The Son of God did not want to be seen and found in heaven. Therefore he descended from heaven into this humility and came to us in our flesh, laid himself into the womb of his mother and into the manger and went on to the cross.
This was the ladder that he placed on earth so that we might ascend to God on it.
Martin Luther on Isaiah 9:6 via Stephen J. Nichols, Peace: Classic Readings for Christmas, 56-57.
Repentance and faith are heart postures you take toward the finished work of Christ. You might express the beginning of that posture in a prayer. But don’t make the mistake of equating that prayer with the posture.
The sinner’s prayer is not a magic incantation or a recipe you follow to get a salvation cake.
The real stuff – the stuff that matters – is the posture of repentance and faith behind the words you speak. The prayer is good only insofar as it verbalizes the posture.
J.D. Greear, Stop asking Jesus into your heart, 7.
John Calvin comments,
“God renders his glory conspicuous everywhere, so that it ought to engage and occupy the thoughts of all men; and it would do so were they not led away by their own vanity.”
Idolatry does not exist because the Lord is unclear about His existence but because of our own vain imaginations. Sin makes us prone to trust gods other than the one true Lord of all, but when we do that we become captive to fear and the destructive results of putting our final hope in any but God.
Table Talk Magazine, Devotional from July 10th
How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?
If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.
This applies in a special way to the complaints often heard from pastors and zealous members about their congregations. A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.
When a person becomes alienated from a Christian community in which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament.
But if not, let him nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief. Let him pray God for an understanding of his own failure and his particular sin, and pray that he may not wrong his brethren. Let him, in the consciousness of his own guilt, make intercession for his brethren. Let him do what he is committed to do, and thank God.
Christian community is like the Christian’s sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.
Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 29-31. (Note: Text is Bonhoeffer’s, headings are mine.)
Discipline is not the “final straw” where judgment is pronounced.
Biblical church discipline is a culture of accountability, growth, forgiveness, and grace that should permeate our churches.
Each member of the church has a responsibility to help others as they struggle with sin – not through judgment and criticism, but rather with gentleness and an eye toward restoration, knowing that he too is subject to temptation (Gal. 6:1).
Matthew 18 does not describe some kind of alternative to litigation; it is a primer on how we lovingly engage one another, patiently exhausting lesser steps (for example, going in person) before moving to greater ones (for example, taking it to the church).
Table Talk Magazine, August 2013, pg 25.
All sin breaches our relationship with God, but we must never think that the Lord will refuse us if we humble ourselves and return to Him with true contrition.
He longs to take us back, and His willingness to forgive His children is infinite.
No matter where we are or what we have done, we can be confident that God will pardon us if we forsake our sin and turn to Christ alone for our pardon. That is the magnitude of His grace. That is the mercy of the God whom we serve in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Table Talk Magazine, Devotional from July 4th
Christianity Matters 