. Could we sum up our daily lives better than a series of “mundane frustrations and unspectacular difficulties”? After all, God seems absent so much of the time. Prayer seems fruitless. Loved ones die. Children go astray. Spouses lose interest in one another. Dreams fade like furniture left in the sunlight over the years. Nothing is perfect. Everything is broken.

Once we come to terms with the essential role suffering plays in our union with Christ, mundane frustrations and unspectacular difficulties begin to make sense. We realize afresh the truth of Jesus’ words when He said, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). Suffering is a nonnegotiable aspect of our discipleship. Cross bearing is part of Christ following. I don’t intend to minimize the pain we experience at seemingly unanswered prayer. Much less do I want to downplay the agonizing grief that grips us when a friend or family member dies. But we do not honor God, and we do not help ourselves, when we shake our fist at the heavens, as though hardship and suffering are something strange. According to the Bible, they are not (1 Peter 4:12). They mean we’re on the right path.

In my ministry, I have been privileged to witness Christians suffering well. Watching them endure like this has been both humbling and strengthening. They embody the truth that suffering comes before glory. I have watched parents put the bodies of toddlers into the cold earth. I have seen faithful saints suffering horribly with diseases like pancreatic cancer. I have prayed with families struggling to come to terms with a beloved child’s suicide. I leave these situations bewildered, full of questions, and with my faith stretched to the breaking point.

Through it all, I have seen firsthand families and individuals, with pain so deep that words failed them, continue to trust God. If anything, their faith has deepened in their suffering. It takes my breath away.

Their steadfast confidence in the Lord helps me fathom the unfathomable truth that, in ways none of us will understand this side of glory, suffering is God’s design for our lives. The pathway to a mature, lasting faith—the type of faith that gives way to resurrection sight—is paved with the rough stones of suffering (Col. 4:12; Heb. 6:1). The only way to keep putting one foot in front of the other on this dark road is through union with Christ and with the promise of resurrection to light the way. Here we see the Spirit manifest His power in our lives. No one but God Himself could keep us on the resurrection road when such difficulties loom in front of us. The Spirit indwells us to enable us to suffer well in union with Christ.

This excerpt is adapted from Alive: How the Resurrection of Christ Changes Everything by Gabe Fluhrer.

Death, Where Is Your Sting?

Everyone who trusts in Jesus Christ will share in His resurrected glory. In this brief clip from his series What Did Jesus Do?, R.C. Sproul teaches that the resurrection of the Lord brings us to the heart and center of the Christian faith.

Transcript:

“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So, when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and the mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’” Death is devoured, consumed by victory. “‘O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?’ The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.“ That's the point of His work: He is raised by the Father, by the power of the Spirit, not simply for His own vindication, but He's raised for us. He may be the first to be raised in this manner, being brought forth in a glorified state, but He is by no means the last. Everyone who is in Christ Jesus will share in this resurrected glory. This is our hope. This is at the very heart and center of the Christian faith.