reformed blogging.

Hence, the test of Christian knowledge is not how much we understand, but how far our knowledge is affecting our lives.
It is one thing to possess a clear intellectual grasp of the doctrines of grace, it is quite another to experience the grace of the doctrines in a spiritual way. It is one thing to believe the Scriptures are the inspired and inerrant Word of God, it is another for the soul to live under the awe of their Divine authority, realising that one day we shall be judged by them. It is one thing to be convinced that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, it is another to surrender to His sceptre and live in personal subjection to Him. What does it profit me to be convinced that God is omnipotent, unless I am learning to lean upon His mighty arm? What avail is it to me that I am assured of God’s omniscience unless the knowledge that His eye is ever upon me acts as a salutary restraint to my actions? What does it advantage me to know that without holiness no man shall see the Lord, unless I am making the acquirement of holiness my chief concern and aim!
… see to it that your hearts are duly affected, so that the truth will regulate all your conduct.
- A.W. Pink, An Exposition of Hebrews, 982-3.

“Hebrews 11 is a divine mandate to read Christian biography. The unmistakable implication of the chapter is that if we hear about the faith of our forefathers (and mothers), we will “lay aside every weight, and sin” and “run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1). If we asked the author, “How shall we stir one another up to love and good works?” (10:24), his answer would be: “Through encouragement from the living (10:25) and the dead (11:1-40).” Christian biography is the means by which the body life of the church cuts across the centuries.” - John Piper, Brothers We Are Not Professionals, 89-90.

Some good Christian Biographies (in no particular order, except for no. 1):

1. The Life and Times of George Whitefield (vol. 1 & 2) - Arnold A. Dallimore — (I think it safe to say that these two volumes changed my life. Dallimore’s pastoral heart comes through his writing so that the two volumes are more than mere biography.)

2. Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography - Iain H. Murray (classic!)

3. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Vol. 1 & 2) - Iain H. Murray (comparable to Whitefield’s biography in richness!)

4. The Life of A.W. Pink - Iain H. Murray (the life of a brilliant man, who is not too well-known. Good read –like all of Murray’s biographies!)

5. The Life and Diary of David Brainerd - Jonathan Edwards (can be dry at times, but it is the realness of the biography, that God would work through an earnest and melancholy man like Brainerd, that makes it so good (an understatement)).

6. Here I Stand: The Life of Martin Luther - Roland H. Bainton (classic!)

7. To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson - Courtney Anderson (Anderson was a screenwriter so some parts of the bio seem really dramatic, especially in describing Judson’s childhood. Yet, the book is well-written and good!)

8. William Tyndale: A Biography - David Daniell (written in a scholarly manner. gain a good history of the english reformation as well as appreciation for our English bible through reading this. Reaading this will make you so thankful for the Reformation!)

9. John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides - John G. Paton (makes for an easy and fun read since Paton writes so well! Like reading an adventure book.)

10. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners - John Bunyan (another classic!)

The Reformers held to the doctrine of Sola Fide or justification by faith alone which means that God saves us, not on the basis of any deeds we have done, but on the basis of faith alone in Christ alone. We are properly saved through Christ’s mediating work on our behalf, that He died as our ransom and sacrifice. He was put in our stead and by faith our sins are placed on Him and His righteousness becomes our own. Yet they also believed in the absolute necessity of works. Not as grounds of justification but as a result of it. True faith will produce fruit. Or as Jonathan Edwards would put it, “God would have it deeply impressed on all, that good works are the only satisfying evidence that we are truly possessed of grace in the soul.”

The issue then arises, how do we rightly judge ourselves? For Scripture indicates that no one is sinless, and if anyone claims that he is, he is a liar. Yet, we are also told that “no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” How do we reconcile these passages?

Some have gone to one extreme of ruling out the necessity of works, saying that verbal profession is enough, while others have gone to the other end of works-based righteousness. Neither extreme is scripturally warranted, nor glorifying to God. How, then, do we walk the fine line between antinomianism (lawlessness) and legalism? How do we gain assurance without ruling out good works and without depending on our works? We work, knowing that we have been saved by Christ’s righteousness. A.W. Pink rightly says that “the quickest road to full assurance is full obedience.” Yet, we do often fail in obedience and the Christian who understands that the Law is more than external but a matter of the heart will always find sin in himself.

To remedy this, Jonathan Edwards provides seven guidelines so that true Christians do not despair in self-examination:

1. Has your supposed grace such influence as to render those things in which you have failed of holy practice, loathsome, grievous, and humbling to you?

2. Do you carry about with you, habitually a dread of sin?

3. Are you sensible of the beauty and pleasantness of the ways of holy practice?

4. Do you find that you do particularly esteem and delight in those practices that may, by way of eminence, be called Christian practices, in distinction from mere worldly morality?

5. Do you hunger and thirst after a holy practice?

6. Do you make a business of endeavoring to live holily, and as God would have you, in all respects?

7. Do you greatly desire that you may know all that is your duty?

If you can honestly meet these tests, then you have the evidence that your grace is of the kind that tends to holy practice, and growth in it. And though you may fall, through God’s mercy you shall rise again. He that hath begun a good work in you will carry it on until the day of Jesus Christ. Though you may be at times faint, yet, if pursuing, you shall be borne on from strength to strength, and kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. - Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, pp. 246-50

We ought strive for the full assurance of faith, without contenting ourselves with anything unbiblical. Crucify any notion in yourself that God will be had by anyone immoral or ungodly , as well as the notion that you, by your own works can meet the standards set by an infinitely holy God. Seek only to come to God by the mediation of Christ Jesus, knowing that a true faith in Him will produce a righteous and holy fruit.

“It is in the nature of faith to mortify, not only corrupt and sinful lusts, but our natural affections, and their most vehement inclinations, though in themselves innocent, if they are any way uncompliant with duties of trial of the sincerity and power of faith. Our lives, parents, wives, lawful objects of our natural affections. But when they, or any of them, stand in the way of God’s commands, if they are hindrances to the doing or suffering any thing according to His will, faith doth not only mortify, weaken and take off that love, but gives us a comparative hatred of them” - John Owen

“David professeth himself to be a stranger and a pilgrim, not only when he was hunted like a partridge upon the mountains, but when he was in his palace, and in his best estate. We are not to renounce our comforts, and throw away God’s blessings; but we are to renounce our carnal affections. We cannot get out of the world when we please, but we must get the world out of us. It is a great trial of grace to refuse the opportunity; it is the most difficult lesson to learn how to abound, more difficult than to learn how to want, and to be abased; to have comforts, and yet to have the heart weaned from comforts; not to be necessarily mortified, but to be voluntarily mortified.” - Thomas Manton

“It is easy to be good when we cannot be otherwise, or when all temptations to the contrary are out of the way. All the seeming goodness there is in so many, they owe it to the want of a temptation and to the want of an opporuntiy of doing otherwise.” - Thomas Manton

“It is not the absence of temptation, but the resisting of and prevailing over them which evidences the efficacy of indwelling grace. ” - Arthur W. Pink

“We are hence to conclude that there is no place for us among God’s children except we renounce the world, and that there will be for us no inheritance in Heaven except we become pilgrims on earth.” - John Calvin

“The terrible thing is that in these degenerate times the consciences of thousands have been drugged by preachers (whom it is greatly to be feared are themselves spiritually dead, and helping forward the work of Satan) that have presented “the eternal security of the saints” in such an unscriptural way, as to convey to their poor hearers the impression that, provided they once “accepted Christ as their personal Saviour” Heaven is now their certain portion, that guilt can nevermore rest upon them, and that no matter what sins they may commit nothing can possibly jeopardize their eternal interests. The consequence has been — and this is no imaginary fear of ours, but a patent fact of observation on every side — that a carnal security has been imparted, so that in the midst of fleshly gratification and worldly living it is, humanly speaking, quite impossible to disturb their false peace or terrify their conscience.” - Arthur W. Pink, An Exposition of Hebrews, p.618

“There are many who give no sign of Gods law being written in their hearts, who nevertheless claim to have had their sins forgiven by Him; but such are sadly deceived. Scripture entitles none to regard themselves as Divinely pardoned save those who have been saved from self-will and self-pleasing.” -Arthur W. Pink, An Exposition of Hebrews, p.581

While going through a season of what Pink referred to as “the worst ones spiritually I have passed through for many years,” a time when he considered his gratitude towards God as “mechanical and lifeless,” he wrote in his “Studies in the Scriptures”:

It is true that a gloomy disposition may affect the mind with doleful thoughts, that unpleasant surroundings are apt to dampen the natural spirits, that trying circumstances tend to harass, and that lack of fellowship with happy saints may sadden the heart. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit is not limited by such things as those, and when He takes the things of Christ and shows them unto us we cannot but rejoice. - p. 155-6, The Life of Arthur W. Pink - Iain H. Murray

During this time of his life, the following was a favorite verse:

Ill that He blesses is our good,
And unblest good is ill,
And all is right that seems most wrong
If it be His sweet will.