External Members of the Covenant

July 28, 2014 in Baptism, Covenantal Living, Discipline, Ecclesiology, Federal Vision, Quotations, Regeneration

“So as with the other covenants, it is possible for someone to join the new covenant community externally without the new heart that defines that covenant. He may be baptized and profess Christian doctrine. But if he lives a life of sin, he shows that he does not have the new heart that is the mark of the new covenant. He has wrongly entered the covenant community and ought to be disciplined by the body. He has become a Christian externally, but without inward change.”

John Frame, Systematic Theology, p. 81.

I would add that we should read “wrongly entered the covenant community” as “entered the covenant community deficiently” not that he shouldn’t have entered the covenant community at all. Baptism welcomes us as legitimate members of the covenant community – but, in the case of an unconverted covenant member, his membership is belied by his lack of a new heart. But it wasn’t wrong to baptize him and admit him to the covenant community – for it is not our place to read the heart but to evaluate words and actions to the best of our ability.

The New Covenant is the Oldest Covenant

July 28, 2014 in Covenantal Living, Cross of Christ, Justification, Old Testament, Quotations, Trinity

“So the work of Christ is the source of all human salvation from sin: the salvation of Adam and Eve, of Noah, of Abraham, of Moses, of David, and of all God’s people in every age, past, present, or future. Everyone who has ever been saved has been saved through the new covenant in Christ. Everyone who is saved receives a new heart, a heart of obedience, through the new covenant work of Christ. So though it is a new covenant, it is also the oldest, the temporal expression of the pactum salutis [the covenant of peace between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in eternity].”

John Frame, Systematic Theology, p. 80.

Unconditional Covenants?

July 28, 2014 in Covenantal Living, Faith, Federal Vision, Justification, Quotations, Sanctification

“…all covenants require obedient faith. This is a not a condition of one covenant or another; it is essential to all human dealings with God, simply by virtue of who God is. It is a requirement of what I have called the universal covenant. Individual covenants require specific forms of obedience, but obedience itself, springing from faith, is simply a requirement of all relations between God and human beings. This requirement is implicit in the very distinction between Creator and creature….

“This emphasis on faithful obedience does not compromise grace at all. For we can never begin to earn God’s forgiveness of our sins through good works, and the blessings that God promises to Abraham are far beyond what any human being could accomplish….

“So like all the other covenants, the Abrahamic covenant is unconditional in the sense that in it God declares that he will certainly accomplish his own purpose, the blessing of the nations through Abraham. But it is conditional in that those who would receive that blessing must trust and obey. As sovereign controller, God is the God of grace. As sovereign authority, he demands obedience of his covenant partners.”

John Frame, Systematic Theology, pp. 70-71.

Justified by Faith and Love?

July 24, 2014 in Bible - NT - Galatians, Church History, Federal Vision, Justification, Quotations, Rome, Sanctification

“The right way to become a Christian is to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the observance of the law. Here we must stand, and not upon the wicked interpretation of those who say that faith justifies when love and good works are combined with it. That interpretation obscures this and similar sentences in Paul in which he clearly attributes justification solely to faith in Christ. When people hear that they should believe in Christ, yet faith only justifies if it is formed and accompanied by works of love, eventually they fall from faith and think along these lines: ‘If faith without love does not justify, then faith is empty and pointless, and only love in action justifies, for faith is nothing without love….’

“They say that faith in Christ does not make us free from sin, but only faith combined with love. this is to say that Christ leaves us in our sins and in the wrath of God and makes us guilty of eternal death, whereas if you keep the law, faith justifies you because it has works, without which faith is no help. Therefore, works justify, and not faith, they claim. What pernicious and cursed teaching is this!”

Martin Luther, Galatians, pp. 90, 93-94.

Against the Church

July 24, 2014 in Bible - NT - Galatians, Church History, Ecclesiology, Quotations, Rome, Tradition, Word of God

“No one willingly says that the church is wrong, and yet it is necessary to say that it is wrong if it teaches anything besides or against God’s Word.”

Martin Luther, Galatians, p. 59.

The Church is our Mother and to be treated with respect and honor. But the Church is to honor the Word of our Father. When the Church fails to do so, then the disciple must follow the Father for the sake of the Mother. This is how Luther conceived his calling. Unfortunately many modern self-proclaimed “reformers” do not have a proper respect for their Mother and make themselves the sole arbiters of truth rather than the Word. Luther writes earlier in his commentary:

“Since the church is such a soft and tender thing, and so soon overthrown, we must be quick to watch against these people with their mad ideas. When they have given two sermons or have read a few pages of the Holy Scriptures, they reckon they are in control of all learners and teachers and are answerable to no human authority. You can find many such people today, bold and impudent persons who because they have not been tried by temptations have never learned to fear God, nor had any taste or feeling of grace. Because they are empty of the Holy Spirit, they teach what they like best and such things as are plausible and pleasant to the common people. Then the uneducated multitude, longing to hear news, soon joins them.” p. 47

I like it!

July 24, 2014 in Bible - NT - Galatians, Justification, Law and Gospel, Quotations, Reformation, Sanctification

“When I first took upon me the defense of the Gospel, I remember a worthy man saying to me, ‘I like it, this doctrine you preach, because it gives glory and everything else to God alone, and nothing to man, for we cannot attribute too much glory, goodness, mercy, and so on to God.'”

Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), pp. 58-59.

Sin in our Context

June 26, 2014 in King Jesus, Quotations, Sin, Sovereignty of God, Word of God

“Only 17 percent of Americans define sin in relation to God, so for the overwhelming majority sin has become a trivial matter, no more serious than having violated some church rule about something quite inconsequential… [But] Sin is all about taking issue with God, defying him, refusing to submit to him, and displacing him from the center of our existence… We imagine that within ourselves we have power enough, wisdom enough, and strength enough to live in security, in the fullness of happiness, as we want to live, amidst all the conflicts and opportunities of life… But all expressions of sin break apart what God has put together. Sin began by breaking apart our relation to God, and from this followed every other breach that has left life in pain, confusion, and disarray.”

David Wells, The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World, pp. 102-104.

The Lord of Glory

June 23, 2014 in Bible - NT - 1 Corinthians, Bible - NT - John, Church History, Cross of Christ, King Jesus, Quotations, Trinity

“When the Apostle says of the Jews that they crucified the Lord of Glory, and when the Son of man being on earth affirms that the Son of man was in heaven at the same instant, there is in these two speeches that mutual [sharing] before mentioned. In the one, there is attributed to God or the Lord of Glory death, whereof Divine nature is not capable; in the other ubiquity unto man which human nature admitteth not. Therefore by the Lord of Glory we must needs understand the whole person of Christ, who being Lord of Glory, was indeed crucified, but not in that nature for which he is termed the Lord of Glory. In like manner by the Son of man the whole person of Christ must necessarily be meant, who being man upon earth, filled heaven with his glorious presence, but not according to that nature for which the title of man is given Him.”

Hooker as quoted footnote 3 of Cassian’s Seven Books in NPNF, p. 577.

Eternal Father, Eternal Son

June 23, 2014 in Christmas, Church History, King Jesus, Quotations, Trinity

“Tell me then, before the Lord Jesus Christ was born of His mother Mary, had God a Son or had He not? You cannot deny that He had, for never yet was there either a son without a father, or a father without a son: because as a son is so called with reference to a father, so is a father so named with reference to a son.” 

John Cassian (c. 360-485), The Seven Books of John Cassian on the Incarnation of our Lord, Against Nestorius, NPNF, p. 574.