Seven Differences Between Gifts and Graces
With fruit/grace, the primary benefit is for the immediate recipient, and secondarily other people. With gifts, it is the other way around: gifts are given for the benefit of people other than the recipient first of all, and the recipient only secondarily.
I just read this chapter from John Owen this morning, and I though I would share Owen’s marvelous insights into the question of how to distinguish between the gifts of God and the graces of God. This is from his A Discourse of Spiritual Gifts, chapter 2. In the old Banner of Truth edition, it is volume 4, pp. 425-438. In the new Crossway edition, it is volume 8, pp. 259-273, which is the edition I will be referencing here. I have seldom read anything from Owen so insightful.
He actually first discusses three similarities. Both come from Christ’s mediation, both are wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit, and both are ordained for the good of the church.
The first difference is in the title of each (263-4). He understands fruits/graces (which are synonymous in Owen’s nomenclature) as coming from the Holy Spirit as from a fountain welling up inside a person, whereas the gifts are effects of the Spirit’s work on a man (as opposed to in a man).
The second difference lies in their intentional origin. Fruit/grace comes from divine election to salvation, whereas the gifts only come from a temporary election unto an office (264-6).
The third differences is in their respective relationship to the covenant of grace. Fruit/grace comes from the essence of the covenant, whereas the gifts are of the administration. An especially sobering warning comes in at this point to all who have an office in Christ’s church: “some may belong to the covenant with respect to its outward administration, by virtue of spiritual gifts, who are not made partakers of its inward effectual grace” (267).
The fourth difference is in how they relate to Christ’s work. The fruit/grace comes from the priestly work of Christ, whereas the gifts come from His kingly office. This is nuanced a bit by the thought that the kingly office of Christ is also involved in pointing us towards His priestly work, but it is secondary to the kingly office. The gifts, however, come solely from His kingly office.
The fifth difference is one I have questions about, since he thinks the gifts can be temporary, whereas the fruit/grace are not. I would ask Owen (who doesn’t deal with this passage in this context) how he would address Romans 11:29: “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (ESV). I suspect Owen would argue that the context of that verse is not about office, but about salvation. But that is only a guess.
The sixth difference has to do with its purpose. With fruit/grace, the primary benefit is for the immediate recipient, and secondarily other people. With gifts, it is the other way around: gifts are given for the benefit of people other than the recipient first of all, and the recipient only secondarily.
The seventh difference is in their effect on the recipient and where their seat is. The gifts reside only in the mind, whereas the fruit/grace reside everywhere in a human. Another warning to those in office arises here: “And although God does not ordinarily bestow them on flagitious persons, nor continue them with such as after the reception of them become flagitious, yet they may be in those who are unrenewed, and have nothing in them to preserve men absolutely from the worst of sins” (271-2, emphasis added). Brilliant stuff.
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Biblical Worldview: Parents’ Rights and Responsibilities in Education
Take back the rod. God gave it to you, not to the government. Take back your kids. God gave them to you, not to the government. This will be for God’s glory. And, I would suggest, this would be the first, and most significant step, to taking back our country.
One of the most fundamental and oft-forgotten truths about education in the modern era is this: God gives children to parents, not the government.
In his recent entry on the biblical worldview of school choice, Freedom Center scholar Dr. Tim Yonts explained why this is so important. He writes:
“The basic biblical position is that children, ultimately, belong to the Lord who has given parents the right and responsibility to raise them and teach them.
The biblical view, however, is at odds with modern secularism, which typically adopts a collectivist approach — ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ or ‘Children belong to all of society.’ This view contains a seriously flawed understanding of human nature and the nuclear family, and it has made the battle over education a spiritual one for the minds and hearts of the next generation.”
Yonts is correct to point out how this core Christian commitment places us at odds with “modern secularism.” For decades now, many leading “educational experts” in America (operating out of a secular worldview) pursued an educational philosophy that aims to pull children away from their parents’ authority. Progressive education reformers like John Dewey unapologetically argued that the goal of public education was to “separate children from the prejudices of their parents.”
What did he mean by this? Dr. Albert Mohler explains,
“John Dewey meant first and foremost the religious prejudices of parents. [He] wanted to free children from that context of the local home, as where they would learn citizenship in the common culture, and instead put them under the control and under the influence of a regime of experts. And these experts would help to separate children from the backward worldviews of their parents.”
This goes directly against God’s good commands to parents to raise their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). God makes it very clear that he holds parents, and not public schools, primarily responsible for the content and quality of their children’s education.
So when we approach the subject of education from a biblical worldview, we must first reject the modern secular view that raising and educating children is somehow a “group” project that the government should be leading and financing.
Therefore, it’s necessary for Christian parents to understand what their rights and responsibilities are when it comes to educating their children. As I mentioned, their “rights” are nothing less than the sole and total ownership of their children contra the state. That is, of course, provided that parents are loving their children well and caring for them rightly.
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Is Health Everything?
The cry of the Lord these past two years continues to be the same as the 2,000 before, “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” By all means care for your physical body, after all it is the temple of the Lord. But do not let these physical pursuits blind your eyes from Him who is eternal and who freely gives life to all who ask, seek, and knock! Death is coming. Today then is the day to find life by believing in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.
Then he departed from Elisha, and came to his master, who said to him, “What did Elisha say to you?” And he answered, “He told me you would surely recover.” But it happened on the next day that he took a thick cloth and dipped it in water, and spread it over his face so that he died; and Hazael reigned in his place.
II Kings 8:14-15
Earlier this week during a driving rain I drove past a Covid testing center. More than 100 people were standing outside waiting for their chance to have a Covid test. The next day I passed a drive thru testing site where cars were lined up for more than a mile. The news is full of similar stories as the world risks sickness from exposure to the elements and spends massive amounts of time for the opportunity not to be treated for Covid, but simply to find out from tests if they might have Covid. The world has trained many to consider health the most important thing in life and worthy of all sacrifice to maintain it for as long as possible.
King Ben-Hadad and his armies had killed untold numbers of people. Men, women, and children had starved under his sieges, kings had been killed in his battles. But when sickness came upon him, Ben-Hadad was so worried he sent 40 camel-loads of gifts to Elisha not as payment to be healed but as payment for the knowledge of whether or not he would survive the illness. On that note, Elisha had good news. Ben-Hadad would recover. The results of the test? The disease was not fatal! The bad news was Ben-Hadad was focused on the wrong thing. He should have been concerned for his soul and his spiritual health more than his physical health which will one day abandon us all. Ben-Hadad was going to die anyway and in a way he seemed to have least expected — his long-time servant Hazael would smother him in his own bed!
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When Critical Theory and Perverse Sexuality Collide
Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, November 22, 2022
We need to see gender theory as it parlays into trans activism in the same light—a pseudo-scholarly justification for destroying parental rights and exposing children to sexual perverts and medical profiteers.Mermaids, the UK activist charity pressing for transgender treatment for minors, has been in the headlines recently. First, the group has been trying to reverse the charitable status of the LGB Alliance. The Alliance is an organization that lobbies for the rights of LGB people has yet fallen foul of Mermaids because of its opposition to trans ideology. All is not well in the world of the rainbow coalition.
Second, a Mermaids board member was forced to resign last week after it emerged that he is an apologist for pedophilia. In an article at Unherd, Julia Bindel (herself a lesbian) outlines in gruesome detail the views of the board member concerned, Dr. Jacob Breslow. In fact, let us call them “perversions” not mere “views” because that is what they are, as her quotations from his work makes graphically obvious.
Breslow, is (inevitably) a professor of “gender studies” at the London School of Economics where his profile on the school’s website is most instructive and raises two obvious questions.
The first is this: to what extent are the current iterations of gender studies, particularly in the manner in which they address transgenderism, really just a means by which adults are able to indulge their pedophile fantasies? It is interesting that Breslow is interested in “the queer life of children’s desires.” By that, he does not mean that he is interested in the typically unformed and often confused sexual desires of young children as they enter puberty and settle into sexual adulthood. Gender theory denies any norms for sexual desires and can therefore grant normative authority to any and all sexual desires it chooses.
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