Grace

Our Universal Need

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

“Just so you know, the need for repentance, redemption, and forgiveness is universal. I don’t care if you are a liberal or a conservative, a religious fanatic or a militant atheist, a ‘spiritual’/’religious’ person or someone who runs from all that. It doesn’t matter to me if you listen to Billy Graham or follow Camus – you are in need.  No one in the human race is exempt.  Its in our DNA…

When we finally acknowledge our need for forgiveness and come to God in repentance, we find true power; for we now have nothing to hide or protect, we don’t care what people say or think about us, we are willing to speak truth gently, and we are enabled to speak with tremendous, supernatural power.”

~ Steve Brown, from Three Free Sins

NOTE: Watch a preview video and listen to Tullian Tchividjian interview Steve Brown about Thee Free Sins: here

Ways of Grace

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

We will never find God unless he first seeks us, but we should remember that he can do so in very different ways.  Sometimes, God jumps on us dramatically, as he does with the younger son, and we have a sharp sense of his love.  Sometimes he quietly and patiently argues with us even though we continue to turn away, as in the case of the older son.

How can you tell if he is working on you now? If you begin to sense your lostness and finding yourself wanting to escape it, you should realize that that desire is not something you could have generated on your own.  Such a process requires Help, and if it is happening it is a good indication that he is even now on your side.

~ Tim Keller, from The Prodigal God

Choosing the Better Thing

/ Dennis Griffith / 4 Comments

I really appreciate this thought by Skye Jethani, reflecting on Jesus’ Parable of the Two Sons, passed along to me recently by a good friend:

“What brought the father joy was not the older son’s service but simply his presence – having his son with him…….what mattered most to the father was neither the younger son’s disobedience nor the older son’s obedience, but having his sons with him.”

What Jethani expresses is something I am in constantant need of remembering. When I was younger (and knew a lot more than I do today) I needed to to learn that it is not my accomplishments or anything I could deliver to God or for God that the Father values most, but my delight in him.  Now that I am older, and take great joy in this reality, I need to constantly remember that this is what Jesus described in aother place, to Martha, as “choosing the BETTER thing.” (Luke 10.42)

Deeper Into the Gospel

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

Reflecting on Colossians 1.6, Tullian Tchividjian, in his book Jesus + Nothing = Everything, offers this poignant perspective about the present practicality of the gospel:

The gospel represents both the nature of Christian growth and the basis for it.  Whatever progress we make in our Christian lives – whatever going onward, whatever pressing forward – the direction will always be deeper into the gospel, not apart from it, not aside from it. Growth in the Christian life is the process of receiving Christ’s “It is finished” into new and deeper parts of our being every day, and it happens as the Holy Spirit daily carries God’s good word of justification into our regions of unbelief – what one writer calls our “un-evangelized territories”.

How I wish – and pray – more people would realize this.  Too many pulpits – conservative and heterodox alike – proclaim alternatives to the gospel – counterfeit gospels, really.  They do this because it sells.  The masses are in need of a remedy only an increasing application of the gospel is able to supply, but they clamor for placebos – spiritual sugar pills.

May I always be mindful of Paul’s words:

  • I resolve to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2.2)
  • But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! (Galatians 1.8)

Offensive Grace

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

Why does not the faith of the average Christian seem to bring about the change we would hope? Could it be that many have a faulty understanding of the Gospel?

Dan Allender, in his book Bold Love, offers the following:

“If our sin is mere failure to conform – simply a mistake to do what is right – forgiveness is really the granting of an opportunity to try again.  In that light, it is like forgetting to finish one’s homework.  We deserve a low grace, and grace becomes merely the privilege of doing it over to get a higher mark.  Such a view of grace might generate appreciation, but it would never drive us to worship.  If, in fact, sin is not only failure to hit the mark of God’s perfection, but also a deep, insidious energy that desires to eradicate from our existence an affronting God who demands perfection, then forgiveness becomes breathtaking, incredible, and wonderfully insulting.”

It seems we underestimate our sin. Consequently we undervalue God’s grace.

A Right Definition of Faith

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

How shall we distinguish a healthy faith from one that is built on more shaky ground?  Consider this insight from John Calvin:

“Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit…..

If then, we would be assured that God is pleased with and [is] kindly disposed toward us, we must fix our eyes …on Christ…  We see that our whole salvation, and all its parts, are comprehended in Christ.   We should, therefore, take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else.”

Growth in Grace

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

 

by Archibald Alexander

The following essay by Archibald Alexander, first president of Princeton Theological Seminary, is a masterpiece integrating sound doctrine, practice, and personal experience. I have appreciated Archibald Alexander’s insights for more than a decade now, perhaps none more than this classic. Christians in this generation would find great refreshment if only we would, at least occasionally, drink from the fountain that springs from the writings of Alexander and others of his day.   – WDG

***

WHEN there is no growth, there is no life. We have taken it for granted that among the regenerate, at the moment of their conversion, there is a difference in the vigour of the principle of spiritual life, analogous to what we observe in the natural world; and no doubt the analogy holds as it relates to growth. As some children who were weak and sickly in the first days of their existence become healthy and strong, and greatly outgrow others who commenced life with far greater advantages, so it is with the ‘new man’. Some who enter on the spiritual life with a weak and wavering faith, by the blessing of God on a diligent use of means, far outstrip others who in the beginning were greatly before them.

It is often observed that there are professors who never appear to grow, but rather decline perpetually, until they become in spirit and conduct entirely conformed to the world, from whence they professed to come out. The result in regard to them is one of two things; they either retain their standing in the Church and become dead formalists, ‘having a name to live while they are dead’—‘a form of godliness, while they deny the power thereof’—or they renounce their profession and abandon their connection with the Church, and openly take their stand with the enemies of Christ, and not infrequently go beyond them all in daring impiety. Of all such we may confidently say, ‘They were not of us, or undoubtedly they would have continued with us.’ But of such I mean not now to speak further, as the case of back-sliders will be considered hereafter.

That growth in grace is gradual and progressive is very evident from Scripture; as in all those passages where believers are exhorted to mortify sin and crucify the flesh, and to increase and abound in all the exercises of piety and good works. One text on this subject will be sufficient: ‘Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.’ (2 Peter 3.18) And this passage furnishes us with information as to the origin and nature of this growth. It is knowledge, even the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Just so far as any soul increases in spiritual knowledge, in the same degree it grows in grace. Persons may advance rapidly in other kinds of knowledge, and yet make no advances in piety, but the contrary. They may even have their minds filled with correct theoretical knowledge of divine truth, and yet its effect may not be to humble, but to ‘puff up’. Many an accurate and profound theologian has lived and died without a ray of saving light. The natural man, however gifted with talent or enriched with speculative knowledge, has no spiritual discernment. After all his acquisitions, he is destitute of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. But it should not be forgotten that divine illumination is not independent of the Word, but accompanies it. Those Christians, therefore, who are most diligent in attending upon the Word in public and private, will be most likely to make progress in piety.

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7 Maxims of Repentance

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

Jesus said:

“This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”  (Luke 26.46-47)

Seemingly few recognize that repentance is part of the message of the Great Commission.  But that is clearly what Luke records Jesus as saying.  Not only is a call to repentance connected to the forgiveness of our sin, but I am convinced that repentance is one of the ways in which we express “obedience” to everything Jesus commanded us. As Martin Luther postulated in the first of his 95 Theses:

When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said “Repent”, He willed that the whole life of believers be lived out in repentance.

Yet, just as seemingly few are aware that repentace is part of the Great Commisson, seemingly fewer realize repentance should be a way of life for the Christian. Building upon Luther’s observation, contemporary pastor/theologian Sinclair Ferguson declares:

“According to Scripture, the Christian Life is repentance from beginning to end! So long as the believer is at the same time righteous and yet a sinner, it can be no other way.”

In his masterful book on the subject, Repentance: The First Word of the Gospel, Richard Owen Roberts offers a series of lists, including 7 Maxims of Repentance:

  1. True Repentance is a Gift of God
  2. True Repentance is NOT a Single Act but an Ongoing and Continual Attitude
  3. True Repentance is NOT Merely Turning From What You Have Done but From What You ARE
  4. True Repentance is Not What you Do for yourself but What You do for God
  5. True Repentance is Not Merely of the Fruits of Sin but of the Very Roots
  6. True Repentance is Not Secret but Open
  7. True Repentance is Both Negative and Positive

While I would wholeheartedly commend the reading of Roberts’ book, merely pondering this list will itself offer some rewarding insights as to the nature and benefits of repentance.  While some maxims are more immediately understood than others, all are discernable.

Beauty & Purpose of the Cross

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Sadly not everyone recognizes the requisite necessity for God to be Just. Many picture him exclusively as absolute and unconditional love, thinking he will dismiss the the legal demands that result from mankind’s sin on that basis alone. This approach is offensive to God because it demeans two of the other essential facets of his unfathomable nature: Holiness & Justice. In addition, to see God solely as love is to overlook the beauty and the purpose of the Cross. For at the Cross, the perfect holiness of God meets his perfect love in action.

-Jerry Bridges & Bob Bevington, The Great Exchange

The Gospel vs. The gods of the Elite

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

God has not arranged things so that the foolishness of the Gospel saves [only] those who have IQ’s in excess of 130. Where would that leave the rest of us?  Nor does the foolishness of what is preached transform [only] the young, the beautiful, the extroverts, the educated, the wealthy, the healthy, the upright. Where would that leave the old, the ugly, the introverts, the illiterate, the poor, the sick, the perverse? 

[On the other hand…] The gods of the rich are not gentle with those the rich dismiss as poor; the gods of the wise are not kind to those the wise reject as stupid; the gods of the social elite are not patient with outcasts.

– D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry 

Happy Birthday, ‘Ho’!

/ Dennis Griffith / 17 Comments

OK. I know. A lot of people don’t like Tony Campolo. A lot of my friends don’t like Tony Campolo. I know he’s  “too liberal”.  I know John MacArthur flatly states that Campolo “misses the central teaching of the Bible“.  I know he was once tried in ecclesaistical court for heresy. 

But still, you must admit, he can tell a great story!  And sometimes he makes a great point.

Watch the video above. Then tell me:

  1. Is there anything overtly theologically wrong in what he says?
  2. How does his example move you?
  3. Is this something you see would meet with Jesus’ approval?  How about the approval of the Aposte Paul, who, in Galatians 5.6, wrote: “…the only thing counts is Faith expressing itself through love.”?
  4. Would you want to be part of a chuch that does things like this?
  5. Ask yourself: How would the community around you respond to a church that does things like this?

 “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.”

Grace Will…

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Paradox Hand

I was blown away as I thought about the paradoxes of the Gospel as it was described by Paul Tripp in his book, Broken-Down House.  Don’t just read through quickly. Stop and consider the contrasts:

Grace is a story and grace is a gift. It is God’s character and it is your hope. Grace is a transforming tool and a state of relationship.  Grace is a theology and an invitation. Grace is an experience and a calling. Grace will turn your life upside down while giving you a rest you have never known.  Grace will convince you of you unworthiness without ever making you feel unloved.

Grace will make you acknowledge that you cannot earn God’s favor, and it will remove your fear of not measuring up to his standards. Grace will confront you with the fact that you are much less than you thought you were, even as it assures you that you can be far more than you had ever imagined. Grace will put you in your place without ever putting you down.

Grace will enable you to face truths about yourself that you have hesitated to consider, while freeing you from being self-consciously introspective. Grace will confront you with profound weaknesses, and at the same time introduce you to new-found strength. Grace will tell you what you aren’t, while welcoming you to what you can now be. Grace will make you as uncomfortable as you have ever been, while offering you more comfort than you have ever known. Grace will drive you to the end of yourself, while it invites you to fresh starts and new beginnings.  Grace will dash your hopes, but never leave you hopeless. Grace will decimate your kingdom as it introduces you to a better King. Grace will expose your blindness as it gives you eyes to see. Grace will make you sadder than you have ever been, while it gives you greater cause for celebration than you have ever known.

Grace enters your life in a moment and will occupy you for eternity. You simply cannot live a productive life in this broken-down world unless you have a practical grasp of the grace you have been given.