Heavenly Springs

Holding Fast The Doctrines of Grace

Finding Safety in the Church

by

Finding Safety in the Church

And mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity, and that divine lies: they shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the Lord God. Ezekiel 13:9

Suggested further reading: Hebrews 10:19–25

“The Holy Spirit admonishes us not to conclude that people are true members of the church because most of them seem to excel other people. For just as the chaff lies above the wheat and suffocates it, thus hypocrites bury the sons of God, whose number is small. Hypocrites also shine forth in their own splendor, and great numbers of them seem to make them exclusively worthy of the title of the church.

Hence let us examine ourselves, searching whether we have the living root of piety and faith, which are those interior marks by which God distinguishes his children from strangers, or hypocrites.

This passage also teaches that nothing is more formidable than to be separated from God’s flock. We cannot hope for safety unless God collects us into one body under one head. When we safely reside in Christ alone, we cannot be separated from Christ without falling away from all hope of safety. Christ will not and cannot be torn from his church that he is joined to by an indissoluble knot, as the head is to the body. Hence, unless we cultivate unity with the faithful, we are also cut off from Christ. Nothing, then, is more fearful than to be separated from God’s people, and therefore from Christ.

Psalm 106:4 says, “Remember me, O God, in thy good will towards thy people: visit me with thy salvation.” When the author of the psalm prays this way, he acknowledges that we will have true and solid happiness when the Lord embraces us along with the rest of the faithful. For God’s good will toward his people is that fatherly kindness by which he embraces his elect.

If God thinks us worthy of his fatherly favor, then we may be truly confident of safety.

For meditation: In a day when many Christians are focused only on their own individual relationship with God, this passage reminds us of the importance of the church. The church is not just a means to advance our own walk with God, but a divinely appointed institution. Connecting with the church is therefore not an option, but a requirement for true believers.”

 John Calvin and Joel R. Beeke, 365 Days with Calvin (Leominster; Grand Rapids, MI: Day One Publications; Reformation Heritage Books, 2008), 142.

Calvin’s Legacy

by

“Among the many faithful voices from the past, there seems to be one that rises above them all. It is the voice of a man who desperately wanted us to hear not his own voice but the voice of God in His Word. It is precisely on account of the humility the Lord had instilled in the mind of Calvin that I am drawn to him. In fact, there is not a week that passes that I do not think about the example Calvin set forth for us and for Christians in every generation. And in life and ministry, as I have considered Calvin the man, I have observed the following things: Calvin was a man who died to himself and sought to take up his cross daily so that he might serve the Lord and the flock God had entrusted to him (Luke 9:23). He was a man who did not think of himself more highly than he should have, but sought to esteem others better than himself (Rom. 12:3; Phil. 2:3). He was a man who did not seek to please men first and foremost, but sought to please God ultimately and completely (Col. 1:10; 3:23). He was a man who strove not to live for his own kingdom but for the kingdom of God (Matt 6:33; 21:43). He was a man who sought to be faithful in the eyes of God, not successful in the eyes of the world (Rev. 2:10). He was a man who did not desire his own glory, but desired to seek the glory of God in all he did (1 Cor. 10:31; Col. 3:17). He was a man who did not try to develop a system of theology that complemented the Word of God; rather, he strove to derive his theology from the Word of God for the right worship, enjoyment, and love of God.

Considering all of this, Calvin is among the greatest men of all time. However, his greatness, as B. B. Warfield recognized, was not in his service to himself but in his surrender to God: “Here we have the secret of Calvin’s greatness and the source of his strength unveiled to us. No man ever had a profounder sense of God than he; no man ever more unreservedly surrendered himself to the Divine direction.” This is Calvin’s greatness—his ultimate surrender to God. In this is Calvin’s legacy for those of us who desire not simply to wear the five-pointed badge of Calvinism, but who desire to clothe ourselves in the humbling power of the gospel (1 Peter 5:5). Let us not be so easily satisfied with a simple insignia of a simplistic Calvinism; rather, let us drape ourselves with Calvin’s Calvinism, a Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered, God glorifying, gospel-driven Calvinism that shines so brilliantly that the deceitful darkness of sin would be conquered in our hearts so that, in turn, we might shine as the light of Jesus Christ to this dark world—for His kingdom and His glory.”

Parsons, Buck, ed.,  John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, and Doxology. (Lake Mary:Reformation Trust, 2008), 13-14.

The Gospel is Sufficient for Social Reformation

by

There are days when the fight to fix my eyes on the hope of the Gospel and not the declining culture is more intense than others.  Having listened to this sermon on my way to work this morning, I had to re-read this excerpt.

In 1535 John Calvin was called to preach in Geneva.  The description below will give you a little color into just how bad things were in this city. But John Calvin, with great faith, passion and perseverance, expositionally preached the Word of God to the citizens in Geneva.  The result was that the Gospel literally transformed a morally degenerate city into, what John Knox would later call, “a New Jerusalem.” 

The Word of God is sufficient for social reformation.  May you be stirred to pray, as I am, that God raise up a new generation of men to preach the life transforming Gospel in cities everywhere.  He did it in Geneva, so why not here?

“The final area in which we need to know that God’s Word is sufficient is the area of social renewal and reform. We live in a declining culture and want to see the lordship of Jesus acknowledged, justice done, and virtue increase. We want to see the poor relieved of want and suffering. How can this happen? Not by more government programs or by increased emphasis on social work – though such things may have a supplementary or stop-gap place – but by the teaching and practice of the Word of God.”

“In 1535 the Council of Two Hundred, which governed the city of Geneva, Switzerland, decided to break with Catholicism and align the city with the Protestant Reformation. They had very little idea what that meant. Up to this point the city had been notorious for its riots, gambling, indecent dancing, drunkenness, adultery, and other vices. The citizens of Geneva would literally run around the streets naked, singing indecent songs and blaspheming God. They expected this state of affairs to continue even after they had become Protestants, and the Council did not know what to do. It had passed regulation after regulation designed to restrain vice and to remedy the situation. They thought becoming Protestant would solve the problem. But that did not do any good either. Genuine moral change never comes from the top down by law, but from the bottom up through a transformed people. Geneva’s morals continued to decline.”

“But the Council did one thing right. They invited John Calvin to become Geneva’s chief pastor and preacher…Calvin had no weapon but the Bible. From the very first, his emphasis had been on Bible teaching…Calvin preached from the Bible every day, and under the power of that preaching the city began to be transformed. As the people of Geneva acquired knowledge of God’s Word and were changed by it, the city became, as John Knox called it later, a New Jerusalem from which the gospel spread to the rest of Europe, England, and the New World…”

“There probably has never been a clearer example of extensive moral and social reform than the transformation of Geneva under the ministry of John Calvin, and it was accomplished almost entirely by the preaching of the God’s Word.”

James Montgomery Boice, “Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? : Rediscovering the Doctrines that Shook the World“ , pages 70-72. e-reader version

John Calvin on Church Unity

by

John Calvin explains why Christians must work for unity within the church, but never at the expense of truth:

“There can at the same time by no doubt that the Holy Ghost is to be viewed as commending in this passage that mutual harmony which should subsist amongst all God’s children, and exhorting us to make every endeavor to maintain it.  So long as animosities divide us, and heart-burnings prevail amongst us, we may be brethren no doubt still by common relation to God, but cannot be judged one so long as we present the appearance of a broken and dismembered body.  As we are one in God the Father, and in Christ, the union must be ratified amongst us by reciprocal harmony and fraternal love. . .We are to set ourselves against those turbulent spirits which the devil will never fail to raise up in the Church, and be sedulous to retain intercourse with such as show a docile and tractable disposition.  But we cannot extend this intercourse to those who obstinately persist in error, since the condition of receiving them as brethren would be our renouncing him who is Father of all, and from whom all spiritual relationship takes its rise.  The peace which David recommends is such as being in the true head, and this is quite enough to refute the unfounded charge of schism and divisions which has been brought against us by the Papists, while we have given abundant evidence of our desire that they would coalesce with us in God’s truth, which is the only bond of holy union.”

John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, 5 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979, 1:189