With lots of books and blog posts out there about law and gospel,
about grace and effort, about the good news of this and the bad news of
that, it’s clear that Christians are still wrestling with the doctrine
of progressive sanctification. Can Christians do anything truly good?
Can we please God? Should we try to? Is there a place for striving in
the Christian life? Can God be disappointed with the Christian? Does the
gospel make any demands? These are good questions that require a good
deal of nuance and precision to answer well.
Thankfully, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The Reformed confessions and catechisms of the 16th and 17th
centuries provide answers for all these questions. For those of us who
subscribe to the Three Forms of Unity or to the Westminster Standards
this means we are duty bound to affirm, teach, and defend what is taught
in our confessional documents. For those outside these confessional
traditions, there is still much wisdom you can gain in understanding
what Christians have said about these matters over the centuries. And
most importantly, these standards were self-consciously grounded in
specific texts of Scripture. We can learn a lot from what these
documents have to teach us from the Bible. Continue at Kevin De Young
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