Nick Roark's Blog, page 25

“A stranger to himself” by Thomas Manton

“Faith is lean and ready to starve unless it be fed with continual meditation on the promises.

A man that is a stranger to meditation is a stranger to himself.”

–Thomas Manton, The Works of Thomas Manton, Vol. 17 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1870/2020), 17: 270-271.

“Plague on this nonsense of putting back the clock” by C.S. Lewis

“TO HIS BROTHER (W):

The Kilns
Feb 25th 1940

“My dear W-

Plague on this nonsense of putting back the clock which has docked me of an hour’s sleep and which for the next few weeks will give me darkness at shaving and dressing time when I want light and light after tea when it is an impertinence: and which also, by abolishing 3.30 Evensong has sent me back to mattins and the old morning rush…

Yours,

Jack”

–C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Books, Broadcasts and War 1931–1949, ed. Walter Hooper, vol. 2 (New York: HarperCollins; HarperSanFrancisco, 2004–2007), 2: 354.

“Christ leads our songs” by John Calvin

“That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.” And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again, “Behold, I and the children God has given me.” (Hebrews 2:11-13)

“It hence appears still more plainly, that the proclamation of God’s praises is always promoted by the teaching of the gospel; for as soon as God becomes known to us, His boundless praises sound in our hearts and in our ears.

And at the same time Christ encourages us by His own example publicly to celebrate them, so that they may be heard by as many as possible.

For it would not be sufficient for each one of us to thank God himself for benefits received, except we testify openly our gratitude, and thus mutually stimulate one another.

And it is a truth, which may serve as a most powerful stimulant, and may lead us most fervently to praise God, when we hear that Christ leads our songs, and that He is the chief composer of our hymns.”

–John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 66–67. Calvin is commenting on Hebrews 2:12.

“The smallest seed of faith connects with all of Christ’s mercy” by John Piper

“Let us make crystal clear at the beginning of each new day, all we will get from God as believers in Jesus is mercy. Whatever pleasures or pains may come our way in this day, they will all be mercy.

This is why Christ came into the world—“in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:9).

We were born again “according to his great mercy” (1 Peter 1:3); we pray daily “that we may receive mercy” (Hebrews 4:16); and we are now “waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (Jude 1:21).

If any Christian proves trustworthy, it is “by the Lord’s mercy [he] is trustworthy” (1 Corinthians 7:25).

In the end, when all is said and done, we will confess, “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Romans 9:16).

So as we face each day, let us humble ourselves and take the position of the blind man: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Luke 18:38).

Or the position of the leper: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us” (Luke 17:13).

And let us take heart that we will never obey God enough to put Him in debt to us. He will never owe us.

“Who has given a gift to [God] that he might be repaid?” (Romans 11:35).

And let us take heart that the smallest seed of true faith in Christ taps all the divine power of mercy—as the slightest touch of an electrical plug to the socket gets all the electricity.

Really? Did Jesus say that? He did. Consider.

In Luke 17:5, the apostles pleaded with the Lord, “Increase our faith!” And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you” (v. 6).

In other words, the issue in your Christian life and ministry is not the strength or quantity of your faith, because that is not what uproots trees. God does.

Therefore, the smallest faith that truly connects you with Christ will engage enough of His power for all you need. Moving trees is a small thing for Christ.

The issue is not perfection for Christ, but connection to Christ. So take heart, the smallest seed of faith connects with all of Christ’s mercy.

But what about your successes? When you succeed in obeying God, do you no longer need to be a supplicant of mercy? Jesus gives the answer in the next verses (Luke 17:7–10).

Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, “Come at once and sit down at table”?

Will he not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink”?

Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”

What does He mean that after doing all His commands we should still say, “We are unworthy servants”? He means, you never cease to be dependent on mercy.

Doing all we are called to do does not make us deserving in relation to God. “Unworthy” after all obedience means humans cannot earn anything good from God. If we get it, it’s mercy.

Therefore, I conclude, the fullest obedience and the smallest faith obtain the same thing from God: mercy.

A mere mustard seed of faith taps into the mercy of tree-moving power. And flawless obedience leaves us utterly dependent on mercy.

God may withhold some blessings of mercy for our good, if we stray from the path of growing faith. But even this withholding is another form of mercy.

The point is: Whatever the timing or form of God’s mercy, we never rise above the status of beneficiaries of mercy.

We are always utterly dependent on the undeserved. God never owes us anything in ourselves.

The smallest faith and the fullest obedience receive one thing: almighty mercy.

Therefore let us humble ourselves and rejoice and “glorify God for His mercy”!

O Lord, forbid that I would be so foolish
as to be a lover of wages
more than a lover of undeserved rewards.
Make me feel the sweetness of being shown mercy.
Work childlikeness deeply into my soul,
and make me find my joy and my rest
in Your free gift of grace.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.”

–John Piper, Life as a Vapor: 31 Meditations for Your Faith (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2004), 61.

“Every attribute of God is precious to believers” by Herman Bavinck

“Every attribute of God is precious to believers. They cannot do without any of them.

They desire no other God than the only true God, who has revealed Himself in Christ, and they glory in all His perfections in truth.

Their adoration, their love, their thanksgiving, and praise are aroused not only by God’s grace and love but also by His holiness and righteousness, not only by God’s goodness but also by His omnipotence, not only by His communicable but also His incommunicable attributes.

Now, when we attribute supreme perfection to God, we thereby acknowledge that all the perfections we discover either positively or negatively in observing God’s creatures belong absolutely and preeminently, that is, to the highest degree, to God.

This implies, however, that they cannot all be attributed to Him in the same sense. Some attributes belong to Him characteristically, such as eternity, simplicity, and so on, which after all are not found in creatures.

Others, such as intellect and will, belong to Him preeminently, and because a faint reflection of these can also be discerned in creatures.

Still others are ascribed to Him only figuratively, such as physical sight and hearing, because these attributes are present in Him in a divine way, not in a literal creaturely sense.

But whatever difference this may make in the way in which we must ascribe this or that attribute to God, He nevertheless remains the sum of all conceivable perfections, the highest perfection in person, infinitely far removed from all defects and limitations.”

–Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, Ed. John Bolt, and Trans. John Vriend (vol. 2; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 2: 250.

“There is no change in God Himself” by Herman Bavinck

“Indeed, the idea of becoming predicated of the divine being is of no help whatever in theology.

Not only does Scripture testify that in God there is no variation nor shadow due to change [James 1:17], but reflection on this matter also leads to the same conclusion.

Becoming presupposes a cause, for there is no becoming without a cause. But being in an absolute sense no longer permits the inquiry concerning a cause. Absolute being is because it is.

The idea of God itself implies immutability. Neither increase nor diminution is conceivable with respect to God.

He cannot change for better or worse, for He is the absolute, the complete, the true being. Becoming is an attribute of creatures, a form of change in space and time.

But God is who He is, eternally transcendent over space and time and far exalted above every creature.

He rests within Himself and is for that very reason the ultimate goal and resting place of all creatures, the Rock of their salvation, whose work is complete.

Those who predicate any change whatsoever of God, whether with respect to His essence, knowledge, or will, diminish all His attributes: independence, simplicity, eternity, omniscience, and omnipotence.

This robs God of His divine nature, and religion of its firm foundation and assured comfort.

This immutability, however, should not be confused with monotonous sameness or rigid immobility. Scripture itself leads us in describing God in the most manifold relations to all His creatures.

While immutable in Himself, He nevertheless, as it were, lives the life of His creatures and participates in all their changing states. Scripture necessarily speaks of God in anthropomorphic language.

Yet, however anthropomorphic its language, it at the same time prohibits us from positing any change in God Himself.

There is change around, about, and outside of Him, and there is change in people’s relations to Him, but there is no change in God Himself.

In fact, God’s incomprehensible greatness and, by implication, the glory of the Christian confession are precisely that God, though immutable in Himself, can call mutable creatures into being.

Though eternal in Himself, God can nevertheless enter into time and, though immeasurable in Himself, He can fill every cubic inch of space with His presence.

In other words, though He Himself is absolute being, God can give to transient beings a distinct existence of their own.

In God’s eternity there exists not a moment of time; in His immensity there is not a speck of space; in His being there is no sign of becoming.

Conversely, it is God who posits the creature, eternity which posits time, immensity which posits space, being which posits becoming, immutability which posits change.

There is nothing intermediate between these two classes of categories: a deep chasm separates God’s being from that of all creatures.

It is a mark of God’s greatness that He can condescend to the level of His creatures and that, though transcendent, He can dwell immanently in all created beings.

Without losing Himself, God can give Himself, and, while absolutely maintaining His immutability, He can enter into an infinite number of relations to His creatures.”

–Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, Ed. John Bolt, and Trans. John Vriend (vol. 2; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 2: 158-159.

“Faithfulness is just saying an ongoing ‘amen’ to the commitments that we’ve made” by Sinclair Ferguson

“We’ve come today to the third and last triad of graces in Paul’s description of the fruit of the Spirit: faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Today, we’ll look at faithfulness.

It’s always been interesting to me that the words for faithfulness and faith in the Old Testament have the same root as the word amen.

Faithfulness is just saying an ongoing “amen” to the commitments that we’ve made.

God has given us a model of what this means, and we see it perfectly expressed in the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus.

The author of Hebrews tells us that, as the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus was faithful to Him who appointed Him (Heb. 3:2).

He was determined to say “amen” in His own life to every aspect of His Father’s covenant promises and covenant commands.

Indeed, Paul says that all the promises of God find an answering “Yes” and “Amen” in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 1:20).

This was especially true when it came to the hardest-to-keep promise of all: going to the cross to die for our sins.

When Paul says that Jesus became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross, He is actually describing Jesus’ faithfulness.

And because Jesus has been faithful to that promise, we can be sure He will be faithful to every one of His promises.

And it’s in light of His faithfulness that you and I are called to be faithful.

As I was searching my mind for another word to convey what faithfulness looks like in daily life, my wife, Dorothy, happened to use the word inconsistent during a casual conversation. That switched on a light for me.

Faithfulness means being consistent, reliable, trustworthy, and dependable.

Consistent in our work because someone is paying us for it.

Consistent in our churches to the vows we’ve taken to the Lord and to each other.

Consistent in our friendships.

Consistent with our wife or husband. Consistent with our children and grandchildren.

And consistent and faithful to the Savior who has been so perfectly consistent and faithful to us.

We need the help of the Holy Spirit to be consistent and faithful in all our relationships.

Paul isn’t telling us here that we’re to depend on our own resources.

Rather, he is telling us about a quality that the Spirit of Christ produces in us precisely because He is the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So today, let’s trust the Holy Spirit to produce faithfulness in us as He works in our hearts and lives to make us more and more like our Lord Jesus.”

–Sinclair B. Ferguson, Things Unseen: One Year of Reflections on the Christian Life (Sanford, FL: Ligonier, 2024), 74-75.

“The sovereign perfection of God” by Stephen Charnock

“The sovereign perfection of God (Matthew 5:48) is an invincible bar to any change in Him; for whichever way you cast it for a change, His supreme excellency is impaired and nulled by it.”

–Stephen Charnock, “On the Immutability of God,” in The Existence and Attributes of God, ed. Mark Jones, Updated and Unabridged, vol. 1 & 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 1: 494.

“Our surety and our substitute” by J.C. Ryle

“Consider now: there were two things to be done before guilty man could be saved. The law was to be fulfilled, for we had all come short of it; justice was to be satisfied, for we had all deserved punishment.

And how was this effected? Hearken! The Lord Jesus Christ, pitying our lost estate, covenanted and engaged to become our surety and substitute; and when the fulness of time was come, He left the bosom of His Father and took upon Him the form of a servant here on earth, being born of the Virgin Mary.

In that form, by a sinless obedience to the whole law, He wrought out and brought in a perfect and everlasting righteousness, and this He is both willing and ready to bestow on all who will put their trust in Him.

And more than this: to complete the mighty work He consented to offer up Himself in our place as a victim to the wrath of God, to suffer instead of us, to bear that punishment which we had deserved,—and this He did by dying on the cross.

It was there He satisfied the claims of justice. It was there He paid the heavy debt written against our names.

It was there that God the Father laid upon Him the iniquity of us all, and made His soul a sacrifice for sin.

It was there that He redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.

Here, then, you see the plan of salvation which is offered to all the world. The believing sinner’s guilt is taken away and laid upon Christ, for He has carried our transgressions, and all the merit of Christ’s life and death, and all the value of His sufferings, are then made over to the sinner.

But see how great and glorious is this exchange between Jesus and our souls: the Father sees us now as members of His dear Son, in whom He is well pleased.

He deals with us as if we had never sinned, as if we had ourselves fulfilled all righteousness.

He looks on us as one with Christ, and acknowledges us as dear children and heirs of eternal glory.

Do I say more than Scripture warrants? I think not. Listen to St. Paul: “God hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Are not these words strong? But so it is. Christ was accounted as a sinner, and therefore punished for us: we are accounted as righteous, and therefore glorified in Him. He was accounted as a sinner, and therefore He was condemned; we are accounted as righteous in Him, and therefore justified.

God’s law has been satisfied, and now we may be saved. Sin has been punished, and now sinners may go free. God has shown Himself a just God, and yet He can be the Saviour of guilty men.

Beloved, are not these things wonderful? Are not these glad tidings to the labouring and heavy laden? The Lord Himself is our RIGHTEOUSNESS.

Who is there among you that is groaning under the burden of sin, trembling under a sense of innumerable transgressions? Fear not, but come to Jesus; He has paid your debt in full; believe, and you shall be free.

Who is there among you that is tried with manifold temptations—slipping, stumbling, walking in darkness and seeing no light, and often ready to say with David, “I shall one day perish”?

Fear not, but look to Jesus; He has secured your entrance into heaven; He has fought and won the battle for you. The Lord is our righteousness.

This shall be our defence and plea, when earth and its works are burned up, and the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and the Chief Shepherd shall appear to judge the sons of men.

Who shall lay anything then to the charge of those who have laid hold on Christ? Shall any one presume to say they have not done everything required? The Lord, we will answer, is our righteousness; He is our substitute; we have done nothing, but He hath done everything; He is our all in all.

And who is he that can condemn us? shall death or hell or Satan lay a finger on us, and dare to say that justice has not been satisfied? The Lord, we will answer, is our righteousness; we have indeed sinned, but Christ hath suffered; we have deserved wrath, but Jesus hath died and shed His blood to make atonement in our stead.

‘Blessed,’ says holy David, ‘is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.’ (Psalm 32:1-2)

‘I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,’ says Isaiah; ‘my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.’ (Isaiah 61:10)”

–J.C. Ryle, The Christian Race and Other Sermons (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2024), 78-80.

“The Lord our Righteousness” by J.C. Ryle

“The Lord Jesus Christ has done what we ought to have done, and suffered what we ought to have suffered.

He has taken our place and become our substitute both in life and death, and all for the sake of miserable, corrupt, ungrateful beings like ourselves.

Oh, is not His name then rightly called, ‘The Lord our Righteousness‘ (Jeremiah 23:6)?”

–J.C. Ryle, The Christian Race and Other Sermons (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2024), 77.