Salvation

I heard a comment recently from one of the young men in our church that gave me pause for thought. He said, ‘I don’t think I have ever heard a sermon about assurance.’ My initial reaction was to frantically cast my mind back over the last 40 years trying to remember if I myself had ever addressed...

Satan downplays the seriousness of sin so that we think it poses no danger to our soul. “But it's such a harmless sin," he tells us, “It's so small. No one will be hurt. It's just a little pride, a little worldliness, a little compromise, a little sexual immorality. Only you and God will know, and...

Too often the idea of ‘good works’ has been the Cinderella of Reformed discussion. Wanting (quite rightly) to distance ourselves from any kind of meritorious implications attached to them (which lies at the heart of the Roman Catholic view) we have perhaps over-corrected our stance to our own loss...

As heirs of the Reformation, we rightly champion salvation by grace alone. If God was not gracious to us we would have no hope. The simplest definition of grace is: favor extended where wrath is deserved. Others have made the definition in the form of an acronym: God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense...

“And he said, Nay; but I will die here.” — 1 Kings 2:30 In his sermon on the above text, Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) points out that participation in outward Church activities and ordinances cannot save, no more than Joab was saved by clinging to the temple altar. But Spurgeon then turns to...

Westminster divine Anthony Burgess addressed Antinomianism in his book Vindiciae Legis: A Vindication of the Moral Law and the Covenants . In a passing comment, Burgess noted that God may have allowed “Antinomian errour” to grow in popularity in order rebuke Protestant ministers. He claimed that “...

He surely saw him from the boat. The Lord watched the erratic and unstable demoniac who was as unruly as the storm he had recently silenced. The man’s appearance alone made him an imposing figure against the otherwise peaceful shores of the Garasenes. One can’t help but wonder if the disciples...

David Clarkson and Soul Idolatry, Part 2: The Remedy Applied Our last post identified the problem of soul idolatry from David Clarkson's book, Soul Idolatry Excludes Men out of Heaven . For Clarkson, soul idolatry occurred in general “when the mind and heart is set upon anything more than God.”...

Augustus Montague Toplady and His Defense of the Gospel Augustus Montague Toplady was one of the many young people who turned to Christ through the ministry of John Wesley. He was also one of the many who called Wesley out on his departure from the teachings of the Reformed confessions. Effectual...

A doption has been occasionally undervalued and neglected in church history. Yet Paul treated adoption as the end to which the Father predestined his elect (Eph. 1:5). Adoption is the sum of our privileges, or our “inheritance,” in Christ. Our adoption is in Jesus Christ, the natural son, that we...