The Lord does not leave His children after He saves them. He abides with them forever, always warning, teaching, nourishing, instructing, and comforting them from His Word. Trust in the Lord dear saint for, “The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore” (Psalm 121:8). 

Then Elisha spoke to the woman whose son he had restored to life, saying, “Arise and go, you and your household, and stay wherever you can; for the Lord has called for a famine, and furthermore, it will come upon the land for seven years.”
II Kings 8:1 NKJV
Several years ago my wife and I watched a movie where one of the characters decided to be baptized at a random time in his life without any saving knowledge of Christ or His Word. Through the balance of the movie, this man would refer to himself as being saved because he was baptized. Sometimes Christianity is thought of as a religion where people get baptized, born again, or say a prayer and they are forever changed but without any impact on their lives. Sometimes Christ is thought of as God who delivers us and then leaves us to ourselves. The Christ of the Scripture however, does not only change one’s status before God, unjust to just, but also changes one’s life before God, dying to sin and living for Christ. Christ never leaves those whom he saves but whom He saves He sustains throughout their lives and even through death by His Word and Spirit.
Read More

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Rom. 3:10–18)
This is what it looks like to be “dead” in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). All sin is rooted in failing to glorify God as “the true God and our God” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 47). It is bad to be sinners before a holy God, but it is even worse to be unaware of who we are and why we need Christ to save us.
However, the Bible not only teaches that we are born dead in sin, that we are averse to living for God’s glory, and that we are inclined to evil, but it also teaches that all humanity died in Adam because all sinned in Adam (Rom. 5:12, 15, 19; 1 Cor. 15:22). This is what the church has called original sin. In order to understand this truth, I will show what original sin means and how it leads to all actual sins that we commit against God’s law. I will use Westminster Larger Catechism questions 24–26 to help us think through Scripture on the nature of sin and original sin. These issues are important because without understanding the nature, depths, and extent of our ruin, we cannot understand the glory of God’s remedy for sin in Christ.
What Is Sin?1
Before considering original sin, it is important to ask what sin is. For some people, sin means “brokenness” or “poor choices.” This misses the mark, focusing on the effects of sin on our lives rather than on the nature of sin itself. The Apostle John wrote, “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). While we can understand “brokenness” or “poor choices” without referring to God, we cannot understand sin without God and His law. It is not stones and trees or even animals that break God’s law but human and angelic beings.
We break God’s law negatively and positively. Negatively, sin is “want of conformity unto” the law. The First Catechism defines “want of conformity” as “not being or doing what God requires.”2 We should love God supremely, and we should love Him while we love others and above others. Failing to be worshipers and servants of the true God, trusting in Christ as our Savior, and depending on the Spirit to trust and obey God makes everything we think, do, or say sinful by definition.

Written by Sinclair B. Ferguson |
Thursday, November 11, 2021
He came to undo what Adam so disastrously did, and lead us back through the jungle to the garden. He crossed the ravine, the unbridgeable gulf between sinful man and holy God. And He did this as the Second Man, but now the Man of Faith, trusting in and living by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

My last contact with the late Professor John Murray — to whose writings and influence I, like many others, owe a lasting debt — was particularly memorable for me, partly because I asked him a question to which he gave the answer: “That is a difficult question!” As a somewhat diffident young person it was something of a relief to know that my question wasn’t totally stupid. It is a question on which I have continued to reflect.
So, what was the question? It may seem a rather recondite one. My question was about the translation and the theological significance of the word used both by Peter (Acts 5:31) and the author of Hebrews to describe our Lord Jesus: archegos. It appeared once before in our studies of Hebrews: Jesus is the author of our salvation who was made perfect through suffering and as such brings many sons to glory (Heb. 2:10). Now the same term reappears towards the end of the letter, in Hebrews 12:2, where our Lord is now described as “the author of our faith who brings it to perfection.”
This explains why, while we are encouraged to read about earlier heroes of the faith (Heb. 11), it is only on Jesus Himself that we are to fix our gaze. If our eyes should stop on anyone who came before Him we will have missed the whole point of the chapter. The Old Testament heroes of faith never received what was promised; they lived before the time of fulfillment. They exercised faith, but they were all trusting in the promise that would be fulfilled in Christ. By contrast, Jesus is the “author” of faith and He is also the one who experienced and expressed it to the full. It is wonderful to think about Jesus in this way. But how do we do so? What did this mean for Him?
Archegos describes an inaugurator, a trail-blazer, a pioneer — someone whose achievements make it possible for others to experience the benefits of what he has done. The school our two eldest sons attended held an annual “Founders’ Day” service at which the two brothers who had first begun the school centuries before were remembered and honored. They had begun something the benefits of which our children entered into and shared. They were archegoi.
But we might describe other religious leaders in these terms, as founders of great movements.
Read More