First Peter 4:12–19 is written in the rhetorical style of paraenesis—it offers strong encouragement to press on even when it hurts and to not change course because of intense suffering that we will experience. This strong exhortation pushes believers to grow into mature saints. In this passage, Peter commands us to do things that we cannot do without the Lord’s grace: to face the fiery trial with expectation that we will suffer (v. 12); to rejoice in the midst of suffering (v. 13); to interpret the slander that comes our way because of our strong stance for the Christian faith as a blessing from God Himself and a proof of the Spirit of glory resting upon us (v. 14); to mortify all sin and all potential sin, especially murder, robbery, and meddling (v. 15); to glorify the name of God in our words and our deeds as we suffer for the faith (v. 16); to expect God’s hard and rebuking judgment upon the nation to start with the church (v. 17); to realize that, as John Calvin puts it, we can arrive in heaven only after escaping a thousand deaths on earth (what Peter calls being “scarcely saved”). And if all this isn’t enough, God expects us to continue in doing good works in the midst of this agony (v. 19). Written to suffering Christians who are covenant members of a faithful and visible church, belonging to the church and to one another (vv. 1–11), 1 Peter 4:12–19 raises an important question: Why does a God who loves us as a gracious Father want us to suffer for the name of Christ?
Suffering as a Christian
Are we covenant members of a faithful church? Are we pressing on in the midst of suffering, enduring slander or worse for the cause of Christ? This strong medicine for our weak and wandering faith will prepare us faithfully for the days ahead.
When we as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ read the Word of God with faith, we are pulling down the very power of heaven to bear on our earthly trials. Because the Word of God is pure and true, we can trust it with our lives: “By this faith, a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God speaking therein” (Westminster Confession of Faith 14.2). The Word of God calls us to “act differently . . . yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life and that which is to come” (WCF 14.2).
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Westminster Assembly
As the late Professor John Murray of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia put it: “The work produced by the Westminster Assembly has lived and will permanently live. The reason is obvious. The work was wrought with superb care, patience, precision, and above all with earnest and intelligent devotion to the Word of God and zeal for His glory. Sanctified theological learning has never been brought to bear with greater effect upon the formulation of the Christian Faith.
Let me take you back to seventeenth-century England—1643, to be precise.
King Charles I was increasingly hostile to the Puritans and their Reformed theology. And members of Parliament—many of whom were Puritans and Puritan sympathizers—were becoming increasingly aggrieved by the king. They were convinced that there was still a lot of work to be done in the Church of England, that it still needed to be reformed in light of Scripture.
Although the English Church had separated itself from Rome during the English Reformation more than one hundred years earlier, the Puritans felt it hadn’t gone far enough. So, with that in mind, Parliament called upon Reformed theologians to meet at Westminster Abbey. Their job was to advise Parliament on issues of worship, doctrine, government, and discipline in the Church of England.
Despite a royal proclamation prohibiting its meeting, the assembly first met on 1st July, 1643, at the Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey, before later moving to the abbey’s Jerusalem Chamber.
This Westminster Assembly consisted of 151 men, which included twenty laypeople from the House of Commons and ten from the House of Lords.
The assembly lasted officially until 1649, although it continued to meet occasionally until 1652. And those present certainly did not slack during that time. Over the course of the six years between 1643 and 1649, they met 1,163 times.
The documents they produced are known as the Westminster Standards, namely:the Westminster Confession of Faith
the Larger and Shorter Catechisms
the Directory for the Public Worship of God (which is a sort of liturgical manual)
and the Form of Presbyterial Church Government (which describes how churches ought to be structured and governed)Read More
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What – or Better, Who – is Beauty?
Understanding God as Beauty, the most beautiful and the One against whom we define all other beauties, allows our experiences of beauty here in this world to draw us towards him.
When writing or speaking about beauty, one of the first major hurdles to arise is a definition. What is beauty? While most people would say that they know it when they see it, articulating exactly what it is, and what it is not, is a challenge. Philosophers, theologians, and artists have argued about beauty’s definition for millenia, and it would be arrogant to think that what I have to say will end the discussion.
Still, we need to work towards something. Many go back to Plato, and his claim that beauty is objective, and that it has to do with symmetry, order, balance, and proportion. Others, particularly in modern and postmodern Western culture, would argue that beauty is subjective—it depends on your perspective, tastes, experiences, and that there isn’t one true definition for all people and all time.
But perhaps we are asking the wrong question. What if, instead of asking, “what is beauty?” we asked, “who is beauty?”
Beauty has a Name
Augustine of Hippo, an African bishop and theologian living in the fourth century, answers this question. In one of the most famous lines in his memoir of conversion, he laments, “Belatedly I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved you.” Here, Augustine addresses God, and he does so by calling God “Beauty.”
He’s in good company: his words echo that of David and Moses. In Psalm 27, David declares that he seeks one thing: “that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple” (27:4, NIV). Later, in Psalm 29, he instructs the people to “worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness” (29:2, KJV). Moses, too, identifies God as beautiful in his benediction to Psalm 90: “let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us” (90:17, KJV).[1] David and Moses agree: the Lord is beautiful.
If the Lord is beautiful, then it follows that he is the most beautiful. As Anselm argues, “whatever good thing the supreme Nature is, it is in the highest degree. It is, therefore,…supreme Beauty…” Jonathan Edwards goes further, arguing not only that “as God is infinitely the greatest Being, so is allowed to be infinitely the most beautiful and excellent” but that because of this, “all the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation is but the reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory; God…is the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty.”
Our Beautiful God
We have identified, now, not simply an idea of beauty, but beauty itself. God, in his attributes and actions, grounds all definitions of beauty. Whether beautiful in small measure or great, something or someone may only be said to be beautiful if it is consonant in some way with who God is.
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On The Chosen: Jesus Is Not the Law of Moses. He is Far Better.
Recently, The Chosen posted an image of the actor who plays Christ with a line from season 3 that is supposedly a “mic drop” moment for the show’s producers. It shows the character responding to one of the Pharisees by saying, “I am the Law of Moses.” While many flocked to the post in support of the “mic drop,” many others expressed how flatly unbiblical this is. They rightly said that Jesus is not the Law, but that the Law instead reveals the righteous standard of our thrice holy Lord. Likewise, they were right to say that Jesus came to fulfill the Law in His perfect, active obedience to it all His earthly life.
Contrary to the expression of infamous pastors like Steven Furtick, the active obedience of Christ means that He in no way “violated the Law” out of love. More importantly, the active obedience of Christ is a vicarious obedience. We think of the vicarious substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, meaning that He died in our place as our Substitute, and paid the wrath that we deserved. In the vicarious obedience of Christ, Jesus lived in perfect obedience, likewise, on our behalf. He fulfilled what we could not do: Jesus obeyed the Law, and due to His active obedience, and His passive obedience on the cross, we actually gain the benefit of being counted righteous before God. This is the doctrine of imputed righteousness, which is an alien righteousness—a righteousness not of our own, but Christ’s. This is important, so hang with me.
As we come back to the “mic drop” moment of season 3 in The Chosen, this becomes all the more nefarious. In fact, nowhere in Scripture does Jesus say to anyone, “I am the Law of Moses.” In the book of Mormon, however, you will find such a statement in 3 Nephi 15:9, “Behold, I am the Law, and the light. Look unto me, and endure to the end, and ye shall live; for unto him that endureth to the end will I give eternal life.” That alone should give people enough pause on the show, owing to the fact that Mormonism is a false religion that teaches a contrary gospel to the gospel of our Lord. In short, Mormon doctrine holds that it is your active obedience that will please God in the end, and earn your salvation.
2 Nephi 25:23 states, “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (emphasis mine). Often this verse from 2 Nephi is used in conjunction with Moroni 10:32 to give clearer meaning, which says, “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God” (emphasis mine). It is quite important to notice the all-important temporal modifiers to these Mormon scriptures, because they explicitly teach that grace is a commodity earned only after one has exhausted their own spiritual muster.
The LDS Bible Dictionary puts it like this:
“This grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts. Divine grace is needed by every soul in consequence of the fall of Adam and also because of man’s weaknesses and shortcomings. However, grace cannot suffice without total effort on the part of the recipient. Hence the explanation, ‘It is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do’ (2 Ne. 25:23)” (p. 697).
But what does the Bible say of all of this? It is bupkis. Rubbish. Ultimately, it is damnable doctrine. Romans 3:10-20 lays out the plight of mankind so incredibly clearly that it leaves anyone without a source of comfort in their own ability to earn grace. Likewise, Ephesians 2:1-10 displays not only the hopelessness of those born under the dominating power of sin—but it lifts up the reality that we are saved “by grace through faith…and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). The good works which we walk in were prepared beforehand for us by the Father (Eph. 2:10), meaning that even our good works are a production of this grace in us. In other words: even our active obedience to Christ is a display of the riches of God’s grace. They are not what produces salvation, but a production of salvation.
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