I am still learning about Law and Gospel through the scriptures, and Luther helps me take hold of them, because the flesh always abides and the Gospel is always counterintuitive. Thus, the good Doctor wisely teaches me that I will never fully learn these lessons until I am finally purged of my sinful, self-justifying flesh in glory. In summary, Luther teaches me that I am still a sinner (by nature) and righteous (only by faith), and so I will need to hear and believe the Gospel every single day until I die and see my Savior face-to-face.

“What is a nice OPC minister like you doing constantly quoting Martin Luther on Twitter?” is the familiar refrain after people take a gander at my feed. Normally, I admit when I am guilty as charged, but there is no great guilt in learning from the good Doctor Luther. I would describe myself as an old-school, confessional Presbyterian. When I say I am “Reformed,” I mean that I sincerely subscribe to the Westminster Standards as a minister of the Gospel in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In my prior calling as a minister in the URCNA, I also gladly subscribed to the Three Forms of Unity because I am persuaded they fully agree with the Word of God.
In 2015, I left the PCA after 12 years of ministry there, in part, over the matter of confessional subscription. I was no longer comfortable with how the practice of “good faith subscription” seemed to be working out there, especially with the exoneration of ministers who publicly taught contrary to the Westminster Standards by espousing the Federal Vision error. I am sympathetic with my confessional brothers in the PCA, as they continue to deal with the inevitable if unintended consequences of good faith as it plays out now in the Revoice controversary.
In other words, I mean it when I say that I am confessionally Reformed. I am decidedly not confessionally Lutheran. So, what accounts for my love of Martin Luther? Luther taught me things that I believe are entirely compatible with my Reformed commitments. In fact, what I have learned from him clarifies and strengthens those commitments.
First, I learned from Luther that “Christ-centered” is not merely a slogan; it truly shapes the way I read Scripture, how I preach, and how I pastor. Luther said, “It is beyond a doubt that the entire Scripture points to Christ alone.”1 For some years, “Christ-centered and Gospel-driven,” and “preaching the Gospel to yourself” were popular slogans among the Young, Restless, and Reformed-ish crowd. Some, it seems, have moved on to other things, like mercy ministry or variations on the theme of social justice, but Christ as the center of Scripture is not a fad. The Gospel as the animating force of Christian life is not a gimmick. Luther understood the necessity of pounding this truth into the human heart: “The article of justification must be sounded in our ears incessantly because the frailty of our flesh will not permit us to take hold of it perfectly and to believe it with all our heart.” 2
I highly recommend Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel (originally published in The Library of Christian Classics but now republished via Muriwai Books for Kindle). There you can see Luther comforting the doubting and despondent by applying the healing balm of Christ and Him crucified to their wounds. There is certainly some good advice in his letters, but the main thrust of his pastoral counsel is to remind sinners and sufferers of the sufficiency of Christ. In his efforts to encourage, Luther frequently cites Jesus’ words in John 16:33: “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
Luther also taught me the importance of rightly distinguishing the Law and the Gospel, both for my own sake and for the sake of my flock. Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians is a must-read for this purpose alone. As he explains, “It seems a small matter to mingle the Law and Gospel, faith and works, but it creates more mischief than man’s brain can conceive. To mix Law and Gospel not only clouds the knowledge of grace, but it also cuts out Christ altogether.”3 Is this yet another example of Luther’s gift of hyperbole in action?
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Written by B.C. Newton |
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
By having this tent of meeting outside the camp, Yahweh was sending a message to Israel that, through their sin, they had become defiled. Their camp could not be a place of holy communion with Him because they had defiled themselves and become unclean. Thus, God was effectively saying that they wilderness was cleaner than being in their midst. 

As I have noted before, the final half of Exodus can be divided into a several sections. In chapters 20-23, we studied the Book of the Covenant that Yahweh spoke to Moses. Chapter 24 gave us the ratification ceremony of God’s covenant with Israel. Chapters 25-31 gave us the instructions for the tabernacle that Moses received from the LORD. We may rightly call chapters 32-34 the saga of the golden calf. Although the actual act of idolatry was recounted briefly over the course of the first six verses of chapter 32, the consequences of that sin continue to linger. Indeed, this structure reflects the very nature of sin. A moment of self-gratification leads to much sorrow and pain.
Chapter 32 ended with God bringing a plague upon the Israelites, which He had warned them of doing back in 15:26, and the text before us continues the press home the great damage that Israel’s sin has done toward their communion with Yahweh.
I Will Not Go Up among You—Verses 1-6
After rejecting Moses’ attempt to make atonement for Israel’s sin, Yahweh now gives Moses sorrowful instructions:
The LORD said to Moses, “Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give it.’ I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
As we said of 32:7, we should again notice that God is distancing Himself from Israel. He does not call them His people but simply the people, and He again presents Moses as the worker of the exodus. Even so, the message seems to be somewhat good at first. After all, the LORD commands Moses to lead the people into the land of Canaan, fulfilling His promises to the patriarchs. He even reiterates the promise that He made at the end chapter 23 about the angel that would go before them to drive out the inhabitants of the land. But there is still something off about this promise as well. Back in chapter 23, Yahweh called the angel that would go before them “my angel,” and He said that His name was in Him. Thus, many believe that it was Jesus Himself who would go before Israel. Here, however, it seems that an ordinary angel would be sent to them.
Verse 3 then removes all doubt that Israel’s sin has yet to be dealt with. God commands them to go into the land flowing with milk and honey, but He will not go among them. Of course, the LORD gave Moses instructions for the tabernacle so that He could dwell among His people, but because they wanted an idol to go before them instead, Yahweh was now withdrawing is presence from them. One commentator notes that:
The significance of this turn of events cannot be stressed too highly. The whole purpose of the Exodus was for God and his people to be together. God’s presence with them will be firmly established in the proposed tabernacle. By saying “go ahead, but you’re going without me,” the events of the previous thirty-one chapters are being undone. This is not merely a setback; it means the end of the road.
This ought to also serve as a potent reflection for us to consider. God was effectively giving the Israelites His blessings but not Himself, and we should consider well what our reaction would be to such an offer. As James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Therefore, it is certainly proper for us to rejoice in the blessings that God gives to us, just as God intended the Israelites to enjoy the land of milk and honey. However, God’s good gifts should always lift our eyes up to Him as the good Giver, and it would be improper to do anything else.
Although God is the Giver of all good gifts, we must always remember that He is Himself the Blessed One. He is the supreme Treasure. Thus, while many today simply imagine heaven to be a place of endless happiness and think very little of God being a part of it, the reality is that God’s presence is what makes heaven heavenly. The person who believes that he or she is decent enough for God to allow into heaven doesn’t understand the nature of eternal life. As Jesus Himself said, knowing God is eternal life (John 17:3). Thus, the person who has no desire to know God in this life will not find any happiness in knowing Him throughout all eternity.
To the Israel’s credit, they do have the proper reaction to God’s command through Moses:
When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the LORD had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’” Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.
God’s refusal to dwell among them was rightly heard as being a disastrous word, and they mourned. They treated God’s message as though they had been stricken with death. They were sorrowful and removed all of their ornaments, which was a sign that they were in a time of mourning. They were physically displaying their sorrow over their sin and its effects. As Douglas Stuart notes:
In the ancient Near East, mourning tended to involve appearance, not just attitude, so that what one wore was a part of the appearance aspect of mourning. Nothing fancy could adorn the mourner because fancy dress was associated with cheerfulness and might contradict the desired pattern, which was thoroughgoing mourning behavior designed to appeal to a god (or the true God) for relief of suffering (including in this case relief from the unknown miseries that might be subsumed under “and I will decide what to do with you”). Therefore they removed all adornment and made their appearance “plain” as a sign of mourning. (691-692)
Matthew Henry also says,
God bade them lay aside their ornaments (Exodus 33:5; Exodus 33:5), and they did so, both to show, in general, their deep mourning, and, in particular, to take a holy revenge upon themselves for giving their ear-rings to make the golden calf of. Those that would part with their ornaments for the maintenance of their sin could do no less than lay aside their ornaments in token of their sorrow and shame for it.
There is something to be learned here of proper repentance. Since we have entirely removed a period of mourning entirely from our culture and largely emphasized happiness as the highest good in life, it is not surprising that we would also have a difficult time understanding what it means to mourn and lament over our sins. Yet there is a godly mourning that ought to accompany repentance. Does that mean that we should also strip ourselves of our ornamentation? Not necessarily. Joel 2:12-13 says, “’Yet even now,’ declares the LORD, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’”
In other words, God cares far more about the condition of your heart and the condition of your clothing. We should not dirty our faces and make a big show of our repentance like the Pharisees did when they fasted. But knowing that godly simplicity and humility is what the LORD desires, not a show, we should then consider what physical actions need to be taken as we repent of our sin. As Henry noted, it is no accident that God told them to take off their earrings for the remainder of their time in the wilderness. And we should at least give similar consideration to the instruments that we use for sin.
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Written by Saji P. Thomas |
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
There was never a greater crisis of faith for the disciples as when their Lord was crucified on the cross; but God has never been more at work in that very moment of weakness and suffering of his very Son!

Recently a close relative hosted a believing family who visited Bangalore to treat their five-year-old daughter for a few weeks. The little one had been suffering from bone cancer, enduring an indescribable amount of pain. Doctors advised bone marrow transplant. All the tests for compatibility cleared the father as the donor. The surgeries on both the father and his darling daughter were carried out on the next day satisfactorily. But within a few days, the child got infected, and she did not recover. Watching the little one’s funeral was one of the most heartbreaking experiences in recent times.
During the course of the treatment of their child, they also found out that the mother is at the fourth stage of bone cancer herself. The intensity of their trial is all the more because they are a very young family in the Lord.
I took time to reflect on how we Christians grapple with the reality of suffering, especially those that come to us due to no apparent fault of ours. Why would God allow the curse of suffering to come upon His own children, especially because Christ has paid for the curse of sin? The subject is awfully perplexing and yet what the Scripture has to offer is both assuring and rewarding.
Let me share with you five of the many New Testament truths that I came across about why the suffering of Christians is not a curse, but a blessing!
Suffering is a Test of Our Faith
Almost every paragraph of 1 Peter has something to say about Christian suffering. In addition to the general sufferings of the world, the ridicule and scorn, and being ill-treated, the apostle Peter anticipated the state-sponsored persecution that was imminent on these believers. The set of instructions given to the believers to submit to various non-Chrisitan authorities (2:13-3:6) underscores this situation.
He begins the letter by warning the church not to be surprised by various sufferings (1:6-7). Strong encouragement is given to us to be prepared in the light of the coming “fiery trials.” Peter gives the first theological reason for our sufferings. “The tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire” (1 Pet 1:7a). It is a test of our faith, a faith that endures in spite of the trials, faith that will  “result in praise and glory and honour” (v.7b).
Suffering Signifies Our Union with Christ
Peter reminds his readers not to be surprised at the fiery trials (4:12ff.). Instead, he says we are to rejoice in them. The second reason why we suffer as Christians and can rejoice in our suffering is that it signifies our union with Christ: “to the degree that you share (fellowship, koinonia) the sufferings of Christ” (v.13a NASB). “Their sufferings are not a sign of God’s absence but his purifying presence.”1 This too will result in our joy and exultation at the coming of Christ … so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation (v.13b).
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