Justification and the Supreme Victory of Faith

“Among all the realities of the invisible world, mediated to us by the disclosures and promises of God, and to which our faith responds, there is none that more strongly calls into action this faculty for grasping the unseen than the divine pronouncement through the Gospel, that, though sinners, we are righteous in the judgment of God. That is not only the invisible, it seems the impossible; it is the paradox of all paradoxes; it requires a unique energy of believing; it is the supreme victory of faith over the apparent reality of things; it credits God with calling the things that are not as though they were; it penetrates more deeply into the deity of God than any other act of faith.”

—Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory: Sermons Preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary (Solid Ground, 2007), p. 135.

FWIW

A digest of the week’s tweets:

RT @randyalcorn: Lewis said, God is good, but He isn’t safe. Until we face His uncompromising holiness, we will never grasp His amazing grace.

Bizarre file: Ted Williams decapitated head–now frozen–was beaten by lab techs like a t-ball… http://bit.ly/2A3e2Y

J.I. Packer: “As I grow old, I want to tell everyone: ‘I am so thankful for the penal substitutionary death of Christ. No hope without it.’”

RT @SovereignGrace: C.J. Mahaney’s recent conference message to pastors is now online (video/audio). http://bit.ly/1R28SD

RT @douglaswils: I am going to do my level best to keep this real. No artificial tweeteners.

New: Read the intro to Timothy Keller’s new book, Counterfeit Gods … http://bit.ly/u8PED // Cant wait for this one!

Nice review of the God Exposed conference this weekend at SEBTS … http://bit.ly/429VnF

RT @jsd…: Just threw tgthr a planning worksheet 4 Driscoll’s “The Biblical Man” msg http://tinyurl.com/ybdw9o6

Great hanging with CJ, the folks of 9Marks (MD, Thabiti, McKinley), SEBTS (Akin clan), and SovGraceNC (Sasser clan and staff) all weekend!

J.I. Packer on the Atonement

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For the context of Packer’s comments click here.

Social injustice and the OT Prophet

“…injustice is sin against God, and no consequences, however deplorable from the manward point of view, could equal the terrible significance of the religious fact to the prophetic consciousness. In short, it is not the circumstance that the rich injure the poor from which the prophetic mind in the first instance revolts, but what shocks and excites the prophets’ resentment is the bearing of the wicked conduct upon Jehovah and His rights. Hence the phenomenon that the conduct of the rich is condemned in equally strong terms even where it does not directly affect the lot of the poor and the weak.”

—Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology (Banner of Truth, 1948), p. 275.

God’s Punishment / God’s Discipline

Understanding this distinction is critical for the Christian life. Inadvertently overlapping punishment/discipline is not difficult to do. But if we do this we will be prone to legalism and condemnation and fall into a pattern of what John Owen calls “hard thoughts” about God.

So how does God discipline His children? Is this punishment for sin? Can punishment and discipline be distinguished by the cross? These important questions have been tackled by Dr. Alan S. Bandy, the Rowena R. Strickland Professor of New Testament and Greek/Assistant Professor of NT & Greek at Oklahoma Baptist University (2007 Ph.D. from SEBTS). I’d encourage you to read his blog post for details: “The Difference Between God’s Punishment and God’s Discipline” (June 16, 2009)