Reforming a Church When You Are Not the Pastor

Greg Gilbert at the 9Marks Blog has started a series Church Reform When You’re Not the Pastor: A Series

There are 4 post so far

Church Reform When You’re Not the Pastor: A Series

Church Reform When You’re Not the Pastor #1

Church Reform When You’re Not the Pastor #2

Church Reform When You’re Not the Pastor #3

James White’Closing Statement: Debate on Calvinism

Christ On Campus Institute

The Christ on Campus Initiative (CCI) is a ministry created for the purpose of preparing and circulating literature for college and university students, addressing an array of important intellectual and practical issues from an evangelical Christian perspective. This initiative is made possible by generous support from the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL) and the MAC foundation (Fort Collins, CO). The editorial team, led by D.A. Carson, commissions top evangelical scholars to oversee the creation and distribution of a variety of resources for university students. The goal of these resources is that they be intellectually rigorous, culturally relevant, persuasive in argument and faithful to historic, evangelical Christianity.

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2008 RESOLVED TRAILER

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Win a $200Monergism Books Shopping Spree

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Are You Fighting?

     Yes, I am posting on this blog. Contrary to popular belief, I do remember how to write a blog post even after not posting for a good amount of time. But God has been teaching me a lot lately, and this post is just a product of one of the many things that I’m learning.

     Let me ask you this, what are you fighting? What is it that you’re spending your time, resources, and energies waging war against? From watching the news lately, I would say a large number of people are fighting the opposing political party. Some people are fighting for their own name and fame. Some fight for their family, some for their job, others fight just to live day after day. While most of these things aren’t necessarily bad in and of themselves, I want to pose that there is one thing that we, as Christians, must fight above all other things and that is sin.

     Before you begin to jump to conclusions, here me out. Most people would respond, “Well yeah, sin is bad. Of course we should try our best to resist it,” and yes that is true but I think our attitude towards sin needs to be so much more than just resisting it like we resist a sickness. I think that our attitude towards sin flows out of our own doctrine of sin. Many people, especially myself, have a half-hearted attitude about sin because their view of sin is not scriptural. I’ve realized that I don’t see the weight of sin; I don’t see where it leads. Although it’s right in front of my face when I open my Bible, I am many times blinded (because of my own laziness and lack of discipline) to the consequences of sin. We see in Romans 6, “For the wages of sin is death.” Has that hit you? Do you you realize that just as you earn money for a job, what you earn for sin is spiritual death, separation from God?

     Now I know that the rest of that verse continues on, “…but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Praise our gracious and merciful God that for those who are saved through faith in the work of Christ, Romans 8:1 rings true, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those are in Christ Jesus.” Although our sin brings us death, faith in the One who has conquered death, and therefore sin, brings us life eternally.

     I say all this to say that our view of sin must be changed. We must have an attitude of all out war towards all the sinfulness of our own hearts. As John Owen’s well-known quote states, “Kill sin, or it will kill you.” Paul exhorts us in Romans 8 to “…by the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body…” The big word used here is mortification, which means “to kill” or “put to death.” We must strive to be holy as God is holy, but most of the time we strive to just sin as little as possible. That’s not the standard God presents for us in Scripture, we are to strve for holiness and, therefore, fight our sin with all that we have. Sin is not to be tolerated, it’s not to be played around with, it’s to be killed. May God give us the grace and the power by His Spirit to wage war on our sin, to fight our sin.