Good day on the river yesterday. #nature #universeovermetaverse

Doctrine matters. Don't be deluded by plausible arguments. "The papist says we are justified by faith because it disposes a sinner to his justification...We say otherwise that faith justifies because it is a supernatural instrument created by God in the heart of man at his conversion, whereby he apprehends and receives Christ's righteousness for his justification." -William Perkins, A Reformed Catholic #thelawandthegospel #semperreformanda

"All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out." -John 6:37 "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day." -John 6:44 "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life." -John 6:47 "But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you." - John 10:26 "And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand." - John 10:28 It certainly sounds like Jesus knows who His sheep are before they know they're His, and He calls them to Himself irresistibly, and they believe, and those who believe already have eternal life and will never perish, and that Jesus really wants them to know without a doubt that they are really His and need not fear losing salvation, because that demonstrates the depths of His love, the glory of His character, and motivates to far greater works for the sake of His name. It is absolutely ludicrous to say a justified person can lose their justification. Christ knows His own. This is the freedom of sonship. Don't content yourself with slavery to a harsh master. Don't be content with being out on probation. Don't keep making mud pies in a slum because you can't fathom a holiday at the sea. God is bigger and better than you can imagine. There are oceans of grace in Christ.

Any work done for justification is by definition not a work of God's grace but a work of the flesh. This includes baptism, the Lord's Supper, and lifting a finger.

Your response to the gospel makes up no part of the basis on which God reckons you righteous.

All of the goodness of God is promised us in the gospel. If it is promised of God, then it depends not on us and our cooperation, but on God who raises the dead. (Rom. 9:16)

The good news of the gospel is not that God's grace enables you to attain to righteousness if you cooperate. The good news is Christ has attained to righteousness for us, and grace enables us to rest complete in Him (Col. 2:10).

If your own good works make up even the slightest portion of the grounds on which you believe God will justify you, you are no longer under grace. #repent #semperreformanda #marrow

Paul speaks of salvation as a matter of being crucified with Christ. Then, if it were possible for a person to lose their salvation, it would require un-crucifying oneself. I can only imagine this would be very difficult to accomplish. #gm

If you are really preaching the gospel, you should at some point be misunderstood as teaching antinomianism: "If a man’s preaching is, ‘If you want to be Christians, and if you want to go to heaven, you must stop committing sins, you must take up good works, and if you do so regularly and constantly, and do not fail to keep on at it, you will make yourselves Christians, you will reconcile yourselves to God and you will go to heaven’. Obviously a man who preaches in that strain would never be liable to this misunderstanding. Nobody would say to such a man, ‘Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?’, because the man’s whole emphasis is just this, that if you go on sinning you are certain to be damned, and only if you stop sinning can you save yourselves. So that misunderstanding could never arise . . . Nobody has ever brought this charge [antinomianism] against the Church of Rome, but it was brought frequently against Martin Luther..." -D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"A sinner depends on the righteousness of Christ for justification to no good purpose if he does not rely on it only, and neither in whole nor in part on his own obedience." -John Colquhoun, on the theology of Galatians, in his Treatise on the Law and the Gospel

Them: "Reformed theology regarding perseverance is an innovation with no historical precedent." Augustine: "Whosoever, therefore, in God's most providential ordering, are foreknown, predestinated, called, justified, glorified...These truly come to Christ, because they come in such wise as He Himself says, "All that the Father gives me shall come to me, and him that comes to me I will not cast out;" John 6:37 and a little after He says, "This is the will of the Father who has sent me, that of all that He has given me I shall lose nothing." John 6:39 From Him, therefore, is given also perseverance in good even to the end; for it is not given save to those who shall not perish, since they who do not persevere shall perish."

"[Antinomianism] is the charge that formal dead Christianity – if there is such a thing – has always brought against this startling, staggering message, that God ‘justifies the ungodly’..." -D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

33. Formalist and Hypocrisy And as he was troubled thereabout, he espied two men come tumbling over the wall on the left hand of the narrow way; and they made up apace to him. The name of the one was Formalist, and the name of the other Hypocrisy. So, as I said, they drew up unto him, who thus entered with them into discourse. Christian: Gentlemen, whence came you, and whither go you? Formalist and Hypocrisy: We were born in the land of Vain-glory, and are going for praise to Mount Zion. Christian: Why came you not in at the gate which stands at the beginning of the way? Know you not that it is written, that he that comes not in by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber? Formalist and Hypocrisy: They said, That to go to the gate for entrance was, by all their countrymen, counted too far about; and that, therefore, their usual way was to make a short cut of it, and to climb over the wall, as they had done. Christian: But will it not be counted a trespass against the Lord of the city whither we are bound, thus to violate his revealed will? Formalist and Hypocrisy: They told him, that, as for that, he needed not to trouble his head thereabout; for what they did they had custom for; and could produce, if need were, testimony that would witness it for more than a thousand years. Christian: But, said Christian, will your practice stand a trial at law? Formalist and Hypocrisy: They told him, That custom, it being of so long a standing as above a thousand years, would, doubtless, now be admitted as a thing legal by any impartial judge; and besides, said they, if we get into the way, what matter is it which way we get in? If we are in, we are in. You are but in the way, who, as we perceive, came in at the gate; and we are also in the way, that came tumbling over the wall; wherein, now, is your condition better than ours? Christian: I walk by the rule of my Master; you walk by the rude working of your fancies. You are counted thieves already, by the Lord of the way; therefore, I doubt you will not be found true men at the end of the way. You come in by yourselves, without his direction; and shall go out by yourselves, without his mercy. To this they made him but little answer; only they bid him look to himself.

Rome is not your home. Repent and put your full confidence in Christ's goodness. "We do not obtain salvation either because we are prepared to embrace every dictate of the Church as true, or leave to the Church the province of inquiring and determining; but when we recognize God as a propitious Father through the reconciliation made by Christ, and Christ as given to us for righteousness, sanctification, and life. By this knowledge, I say, not by the submission of our understanding, we obtain an entrance into the kingdom of heaven. For when the Apostle says, “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,” (Rom. 10:10); he intimates, that it is not enough to believe implicitly without understanding, or even inquiring. The thing requisite is an explicit recognition of the divine goodness, in which our righteousness consists." -John Calvin's Institutes 3.2

Anxious? #semperreformanda

Where is God in suffering? #semperreformanda #preachtheword

If God declares you righteous, your own good works will form no part of the basis on which He does so. #semperreformanda #thelawandthegospel