The Weakest Believer

There is not the meanest, the weakest, the poorest believer on the earth, but Christ prizes him more than all the world besides. 

--John Owen, Communion with God (Christian Focus, 2007), 218

Revelation 22

My first day in the new earth will look something like this.

Not the Doing, But the Resting In

Should Christians be earnest about building into their lives the disciplines of prayer, giving, Bible meditation, church involvement, regular confession of sin, etc? Does such earnestness jeopardize one's grasp of the gospel?

I am increasingly convinced that healthy spiritual disciplines and healthy gospel-centeredness rise and fall together.

In Edward Fisher's The Marrow of Modern Divinity, the character Evangelista (= mature Christian) is explaining to Nomista (= legalist) that upholding the full and free gospel of grace does not undercut violent-if-need-be development of habitual spiritual exercise: 

Mistake me not, I pray, in imagining that I speak against the doing of these things [religious exercises], for I do them all myself, but against resting in the doing of them, the which I desire not to do. (p. 257)

Now there's a sentence for all of us who have given the current gospel-mega-surge any thought at all, whether of cynicism or of exultation.

Evangelista goes on to explain why this distinction is important:

Man's poor soul is not only kept from rest in God by means of sensuality, but also by means of formality. If Satan cannot keep us from rest in God by feeding our senses with our mother Eve's apple, then he attempts to do it by blinding our eyes, and so hindering us from seeing the paths of the gospel. If he cannot keep us in Egypt by the flesh-pots of sensuality, then  will he make us wander in the wilderness of religious and rational formality. (ibid)

The Scope of Redemption Is as Big as the Scope of Creation

Mike Williams, Professor of Systematic Theology at Covenant Seminary and author of the wonderful and needed book Far as the Curse Is Found:

Many of our students come to us having been carefully nurtured and discipled in the biblical story and have already begun to lay hold of the breadth of it. Many others, however, come only with the story of the larger culture or that of popular Christian culture or with stories that invite them to see the Christian faith as being about and relevant to only their private lives—a spiritual existence that is always to be distinguished from the life of the body, the material world, and the work-a-day world of human social existence. Students are often more than a bit surprised to hear an understanding of the gospel and the Christian life that embraces the entirety of their lives, indeed, the whole of God’s creation.

Putting the issue in the most explicit terms, the scope of God’s redemption in Christ is as big as the scope of God’s creative work. The God who sent his Son to die for me is the God who created all things in the first place, and His redemptive goal is nothing less than to push sin out of every inch and aspect of His creation. I have been redeemed in Christ for a purpose: to be a redemptive agent in the reclamation of “all things.” We should not miss what is at stake here. God is jealous for his works. He surrenders nothing to the forces of sin and death. If the Kingdom of God stands for the realization of God’s good will in the world (an affirmation and living out of the way things ought to be) then the loving grace of God lays claim to all things, destroying the Devil’s work and returning every bit of God’s world—every aspect, place, and thought—to its rightful Lord.

Amen.

The Main Reason Christians Grow So Slowly

Archibald Alexander (1772-1851), founder of Princeton Seminary:

It seems desirable to ascertain, as precisely as we can, the reasons why Christians commonly are of so diminutive a stature and of such feeble strength in their religion.

When persons are truly converted they always are sincerely desirous to make rapid progress in piety; and there are not wanting exceeding great and gracious promises of aid to encourage them to go forward with alacrity. Why then is so little advancement made? Are there not some practical mistakes very commonly entertained, which are the cause of this slowness of growth?

I think there are, and will endeavour to specify some of them.

And first, there is a defect in our belief of the freeness of divine grace.

To exercise unshaken confidence in the doctrine of gratuitous pardon is one of the most difficult things in the world; and to preach this doctrine fully without verging towards antinomianism is no easy task, and is therefore seldom done. But Christians cannot but be lean and feeble when deprived of the proper nutriment. It is by faith, that the spiritual life is made to grow; and the doctrine of free grace, without any mixture of human merit, is the only true object of faith.

Christians are too much inclined to depend on themselves, and not to derive their life entirely from Christ. There is a spurious legal religion, which may flourish without the practical belief in the absolute freeness of divine grace, but it possesses none of the characteristics of the Christian's life. . . . Even when the true doctrine is acknowledged, in theory, often it is not practically felt and acted on. The new convert lives upon his frames, rather than on Christ; and the older Christian still is found struggling in his own strength . . . and then he sinks into a gloomy despondency. . . .

Here, I am persuaded, is the root of the evil; and until religious teachers inculcate clearly, fully, and practically, the grace of God as manifested in the gospel, we shall have no vigorous growth of piety among professing Christians. 

--Archibald Alexander, Thoughts on Religious Experience (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1844), 201-2