What Sin Does

This is what sin does to us all, even if our own situation seems less extreme.  The Bible tells us that the sinful mind is “hostile to God” (Romans 8.7).  It describes us as “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2.1).  It says that, apart from a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, we are “alienated and hostile in mind” (Colossians 1.21).  Worst of all, we cannot save ourselves.  On the contrary, we are “utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all that is spiritually good” (Westminster Larger Catechism 25).  This is all because “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4.4).

From: “What Has He Done for You?” (Luke 8.26-39) in Luke by Philip Graham Ryken; Reformed Expository Commentary series; 2 volumes (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 1:398.

Philip Graham Ryken (born in 1966) was, at the time these sermons were published, Senior Minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He is now President of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.

 

Look Up and Live

The brazen serpent [Numbers 21] was not lifted up as a curiosity to be gazed upon by the healthy, but its special purpose was for those who were bitten.  Jesus died as a real savior for real sinners.  Whether the “bite” has made you a drunkard or a thief or an unchaste or a profane person, a look at the Great Savior will heal you of these diseases and make you live in holiness and communion with God.  Look and live. – Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)

 

The Same, But Different

The fundamental elements in our personalities and temperaments are not changed by conversion and by re-birth.  The “new man” means the new disposition, the new understanding, the new orientation.  But the man himself, psychologically, is essentially what he was before. – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), from an early sermon

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) was Senior Pastor of Westminster Chapel (Congregational) in London, England, from 1943 to 1968.

 

God Provides Everything

All is provided that man can need to quench his soul’s thirst.  To his conscience, the atonement brings peace.  To his understanding, the gospel brings the richest instruction.  To his heart, the person of Christ is the noblest object of affection.  To the whole man, the truth, as it is in Jesus, supplies the purest nutriment.  Thirst is terrible, but Jesus can remove it.  Though the soul were utterly famished, Jesus could restore it. – Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)

 

An Unbiblical View

In recent years, challenges and objections to historic understandings of justification and atonement seem to abound.  Some argue that justification, atonement, and related concepts are Old Testament ideas that should be supplanted by Christ’s incarnational embodiment of love and inclusion.  They suggest that such notions are distasteful to contemporary human sensibilities and must be updated.

From: “Dean’s Column: Nothing But the Blood?” by Dennis Dirks, in Sundoulos: The Alumni Magazine of Talbot School of Theology (Winter, 2011), p. 2.

Dennis Dirks is dean of Talbot School of Theology and Professor of Christian Education there.