How can it be possible for guilt to be transferred from one person to another? How can it be possible for Jesus Christ, the sinless one, to bear away the guilt of me, a sinner?
In his book Scandalous Don Carson reminds us of an illustration that is quite often used by preachers: a judge pronounces a guilty sentence on a criminal. Then he steps down from the bench, takes off his robes, and takes the person’s place in prison or writes out a cheque to cover the fine.…
Paul describes, in vv15-24, a high level of emotional turmoil. But who is the “I” of this passage? Is it Paul himself, or someone else? And is the state he describe that of a believer, or an unbeliever; a regenerate, or an unregenerate person?
It is true, as Moo says, that what Paul says about the law still amounts to much the same thing, whatever conclusion one arrives at: ‘One can preach this paragraph, in its basic intention, without even making a definite identification of the ‘ego’.’ …
I wonder how far back you can trace your family tree? Not many of us can rival the claim of Canadian furniture-maker Michael Ibsen, who is the nearest known relative of Richard III, who died at the battle of Bosworth in 1483.
But did you know that, in fact, each of us is a member of one or other of two very ancient families? These families are discussed by Paul in Romans 5.
At the head of each of these two families stands a representative. …
Text: Acts 4:32-5:16
It’s a shocking story. What is our gut reaction?
Disbelief? (a God of love wouldn’t do such a thing)
Dismay? (I’m no better than this pair. If only you knew what impure thoughts, what insincere prayers, what resentful attitudes I’m capable of…)
Collusion: they had hatched this plan together v2.
Deceit: their sin was not in keeping some of the money back. (Selling off houses and land was neither universal nor compulsory). …
It has often been thought, in evangelical circles, that Christian conversion is normally preceded by intense conviction of sin and awareness of one’s perilous state outside of Christ. This has been documented Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley in their recent book, Prepared by Grace, for Grace: The Puritans on God’s Ordinary Way of Leading Sinners to Christ, and is discussed here by Donald Macleod.
The template is summarised by Jonathan Edwards: ‘God makes men sensible of their misery before he reveals his mercy and love.’ …
William Spurstowe (1605-1666), along with other Puritan writers, catalogued many of Satan’s devices, and indicated the remedies that the Christian should take:-
Device 1 – Satan leads us from lesser sins to greater.
Remedy – ‘Do not give the devil a foothold’ (Eph 4:27). If you let the serpent’s head into the house, the whole body will soon follow. Do not trivialise ‘lesser’ sins: ‘the least sin is contrary to the law of God, the nature of God, the being of God, and the glory of God’ (Brooks).…
In Evangelical Truth (p87) John Stott highlights a report, commissioned in 1945 by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher and written by a group of Anglican Catholics with the aim of examining the causes of the current deadlock in Catholic-Protestant dialogue.
The report is entitled Catholicity: A Study in the Conflict of Christian Traditions in the West, and is available in full here. The authors accused evangelicals of emphasising the doctrine of grace in such a way as to sacrifice the doctrine of the image of God:-
Recent re-thinking about the doctrine of justification throws up a related question about the final judgment:-
Are we warranted to say that we are justified by faith, but are judged by works? The very idea seems to undermine the grace of God and to take away with one hand what has so freely been given with the other.
…‘Here [in Rom 2:1-16] is the first statement about justification in Romans, and lo and behold it affirms justification according to works!
Few Christians are willing to do any sustained thinking about sin. Of course, evangelical preachers will mention it from time to time. After all, they need to convince their hearers that they are ‘sound’. But they will feel under intense pressure from those same hearers to move quickly and as smoothly as possible from anything to do with sin and judgment to a positive and uplifting message about God’s love.
The fact is, that for most modern Christians the doctrine of the love of God has become the one great ‘givens’, the unargued and unarguable axiom. …
