At my children’s literature site I have listed some recommended books for children and families on the Reformation (some pictured in this photo). I hope they are helpful for families to make much of this important event together.
Poem for Reformation Week
This week’s poem comes from Paul Speratus, who helped Martin Luther assemble the first Lutheran hymnal. It is long, but it nicely lays out the futility of works, the place of the Law, justification by faith alone and how works result from faith.
SALVATION UNTO US HAS COME
Salvation unto us has come
By God’s free grace and favor;
Good works cannot avert our doom,
They help and save us never.
Faith looks to Jesus Christ alone,
Who did for all the world atone;
He is our one Redeemer.
What God did in His law demand
And none to Him could render
Caused wrath and woe on every hand
For man, the vile offender.
Our flesh has not those pure desires
The spirit of the Law requires,
And lost is our condition.
It was a false, misleading dream
That God His Law had given
So sinners could themselves redeem
And by their works gain Heaven.
The Law is but a mirror bright
To bring the inbred sin to light
That lurks within our nature.
From sin our flesh could not abstain
Sin held its sway unceasing;
The task was useless and in vain,
Our guilt was e’er increasing.
None can remove sin’s poisoned dart
Or purify our guileful heart—
So deep is our corruption.
Yet as the Law must be fulfilled
Or we must die despairing,
Christ came and hath God’s anger stilled,
Our human nature sharing.
He hath for us the Law obeyed
And thus the Father’s vengeance stayed
Which over us impended.
Since Christ hath full atonement made
And brought us to salvation,
Each Christian therefore may be glad
And build on this foundation.
Thy grace alone, dear Lord, I plead,
Thy death is now my life indeed,
For Thou hast paid my ransom.
Let me not doubt, but trust in Thee,
Thy Word cannot be broken;
Thy call rings out, “Come unto Me!”
No falsehood hast Thou spoken.
Baptized into Thy precious Name,
My faith cannot be put to shame,
And I shall never perish.
The Law reveals the guilt of sin
And makes men conscience-stricken;
The Gospel then doth enter in
The sinful soul to quicken.
Come to the cross, trust Christ, and live;
The Law no peace can ever give,
No comfort and no blessing.
Faith clings to Jesus’ cross alone
And rests in Him unceasing;
And by its fruits true faith is known,
With love and hope increasing.
Yet faith alone doth justify,
Works serve thy neighbor and supply
The proof that faith is living.
All blessing, honor, thanks, and praise
To Father, Son, and Spirit,
The God that saved us by His grace—
All glory to His merit!
O Triune God in Heav’n above,
Who hast revealed Thy saving love,
Thy blessèd Name be hallowed.
– – Paul Speratus, 1523
C. S. Lewis, Children, Property & Justice
Here is C. S. Lewis dealing, parenthetically, with an issue which parents often ask about. I think he is exactly right.
“The question whether the disputed pencil belongs to Tommy or Charles is quite distinct from the question which is the nicer little boy, and the parents who allowed the one to influence their decision about the other would be very unfair. (It would be still worse if they said Tommy ought to let Charles have the pencil whether it belonged to him or not, because this would show he had a nice disposition. That may be true, but it is an untimely truth. An exhortation to charity should not come as rider to a refusal of justice. It is likely to give Tommy a lifelong conviction that charity is a sanctimonious dodge for condoning theft and whitewashing favouritism.)”
– C. S. Lewis, Reflectionson the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1958), 17-18.
[Also posted at The Children’s Hour]
“The Saints Should Never Be Dismayed”
My poem of the week this week comes from William Cowper, one who was well acquainted with feelings of dismay. Yet, in this hymn he draws comfort from the Scriptural testimony of God’s care and aid to his people. May these words encourage you as they do me.
THE SAINTS SHOULD NEVER BE DISMAYED
The saints should never be dismayed,
Nor sink in hopeless fear;
For when they least expect His aid,
The Savior will appear.
This Abr’am found: he raised the knife;
God saw, and said, “Forbear!
Yon ram shall yield his meaner life;
Behold the victim there.”
Once David seemed Saul’s certain prey;
But hark! the foe’s at hand;
Saul turns his arms another way,
To save th’invaded land.
When Jonah sunk beneath the wave,
He thought to rise no more;
But God prepared a fish to save,
And bear him to the shore.
Blest proofs of power and grace divine,
That meet us in His Word!
May every deep felt care of mine
Be trusted with the Lord.
Wait for His seasonable aid,
And though it tarry, wait:
The promise may be long delayed,
But cannot come too late.
Words: William Cowper, Olney Hymns (London: W. Oliver, 1779).
Erasmus, Confidence in Scripture
God only speaks for our profit
In his first sermon on 2 Timothy John Calvin discusses God’s aim in preaching and his gracious desires for his people.
God only speaks for our profit. He wants his love, his mercy, is infinite goodness, to be laid out before us. He wants us to be assured of our salvation. He wants us to be drawn out of everlasting death. He wants us to be loosed out of Satan’s bands. He wants us to be set at liberty out of the slavery of death and be made inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. Therefore since God means nothing but this, shall we not say that Satan has bewitched us too much if we are not ready to receive such a doctrine? And therefore, when we feel any rebellion in ourselves, or any disagreeing, or too much slackness, so that we are not nimble and ready as we would wish to allow ourselves to be led by God’s mouth that we do not have such a burning and earnest affection as one would wish, let us call that to remembrance what St. Paul says here about the gospel, namely, that God does not want it to be preached to us for any gain that he would receive for his part, but for our profit.
This is a helpful point. When we find ourselves resistant to the obedience we owe to God, we should call to mind how gracious he has been in saving us. We should remind ourselves of the glorious graciousness of the gospel and in light of his grace toward us we should be ready and willing to obey.
And, preacher: if these truths- God’s love, mercy, infinite goodness- do not come out in your sermon, you should question whether you are engaged in Christian preaching. You will not help your people grow in godliness by beating them with the law. Rather it is the truth of God’s grace which will empower growth in godliness.
“As Becomes the Oracles of God”
This is a powerful portrait of preaching from Thomas Foxcroft’s book, The Gospel Ministry. Note his combination of close study and earnest, clear exposition.
“They must endeavor for as thorough an understanding and penetration into the mysteries of godliness as they can, and labor to draw the images thereof in their sermons as near as possible in their full proportion, and their native purity and complexion, with the most lively colors; neither clouded with those dark shades which sometimes stain the luster of divine truths, nor varnished over with the false paint of art, which dazzles the sight and entangles the eye, that they cannot see the true light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. . . .
Let a man descend to the ordinary understanding, and yet speak as becomes the oracles of God, agreeable to the dignity and weight of the sacred subject with those serious and solemn, pathetic and moving words that will not so much entertain curiosity and a wanton imagination as affect the soul and persuade the mind. Let him use words that will be as goads and nails, fastened by the Master of assemblies, that will enter the conscience, and breathe heavenly fire to melt and enliven the dead affections.” (pp.34-35)
“To gather fortitude from pain”
My poem of the week this week is “Last Lines,” by Anne Brontë. John Starke cited a portion of this poem last week on Twitter which sent me looking for the full poem. The message of the poem fits very well with 2 Cor 1 which we discussed in class this morning. This is a powerful, moving portrait of perseverance through suffering by faith.
I hoped, that with the brave and strong,
My portioned task might lie;
To toil amid the busy throng,
With purpose pure and high.
But God has fixed another part,
And He has fixed it well;
I said so with my bleeding heart,
When first the anguish fell.
A dreadful darkness closes in
On my bewildered mind;
Oh, let me suffer and not sin,
Be tortured, yet resigned.
Shall I with joy thy blessings share
And not endure their loss?
Or hope the martyr’s crown to wear
And cast away the cross?
Thou, God, hast taken our delight,
Our treasured hope away;
Thou bidst us now weep through the night
And sorrow through the day.
These weary hours will not be lost,
These days of misery,
These nights of darkness, anguish-tost,
Can I but turn to Thee.
Weak and weary though I lie,
Crushed with sorrow, worn with pain,
I may lift to Heaven mine eye,
And strive to labour not in vain;
That inward strife against the sins
That ever wait on suffering
To strike whatever first begins:
Each ill that would corruption bring;
That secret labour to sustain
With humble patience every blow;
To gather fortitude from pain,
And hope and holiness from woe.
Thus let me serve Thee from my heart,
Whate’er may be my written fate:
Whether thus early to depart,
Or yet a while to wait.
If thou shouldst bring me back to life,
More humbled I should be;
More wise, more strengthened for the strife,
More apt to lean on Thee.
Should death be standing at the gate,
Thus should I keep my vow;
But, Lord! whatever be my fate,
Oh, let me serve Thee now!
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine
I have finally plugged one more gap in my education by reading Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine. As is often noted, this English title might cause people to think it is a survey of doctrine. In fact it is a handbook on biblical interpretation (Books 1-3) and proclamation (Book 4). At the end of the book Augustine states,
“In these four books I have set out to the best of my poor ability…what sort the pastor should be who is eager to toil away, not only for his own sake but for others, in the teaching of sound, that is of Christian, doctrine.” (pg. 241)
The book is a challenging book in places but is well worth reading. Some may look down on Augustine’s hermeneutic because he lacks modern sensibilities and makes much of typology. However, he is very clear about the importance of authorial intent. And, what he has on so many people today is that he makes no pretense to being overly scientific or “objective.” He comes to the text as a believing Christian and expects Scripture to interpret Scripture (see more on this theme here). He also is interpreting for living as the Church rather than simply scholarship for the academy. Thus he stresses throughout the book the necessity of humility, love and prayer for both interpretation and proclamation. No matter how much we know (or think we know) if we are proud we will miss what God is saying. If we do not aim at love of God and neighbor we will miss the meaning of any text. And how can we expect to move forward without prayer?
Augustine states:
“So if it seems to you that you have understood the divine scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by this understanding you do not build up this twin love of God and neighbor, then you have not yet understood them. If on the other hand you have made judgments about them that are helpful for building up this love, but for all that have not said what the author you have been reading actually meant in that place, then your mistake is not pernicious, and you certainly cannot be accused of lying.” (pg. 124)
“Who does not turn all this to the praise and love of the one God from whom he knows it all proceeds; such a person can seem to be very learned, but in no way at all can he be wise.” (pg. 158)
“For that reason, when you come to realize that the end of the law is love, from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith without pretense (1 Tm. 1:5), you will relate all the understanding of the divine scriptures to those three, and so be able to approach the study of those books without the least anxiety.” (pg. 125)
This is a good book for all pastors and students of the Scripture to read.
[Page numbers refer to the edition linked to above]
Anthony Esolen on the Pastoral Epistles
Due to some technical problems I have not been able to post at PastoralEpistles.com for a good while. However, we have worked out the issues and the overhauled site is now being hosted by the good folks at Logos Bible Software. I am grateful to Logos for making this possible and especially to Rick Brannan for making it happen.
Yesterday I posted at the new site a brief comment on a recent article by literary scholar Anthony Esolen in which he challenges some of the “assured results” of literary criticism. His article is aptly titled, “Pauline Scholar, Meet Homeric Scholar.” The post includes an offer of a complimentary copy of the issue of Touchstone Magazine which contains Esolen’s article.