Many upcoming quotes from Warfield come from his writings against perfectionism – the idea that we can be free from sin. Pelagianism, referenced below, is that view that the will is totally free to do good such that grace is bestowed on those who merit it.
Pelagianism unfortunately does not have to wait to be imported from New Haven, and does not require inculcating – it is the instinctive thought of the natural man. -B.B. Warfield, Oberlin Perfectionism
Hundreds of miles wide in its swath of destruction you have no hopes of outrunning or outmaneuvering it. It’s as though Jupiter’s red spot were condensed, concentrated, amplified and transported to earth. The rain falls fat and thick; so thick the atmosphere seems an ocean. Breathing is imagined to be an impossible labor in the midst of this storm. That’s assuming you would even be allowed time enough to take a breath. Hail stones the size of boulders fall with such force they are splintering redwoods. Deep purple and wickedly splintering lightning bolts strike repeatedly within mere feet of one another. Families of F5 tornadoes populate the storm liberally, like hordes of Okies fleeing in the midst of the Dust Bowl.
Yet in your blind terror you find an enchanted cave, or rather it is almost as if it found you. There is as it were an invisible barrier that the storm cannot pass. This does not cause you to belittle or mock the storm. You still fear it. It is your dread. But now your fear is mixed with delight. The cave both allows you to reverence the storm more, for now you more fully can observe its glory, and to delight in it more for you can observe all of this in complete safety. Fear has not been eradicated but transformed into that holy love called reverence. One deep mark of this reverence is a rejoicing and delighting in the cave.
This cleft is Christ, and the storm is the glory of God’s holiness. But Jesus has promised that as we identify with Him we will be persecuted. In this cave there is a serpent. He is a wounded serpent. He is a dying serpent. But He is a dangerous serpent, and he has minions. The whole world is under his sway. But you dare not flee the snake to take your chances with the storm, for you know this; the snake could never defeat the the storm, but the storm has already mostly done in the snake, and is sure to finish the job.
If you love the cleft of Jesus, and reverence the storm of God’s holiness you will not be afraid of the serpent’s threats.
[Adapted from an illustration in The Pleasures of God by John Piper]
The inestimable value of the peace of God is apparent next from the reasonableness and surety of this peace. There may be a peace which is not reasonable; a peace which is not assured. The worldly man’s peace on which he strives to stay himself is of this kind; the peace of a drunkard in a house on fire, the peace of a lunatic who fancies himself a king, the peace of a fool who cries Peace! Peace! when there is no peace. Such a peace can be maintained only by shutting our eyes to what we are and where we are and the relations that actually exist about us and between us and God. Any accident that calls us to ourselves destroys it. Any ray of true light arising in our conscience extinguishes it. And when evil and death come, where is it then? But God’s peace is a rational peace, and a stable peace. It arises not from shutting our eyes to our real state, but from opening them to it, and the more our eyes are open and the more we realize our real condition, understanding what Christ is, what we are, and what He has done for us, the more peace flows into our hearts. The more searching the light we turn on the scene, the more glorious the prospect. Light turns a false peace into torment. Light awakes in the countenance of the true peace, happy smiles. -B.B. Warfield, Peace with God
When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
If you are not zealous for the glory of Christ, but only concerned for your own skin, this promise does not relieve anxiety, it causes it. Only someone burning with the prayer, “hallowed be Thy name,” derives any peace from this promise.
This is not an exhortation to preach extemporaneously as some have made it. There is nothing wrong with extemporaneous preaching per se, as long as it is expository preaching, but that is not what this text is about. Nor is this a promise that we will be given clever words to weasel our way out of pain, but rather that we will be given bold words despite threat of pain. This is a promise for anointed preaching when persecuted.
Preaching in the power of the Spirit is always the goal of all Christians when they herald Christ, and of course Christ promises to be with His church as they go forward faithful to the great commission (Matthew 28:20), but to those who go zealous for His glory to the hard places of the earth He gives this special promise of anointed preaching. Do you want the Spirit to anoint your preaching? Go to the hard places of the earth in zeal for His name and compassion for souls and you are promised it! We see several instance of this in the book of Acts, here are just a couple:
Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. -Acts 6:9-10
On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’ Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’ – Acts 4:5-12
This promise relieves anxiety only if you treasure Jesus more than life. It gives peace only if your greatest fear is belittling, disowning, or maligning the name of Jesus. This promise is precious to you if Jesus is precious to you.
If worship is not our goal, we will not be martyr-minded Christians faithful to the great commission, and if we are not martyr-minded Christians, we are not worshippers of God, but of our own lives.
His is not a figurative fatherhood;He is not addressed as Father because we find some things in Him which remind us of the tenderness and love of our parents and so apply to Him, as in a figure, the name we have learned to love in them. On the contrary, His is the normal fatherhood; His is not derived by figure from theirs, but theirs is the poor and broken shadow of His. He is the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: the gloss, though a gloss, is a correct interpretation, and the closeness and intimacy and love of that relation is the norm from which every fatherhood in heaven and earth is named. What we know of fatherhood—dear as the name has become to us through our earthly relations—is but a faint shadow of what He, the true Father, first of Christ and then of us in Christ, is to His children. -B.B. Warfield, The Fullness of God
A Christian seeking significance, meaning, or purpose is a contradiction. It would make more sense for Winston Churchill in the midst of the Second World War to think, “I really wish I had a task, a mission, something to do.” As Christians we don’t get to live where we want, we don’t get to proclaim what we want or how we want, and we don’t get to determine the response to our message or how we should respond to those responses. We get something infinitely better, cosmically bigger, and eternally glorious. We don’t need to find our own mission, Jesus has folded us into His.This mission isn’t elective Christianity for God’s nerdy children, but essential Christianity for all His children.
Contrary to any impressions you may have gained on your high-school mission trip, Jesus does not send us as an affluent and indulgent father might send his bohemian child to venture the world aimlessly in an attempt to discover himself. Jesus doesn’t just send, He instructs. He tells us where to go, what to do, and how to do it. We don’t make or discover our own mission, He gives us one.
His mission is not ours, but our mission is His. We don’t saunter up to Jesus and co-opt His mission, saying, “I’m here to help, and here’s what I’m going to do.” We are not co-redeemers. Jesus’ mission was not just to proclaim the gospel, but to be the gospel. Our mission is not to be the gospel, but to proclaim the gospel Jesus is. We don’t saunter up to Jesus; He comes after us, calls us out of darkness, and makes us messengers of light. He makes us ambassadors such that when we herald the gospel, the glory of Christ is set before souls calling for a response of submission or rebellion. We herald something so glorious that an opportunity for great salvation or great sin is set before them (2 Corinthians 2:14-16). When we proclaim the good news, we must also share the bad news – that they abide under the wrath of God, and that should they reject this message, the wrath they will have to endure will be even greater (Matthew 10:15). This is so because as ambassadors sent by the King they are not responding to us, rather, God is making His appeal through us (2 Corinthians 5:20).
Jesus’ mission is over, under, and through ours. He is over our mission calling and sending us. He is under our mission sustaining and empowering us. And He advances His kingdom not because of us, but through us.
His mission is not ours, but our mission is His. He is over, under, and working through our mission.
[Originally posted 10.27.2009. Revised 7.12.2012]
Many hesitate to tell people that they are pregnant after having experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth. They may want to wait until some point in the future when they believe things are more certain. Maybe they don’t want to get people’s hopes up only to have them decimated again. This is understandable, but I would commend to you another way. It may be a harder way, indeed an impossible way, but I believe it is a better and more Christ-exalting way.
Why we celebrate conception and not just birth:
Our deepest praise to our merciful heavenly Father, and our sincerest thanks to all who have prayed to Him for us. Please continue to pray God’s mercy on us for a safe, healthy, and joyous pregnancy and birth.
Readability: 1
Length: 126 pp
Author: Mark Dever
There is a sea of books that end with “church” telling your church what it should be. For the most part it is a sea of stupidity. Not so the books ending in “church” by Mark Dever. Mark Dever has had a more profound impact on my thinking concerning the church than anyone else. I want him to impact you thinking too.
I have recommended time and again different books by Mark Dever. Why recommend books on the church? If one is going to be a member of some organization, wouldn’t you want to know what the organization is about and what membership entails?
I am thankful that much of Devers’ material has now been compacted in the tiniest of packages so that even the member with the most sever of allergies to reading can have a solid understanding of the church. I may allow a member to opt out of reading 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, but I will implore them to read What is a Healthy Church?.
A healthy church is a congregation that increasingly reflects God’s character as his character has been revealed in his word.
Friend, what are you looking for in a church? Good music? A happening atmosphere? A traditional order of service? How about:
a group of pardoned rebels . . .
whom God wants to use to display his glory . . .
before all the heavenly host . . .
because they tell the truth about him . . .
and look increasingly just like him–holy, loving, united?One church-growth writer recently summed up his strategy on growing churches by saying, “Open the front door and close the back door.” By this he means that churches should make themselves more accessible to outsiders while also doing a better job of follow-up. These are good goals. Yet I suspect that most pastors and churches today already aspire to do this, and to a fault. So let me offer what I believe is a more biblical strategy: guard carefully the front door and open the back door. In other words, make it more difficult to join, on the one hand, and make it easier to be excluded on the other. Remember—the path to life is narrow, not broad. Doing this, I believe, will help churches to recover their divinely intended distinction from the world.
When we really believe the Gospel of the Grace of God—when we really believe that it is the power of God unto salvation, the only power of salvation in this wicked world of ours—it is a comparatively easy thing to preach it, to preach it in its purity, to preach it in the face of a scoffing, nay, of a truculent and murdering world. Here is the secret— I do not now say of a minister’s power as a preacher of God’s grace—but of a minister’s ability to preach at all this Gospel in such a world as we live in. Believe this Gospel, and you can and will preach it. Let men say what they will, and do what they will,—let them injure, ridicule, persecute, slay,— believe this Gospel and you will preach it. -B.B. Warfield, The Spirit of Faith
Jesus sees and Jesus acts, do we?
When Jesus sees the crowds He is moved with compassion. The word behind compassion has no one English equivalent. It means compassion, pity, and sympathy and more. It is a visceral, gut-grabbing kind of compassion. Why don’t we see this way? The answer – sin. Sin blinds. It can blind in numerous ways to the crowds all around us. Prejudice, racism, hatred are all obvious blinders, but selfishness, materialism, and lust are equally as effective.
God’s Word, especially the truth of the gospel, helps us to see. We have to be taught to see. We have to be sanctified to see. Other tools are helpful as well, perhaps none more so than Operation World.
So what do you see when you look at the Muslim world? The Hindu world? The Buddhist world? The materialistic, pluralistic, atheistic, humanistic world? Are you moved deeply in your gut with compassion? When you look at India do you see the largest concentration and variety of the least-reached peoples on earth? Do you even look at India? When you look at Afghanistan do you see the 48,000 mosques, the absence of even one church building, and 70 unreached peoples? When you look at Africa do you see 13 of the worlds 20 least-evangelized countries? Do you see the 240 million Bengali who comprise the largest unreached people in the world? Yet, these statistics mean nothing if we have not been gripped by the glory of the gospel, that God saves sinners, for there is no one else to save.
But Jesus not only sees, He acts. His action is a call for action. He calls for His disciples to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send laborers into His harvest. Some might see the need as so great and say, “What? Pray? That’s it?” No prayer is not to be our only action, but it is to be our first and greatest action. John Bunyan said, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” Prayer calls down heavenly firepower, the only firepower that can storm the gates of hell, advance the kingdom, and rescue captives. The greatest doers are the greatest prayers, relying on power from above and not from within. God may bless in spite of us, but when we pray we will most often get what we can do – nothing (John 15:5)! But when we pray we get what God can do. The harvest is God’s. He sends out laborers, He gathers in the nations. Prayer is our greatest weapon. Nations are won because of prayer.
But Jesus’ action doesn’t end in His calling his disciples to prayer. He then answers that prayer in authorizing and sending His disciples to proclaim and act. We must be willing to be God’s answer to our own prayers. Really we should all be the answer to this prayer, the question isn’t whether or not we should be involved in world missions, but to what extent should we be involved? Really our hearts should be burning with desire asking, “To what extent can I be involved?” We shouldn’t have to wrestle so much with going to the mission field as much as staying here.
Do you see? Do you pray? Do you act? Do you proclaim? Do you act?
Do you sing?
May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
that your way may be known on earth,
your saving power among all nations.
Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you!
– Psalm 67:1-3
No Other Boast 