Eternity
As another year passes by, and as eternity draws ever nearer, may our focus this year not be on how we might make things better but on how Christ makes all things new. May our resolutions not be to make something more of ourselves; rather may we resolve to know Christ and to make Him known.
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite
(Isaiah 57:15).
As the evening sky over Sydney Harbour was once more set ablaze with fireworks, music and lightshows, I was reminded of the festivities that gained global attention some 23 years ago. It was the turn of the century, the beginning of a new millennium, and as around a million people gathered on the foreshore to ring in the new year the Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit up in bright, copperplate, gold lettering: Eternity.
The word stood as a reminder of the message that had been emblazoned on almost every street corner from the early 1930’s to the late 1960’s.
Related Posts:
You Might also like
-
God’s Grace Draws us to Christ
All of us are in great need of seeing our salvation from God’s perspective. The current trend in the 21st Century in some parts of the visible Church is for the focus to be on being a Christian for temporal gain. However, those who see the truth of their sin and totally lost condition until God saved them will not consider this life to be the focal point of it.
41 Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down out of heaven.” 42 They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered and said to them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. John 6:41-44 (NASB)
One of the aspects of our Christian faith that we lose sight of sometimes, and it gets us in trouble when we do, is how vital it is that we remain totally amazed that we ever got saved at all. We make a huge error when we forget this because that path leads to self-righteousness, self-absorption, and an ungrateful heart towards God. Even though we may not be fully aware that we are in that place of self-focus, we cannot be Spirit-led when we are full of self.
God works in people’s hearts by sovereign grace, taking away their imperviousness to his word, taking away their inability to respond to that word, and changing the disposition of their hearts so that instead of saying “Nonsense” when they hear the word of Christ, they say, “That’s just what I need,” And they come.Are you a Christian? A believer? Then you came to Christ because you found yourself willing, longing, desirous, wanting to, as well as, perhaps, not wanting to but knowing you must. How was that? It was because God worked in your heart to give you this desire. He changed you. It was his irresistible grace that drew you to the Savior’s feet. Praise him for it! It was one expression of his love to you. – From: To All Who Will Come pp 184-185 by J.I. Packer
Read More -
Spiritual Explosion—“My Eyes Have Seen the King”
When Isaiah was rocked and shaken by his complete unworthiness, he finally broke down and repented. Full surrender is the only way to recapture the power of the Spirit. Like Isaiah, we’ve been bought with a price, and we must surrender to our King’s will.
A desire to truly experience God runs deep within our veins. However, for most Christians, experiencing God is either elusive and frightening or impossible and improbable. But to the thirsty pilgrim, God’s presence is a wellspring of life. Do we fight for it, or let it fade away? Do we contend for a deeper walk with God, or complain about our life? Do we pursue God like never before, or postpone intimacy?
Psalm 85:6 is the prayer that unlocks the power: “Oh God, we are desperate for more of you. Will you revive us again so that we can rejoice and experience your power and presence in our lives” (paraphrase).
Filling an Empty Vessel
In Ephesians 5:8, Paul tells us to “be filled with the Spirit.” The filling of the Spirit is God’s work, but we must submit by emptying our vessel. There can be many subsequent fillings of the Spirit (cf. Acts 4:8 and Acts 13:9). However, you can’t fill something that is already full — full of self. We must repent of pride and renounce arrogance.
Isaiah 6 offers an incredible glimpse into this dynamic power and the possibility of truly experiencing God.
Isaiah describes the day that his wonderful experience took place. It was in the year that King Uzziah died. He would never forget that day, and you too will never forget the day when God radically fills you with His Spirit, or when you return to Him and experience the joy of your salvation again. It’s a true spiritual explosion.
Holy Ground Shakes
Isaiah said that he “saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple” (6:1). What a wonderful picture of His majesty and His power. The size of the train on a robe would often match the authority of the king. God’s train filled the entire temple. What an awesome sight to behold! No better words could have been chosen — God Almighty rules and reigns.
Isaiah also saw amazing six-winged creatures known as seraphim. Their cry should be our cry as well when we truly experience God: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!”
It’s not by chance that moral purity encompasses the rhythm of their soul. Of all the attributes of God, holiness is mentioned more frequently than the others. Even the posts of the door of the temple responded to the cry of holiness. So powerful was the declaration that the entire entrance was shaken by the voices who cried, “Holy, holy, holy.” Let those words sink in!
Read More
Related Posts: -
The History of Covenant Theology
Written by R. Scott Clark |
Wednesday, October 12, 2022
Throughout the history of the church there has always been a theology of the covenants. The Reformation recovery of the gospel and the biblical distinction between grace and works made it possible for Reformed theology to construct a detailed and fruitful covenant theology.Until recently, it was widely held that covenant theology was created in the middle of the seventeenth century by theologians such as Johannes Cocceius (1609–1669). In fact, covenant theology is nothing more or less than the theology of the Bible. It is also the theology of the Reformed confessions. In the history of theology, the elements of what we know as covenant theology; the covenant of redemption before time between the persons of the Trinity, the covenant of works with Adam, and the covenant of grace after the fall; have existed since the early church.
Indeed, Reformed readers who turn to the early church fathers (c. 100–500 AD) might be surprised to see how frequently they used language and thought patterns that we find very familiar. The covenant theology of the fathers stressed the unity of the covenant of grace, the superiority of the new covenant over the old (Mosaic) covenant, and that, because Jesus is the true seed of Abraham, all Christians, whether Jewish or gentile, are Abraham’s children. They also stressed the moral obligations of membership in the covenant of grace.
The covenant theology of the medieval church (c. AD 500–1500) was related to that of the early fathers but distinct in certain ways. In response to the criticism that Christianity gave rise to immorality, the early church tended to speak about the history of redemption as the story of two laws, the old (Moses) and the new (Christ). They tended to speak of grace as the power to keep the law in order to be justified.
This habit only increased in the medieval church. The major theologians argued that God can only call people righteous if they are actually, inherently, righteous. This, they thought, will happen when sinners are infused with grace, and cooperate with that grace, so that they become saints. In this scheme, sanctification is justification, faith is obedience, and doubt is of the essence of faith.
In medieval covenant theology the word “covenant” became synonymous with “law.” They did not speak of a covenant of works and a covenant of grace, as we do. Rather the grace of the covenant enables one to keep the law.
Late in the medieval period, some theologians began to stress the idea that God has given a kind of grace to all humans and made a covenant so that “to those who do what is in them, God does not deny grace.” In effect, God helps those who help themselves. The Reformation would not only reform the covenant theology of the early fathers, but wage full-scale war on the covenant theology of the medieval church.
When he rejected the medieval doctrine of salvation by cooperation with grace, Martin Luther (1483–1546) rejected the old law/new law understanding of redemptive history. He came to understand that all of Scripture has two ways of speaking, law and gospel. The law demands perfect obedience, and the gospel announces Christ’s perfect obedience to that law, his death and his resurrection for his people.
Not long after Luther came to his Protestant views, others were already reforming covenant theology along Protestant lines. In the early 1520s, the Swiss Reformed theologian Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531) was teaching what would later become known as “the covenant of redemption” between the Father and the Son from all eternity. He also distinguished between the covenant of works as a legal covenant and the covenant of grace as a gracious covenant. A few years later Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75) published the first Protestant book devoted to explaining the covenant of grace. Like the early fathers, this work stressed the graciousness and unity of the covenant of grace.Related Posts: