Sanctification by Faith

Posted by on

Here is a good description of sanctification making clear that we work but we do so by grace and not to earn or maintain our salvation.

“As Americans, we live in a culture that looks for fast, simple solutions to all problems…. we must testify that no such solution exists for the process of sanctification. Rather, we must adorn our faith with serious discipline and continuous work to grow in grace. But that seriousness must not be grim. We pursue holiness not to earn our standing with God, but because we are filled with love and gratitude to God for the standing that is ours in Christ. We pursue holiness sustained at every point with the grace and support that our God gives us in his church and among his people. We pursue holiness with the confidence that on the day that we are with Christ forever, we will be perfectly holy.”
– (Robert Godfrey, An Unexpected Journey, p. 127)

Happy Reformation Day!

Posted by on

Happy Reformation Day! I hope you make much of this day and the truths it commemorates with you family and church this weekend. My family gathered around last night to listen to Max McLean’s wonderful rendition of Luther’s defense at Worms, “Martin Luther’s- Here I Stand” (available for free download through tomorrow!). He includes not only Luther’s speech but also sets the scene well and records Luther’s prayer before his defense. It is very well done. Older children can follow well and I was happy for younger ones to catch whatever they could. 🙂

One impact of the Reformation was renewed attention to the value of family life, as they recovered the truth that all of life (not just explicitly religious things) is valued by God. Luther was a key voice in trumpeting the value and importance of family and the raising of children (as I have noted previously).

Here is another great Luther quote I just came across today:

“Now since we are all duty bound to suffer death, if need be, that we might bring a single soul to God, you can see how rich the estate of marriage is in good works. God has entrusted to its bosom souls begotten of its own body, on whom it can lavish all manner of Christian works. Most certainly father and mother are apostles, bishops, and priests to their children, for it is they who make them acquainted with the gospel.”

What a wonderful ministry we parents have. Let us be faithful in it. And make the most of the opportunity which this Reformation Day gives you.

Here are some other books reviewed previously here that are useful on the Reformation:
Martin Luther: A Man Who Changed the World,
Reformation Heroes

Funeral Message Online

Posted by on

Following some request I have posted the print version of the funeral message for my brother. It is basically complete except for the gospel proclamation at the end.
I have been delayed in getting this up due some technical issues, and that has caused me to reflect on the fact that it has finally, in full form, gone up just as we get to Reformation Day. It seems to me appropriate in a few ways.

1. Doug had a great appreciation for the Reformation and the truths recovered there.
2. In fact some of these Reformation truths were what he most liked to talk about.
3. One of the last things he did was to order study bibles drawing from the Reformation for his daughters.
4. The truth of justification by faith, far from merely an academic, abstract doctrine, is a central ground of comfort in the light of death.
“to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom 4:5)

Luther and the Reformation

Posted by on

The Van Neste household has been gearing up for Reformation Day this weekend as we celebrate the work of God through Martin Luther and others recovering the gospel of grace. In thinking about this I returned again to a book which is a treasure in my library, What Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active Christian, Edited by Ewald M. Plass. I commend this book to you as a good one to but for yourself for a Reformation Day present!

In this volume I found the following quote from Luther on the beginning of the Reformation. May we also be so committed to the Word of God and bold in its teaching.

“I, Doctor Martin, was called and compelled to become a doctor out of pure obedience, without my will. So I had to assume the office of a teacher (das Doctorampt) and swear and promise my most beloved Holy Scripture that I would preach and teach it faithfully and purely. In the course of this teaching the papacy blocked my way and wanted to keep me from doing so. But it fared as you may see, and it will fare increasingly worse and will not be able to defend itself against me. In the name and at the call of God I will ‘tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon [I will] trample under feet’ (Ps. 91:13). And this shall be begun during my life and completed after my death. St. John Huss prophesied of me when he wrote from his prison in Bohemia: They will now roast a goose (for Huss means a goose), but after a hundred years they will hear a swan sing; him they will have to tolerate. And so it shall continue, if it please God.” (p. 1175)

Spurgeon, All of Grace

Posted by on

Many of you have probably already read Spurgeon’s little classic, All of Grace. I have had a copy for years but never read it. Then fairly recently I got an audio copy of someone reading it (from Christian Audio as their free download one month). My soul as soared as I have listened to this book the last couple of weeks! I strongly commend this book, and I think listening to it may have been the best medium- at least for me.

There were so many portions that I thought about quoting here because Spurgeon is so theologically rich and so good with his words and illustrations. The main point I want to emphasize here, though, is what a powerful example of real pastoral preaching this little book is. Spurgeon is not here simply restating truths (however glorious those truths may be). Rather he is in earnest to communicate these truths well to the benefit of his reader. This thought came to mind repeatedly as I listened and then Spurgeon himself made it explicit in his closing when he wrote:

It is all in vain, dear reader, that you and I have met, unless you have actually laid hold upon Christ Jesus, my Lord. On my part there was a distinct desire to benefit you, and I have done my best to that end. It pains me that I have not been able to do you good, for I have longed to win that privilege. I was thinking of you when I wrote this page, and I laid down my pen and solemnly bowed my knee in prayer for everyone who should read it. It is my firm conviction that great numbers of readers will get a blessing, even though you refuse to be of the number. But why should you refuse? If you do not desire the choice blessing which I would have brought to you, at least do me the justice to admit that the blame of your final doom will not lie at my door. When we two meet before the great white throne you will not be able to charge me with having idly used the attention which you were pleased to give me while you were reading my little book. God knoweth I wrote each line for your eternal good. … The tears are in my eyes as I look at you and say, Why will you die?

This same sort of personal earnestness ought to mark our preaching. May we always have our specific people clearly in mind as we prepare. We are not merely describing truths but proclaiming them with the intention that our people understand and benefit eternally.

Patristics and Pastoral Preaching

Posted by on

In his volume on Jeremiah and Lamentations in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Dean Wenthe makes this comment:

“It should also be noted that for all their imaginative and intellectual capacities, the Fathers remained pastors. Their use of the sacred Scriptures was not the abstract debate of the academy but the concrete pastoral care and nurture of the church. Hence, their use of the Old and New Testaments is shaped by churchly needs. Homilies, catechesis, apologetic and liturgy are prominent. Even the few commentaries are deeply pastoral in that their exposition addresses the church’s life.” (xix-xx)

I think this serves not only as a description of these leaders of the past but also as the goal for us today. May the same be said of us. I don’t know if anyone else is like me, but I remember thinking early on in my training that this deep connection to actual church life was a limitation of people’s work- they were not able to step back and analyze more objectively. I now see the folly of my thinking, and this description is what I have in mind when I talk about “pastoral preaching” and the way in which oversight impacts preaching.

Teaching People to Die Well

Posted by on

Justin Wainscott and Matt Crawford have recently posted helpful items on the importance of theology for helping us to live and die well. Justin reflected on the first two question s of the Heidelberg Catechism in light of preparation for a funeral and Matt quoted the trial of several early Christian martyrs in North Africa.

Both of these brought back to mind a comment from J. I. Packer in the recently released volume of essays on his life and work, J. I. Packer and the Evangelical Future: The Impact of His Life and Thought. In Packer’s response essay he wrote:

“‘Our people die well,’ said John Wesley somewhere, commending Methodist Christianity. Dying well, as the final climactic step in living well, was a prominent theme in older Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox teaching on the Christian life and in some places may still be so. But in the West death has become the great unmentionable, like sex in Victorian times, and little is taught to Christians in these days about preparing for it. Instead, we live as if we shall be here forever, and very many churchpeople, one fears, have matched the self-protective young man in Charles Williams’s Many Dimensions who ‘passed . . . a not unsuccessful life in his profession, and the only intruder he found himself unable to cope with was death.’ This being so, and knowing as we do that life in this world is a terminal condition, it is surely most important that our catechesis should promote readiness for dying. When the late Dag Hammarskjold wrote that only one who knows how to die can know how to live, he was absolutely right, and our churches are much at fault in having forgotten it.” (177)

These are reminders of important truths. As pastors, our teaching and preaching is not merely abstract. We must keep in mind that we are preparing people to live well and ultimately to die well. We will all die. Let us prepare to do so well.

Hezekiah Harvey on Care of Souls

Posted by on

Here is another quote I used in my paper calling for a renewed emphasis on oversight of souls. This one is from the book on pastoral ministry by Hezekiah Harvey, prominent Baptist pastor and theologian in the 19th century Northeast US.

The care of souls is the radical idea of the pastor’s office. he is a shepherd to whom a flock has been committed to guide, to fee, to defend; and the divine command enjoins: “Take heed to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers” (Acts 20:28). he is to be the personal religious guide, the confidential Christian friend, of his charge. Our Lord, in his description of the Good Shepherd, said, “The sheep hear his voice; and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before the, and the sheep follow him; for they know his voice” (John 10: 3-4). Each member of his flock is a soul entrusted to his care by the Lord; and if true to his trust, he is one of those who “watch for souls as they must give account.” Paul, when in Ephesus, taught not only publicly, but “from house to house;” and in his farewell charge to the elders of that city he said, “Watch, and remember that, by the space of three years, I ceased not to warn every man night and day with tears” (Acts 20:31).
– Hezekiah Harvey, The Pastor: His Qualifications and Duties (Philadelphia, PA: American Baptist Publication Society, 1879), 78.

P. H. Mell the Pastor

Posted by on

Here is another quote I used in my recent paper arguing for the centrality of the oversight of souls. This one concerns P. H. Mell, a pastor who also served as President of the SBC multiple times.

“Very much of his power as a preacher lay in the way he had of getting close to his people. His custom was to visit all of them, and so anxious were they not to miss the expected pleasure that he made engagements ahead often as far as three months. The humblest householder was glad to entertain ‘Brother Mell,’ and the same ease of manner characterized him whether he sat at the bountiful board of the rich, or broth the plain bread and partook of the cup of milk from the pine table of the poorest. . . . If a poor man was harassed with debt, broken hearted over a willful child, or bowed down with bereavement, he never felt his load to be quite so heavy after he had talked it over with ‘Brother Mell’.”

(reminiscences of Mrs. D.B. Fitzgerald about Patrick Hues Mell, in P.H. Mell, Jr. The Life of Patrick Hues Mell [Harrisonburg, VA: Gano Books, 1991.], 61-62)

Keller on Overseeing Souls

Posted by on

Justin Wainscot just pointed me to a recent post by Tim Keller on our theme here. In the post Keller mentions that he fears too many think that expository preaching is a “magic bullet” that will make everything else in a church go right. If you know Tim Keller you know that he is not demeaning preaching. But he goes on to say that too many want only to preach but not to engage the daily lives of their people. He rightly points to Calvin as an example of depth of preaching combined with real interaction with his people.

The entire post (which is brief) is worth reading. Here is his closing:

If you put in too much time in your study on your sermon you put in too little time being out with people as a shepherd and a leader. Ironically, this will make you a poorer preacher. It is only through doing people-work that you become the preacher you need to be–someone who knows sin, how the heart works, what people’s struggles are, and so on. Pastoral care and leadership (along with private prayer) are to a great degree sermon preparation. More accurately, it is preparing the preacher, not just the sermon. Through pastoral care and leadership you grow from being a Bible commentator into a flesh and blood preacher. (emphasis added)