As our obedience to God is born out of His love for us so to is our desire and center of our being born out of the amazing grace of the cross, the empty tomb, and the risen Lord. As you go about life today remind yourself of the beauty and assurance of what the Savior has done, remember His power, and be sure to order all things so as to give glory to God in His name in the way you do all in thanksgiving for who He is and what He is for you.

Of the many things I love about the Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechism one of the most important in my mind is the way the authors help us to see the way in which the law of God applies to more than just bare “Don’t do this” pronouncements. There is an elegance and reason to every word found in the Holy Scriptures and none more than what we have in the Ten Commandments. We see in these statutes the beauty of God, His order, and the wisdom of His truth. They are evidences for why it is we should worship Him and alone reserve our obedience unto Him as the only one worthy of such. Regardless of whether one is a “Christian” is almost besides the point. These testimonies are given for every human being made in the image of God, which means everyone. All men are to read the commands and see in them their purpose, the end of their existence, and due to that reality are then to see to it that their lives are grounded and formed by what the Lord reveals therein. So when we get to examining what exactly they promote (and what they deny) we need to make sure that we approach them with the correct mindset. We are receivers of truth, not the determiners of it. As Israel was at the bottom of the mountain looking up as Jehovah wrote His law on the tables and gave them to Moses so to are all humans to come to the Ten Commandments and understand that they are neither up for debate or discussion. This is the way things are, not pragmatically organized for our benefit, though they are beneficial, they provide a description for reality. Disregarding their teaching not only can be described as sin, but foolishness as eating a urinal cake is foolishness, it is self-evidently so.
As we continue to look at the commandments as they are presented to us in the Shorter Catechism let us especially pay attention to what the Lord would have His people to know not only about Him, but the way in which they are a blessing to those to whom God loves in His grace. Not to detract from what I wrote above, but it is important for those who have been saved to see the law in the positive light of the redemption purchased by Christ in His mercy, even when they talk in the negative.
Here are our catechism questions for this week:
Q. 47. What is forbidden in the first commandment?
A. The first commandment forbids the denying, or not worshipping and glorifying the true God as God, and our God; and the giving of that worship and glory to any other, which is due to him alone.
Read More

While we gain assurance of our salvation through telltale signs of God’s workmanship, such as love for others and conviction of the truth revealed, our confidence is grounded in the God who appointed our salvation, accomplished it for us, and applied it to us. He holds us fast. Jesus will lose none of those the Father has given Him. 

But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you (1 John 2:27, NKJV).
John speaks to the importance of our abiding in truth and not abandoning that truth for a lie. Any other gospel, any other source of spiritual life, can only be a counterfeit. Like a fake gold watch, it will tarnish and break and disappoint.
John is concerned that we abide in Christ. But his ultimate confidence that we will abide in Christ and realize true life – spiritual, abundant, and eternal – is not rooted in our efforts to abide, but in God’s efforts on our behalf.
That’s why John goes on to speak of the anointing that abides in us. “But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him” (1 John 2:27).
What is this anointing that we as Christians receive from God? It is the presence of God Himself who takes up residence in our hearts and seals us as His own.
Read More
Related Posts:

For Christians to truly hold fast to what is good, to truly seek the good of their neighbors, then they must hate what is evil. They must hate the evil lies promoted by transgender activists. Out of love for others and love for the truth, Christians must refuse to speak the lies of transgender ideology.

On Matt Walsh’s New Documentary
At the very beginning of the Bible we are instructed about the division of the sexes: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). There are only two, male and female, and nowhere does God’s Word indicate that men can become women, or women men. In fact, the Bible explicitly condemns attempts to live as the opposite sex. Deuteronomy 22:5 says that “[t]he woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.” The Bible is abundantly clear about the nature of sexual division within the created order.
In “What is a Woman?,” Matt Walsh’s new documentary about the transgender movement and its critics, Walsh nowhere appeals to the Bible, but instead uses common-sense, rational questioning to investigate transgenderism’s attempt to overthrow nature—God’s “second book” of revelation. Walsh’s documentary reveals how the transgender movement has exchanged the truth about humanity for a lie. No lie conforms to reality, yet Walsh shows how this lie is especially incoherent and detached from reality. Over and over, licensed doctors, college professors, practicing pediatricians, and sitting politicians fumble through Walsh’s interviews (or end the interview, refusing to answer his questions) thereby exposing their gender ideology for the nonsense that it is. Walsh directs each of his interviewees to a concluding question, one that transgender activists were unable to answer in a direct or logical way: What is a woman? Responses ranged from “Great question” and “I’m not a woman, so I don’t know,” to “Why do you want to know?” and “A woman is someone who claims to be a woman.”
One particularly striking interview was with Dr. Patrick Grzanka, Professor in a University of Tennessee Program for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Walsh begins by asking Grzanka if sexuality and gender are different. In a long and circuitous way, Grzanka answers that the concepts are distinguishable yet interrelated. When Walsh presses Grzanka, asking if we can identify a person with male physical characteristics who identifies as a transgender woman as in fact male due to his biology, Granzka demurs. This leads to one of the most eye-opening exchanges in the film. Grzanka asks Walsh why he cares so much about identifying someone’s biological sex, and Walsh says he wants to understand reality, to “start by getting to the truth.” Grzanka reacts, claiming that he is deeply uncomfortable with the language of “getting to the truth,” and that such language is “deeply transphobic.”
Grzanka and other transgender activists believe in their ideology despite what they see. The external world has no necessary connection with reality for the believer in transgender ideology. Instead, each individual’s deliberate choice decides whether he is a man or a woman. Transgenderism thus requires its adherents to deny the concept of stable, accessible, absolute truth, as well as stable human nature. As Grzanka and numerous other interviewees of Walsh made clear, they recognized “my truth” or “your truth” but not the truth.
Walsh’s interview with Gent Comfrey, a gender affirming therapist, reveals the extent to which the transgender understanding of truth and the world blurs the lines between men and women. This blurring makes even knowing one’s own gender uncertain. Comfrey explained that modern research has shown that sex and gender are not mere binaries and are not restricted by biological sex differences. She claimed that “some women have penises…some men have vaginas.” When pushed by Walsh to explain how that claim is known, Comfrey said that she learned it by talking with transgender people who identify as the opposite of their biological sex. Walsh then asked the logical follow-up: if these concepts are fluid, how can Walsh know whether he might be a woman or not? Walsh explained that he likes scented candles and watched Sex and the City. Could Walsh be a woman? Comfrey did not dismiss the idea but encouraged Walsh to ask the question with curiosity to start his journey of gender identity development.
Walsh interviewed one person who had taken the concept of individualized truth to its logical extreme. Naia Okami claimed to be both a transgender woman and a wolf therian. A therian is  “someone who identifies as a non-human earthen animal either spiritually or psychologically.” Okami told Walsh about how he (she?) discovered his inner wolf-ness at around age 10 when watching an anime cartoon. Apparently Okami then went on to spend time at many wolf preserves, communicating with wolves in non-verbal ways.
Read More
Related Posts: