Blog 208: 4.14.9 – 4.14.13
Lest we think that we can stir up the faith required to receive the sacraments in a worthy fashion, God grants us his Spirit to accompany his Word and sacrament…
Sean Lucas
Blog 207: 4.14.4 – 4.14.8
Following on his dictum that word and sign belong together, Calvin insists, “The sacrament requires preaching to begat faith.” Far from the Romanist understanding that the mere “mumbling” of the…
Tony Merida’s Faithful Preaching
One of the great blessings of moving to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, has been gaining the friendship of Tony Merida, teaching pastor at Temple Baptist Church. As we’ve had lunch every other…
Would these two guys have dinner together?
Probably not. But I ran across two great posts today from two friends–one by D. G. Hart, on the secular left’s confused accounting of the “Religious Right”, and the other…
The greatest temptation
From Samuel Rutherford (in The Loveliness of Christ [Banner of Truth, 2007], 4-5): I find it most true, that the greatest temptation out of hell, is to live without temptations;…
How to cope with evil speaking
From Charles Simeon (in Hugh Evan Hopkins, Charles Simeon of Cambridge [Eerdmans, 1977], 134): The longer I live, the more I feel the importance of adhering to the rules which…
Imagine what he’d think of email…
From Hugh Evan Hopkins, Charles Simeon of Cambridge (Eerdmans, 1977), 123-4: Although he wrote so many letters Simeon was very well aware how much better it was, if possible, to talk rather…
Bruce Gordon’s Calvin
In this five-hundredth anniversary of Calvin’s birth, booksellers have flooded the marketplace with all things John Calvin. Of all the books published in this anniversary year, the one that stands…
Blog 158: 3.23.6 – 3.23.9
Calvin turns his attention to a second objection, one that extends further the conversation in which he was engaged in the previous paragraph: “why should God impute those things to…
Blog 157: 3.23.1 – 3.23.5
The other side of divine election for Calvin is divine reprobation, which is necessary if the case of election is to stand. Reprobation means “those whom God passes over, he…