The Worst Sinner You Know

Are you the worst sinner you know? How you answer that question says a lot about your theology as well as the condition of your soul. Some Christians find this questions to be difficult, if not inappropriate. So let me tell you up front that I am convinced the answer to this question, when posed to a Christian, ought to always be, "Yes. I am the worst sinner I know."  Many balk at this idea--pointing to people who are constantly overwhelmed by guilt and find no relief. Such theology can seem cruel. Yet when properly understood this leads to deliverance rather than to despair. Knowing ourselves and knowing our Savior highlights our transgressions and Christ's glories in such a way that we are both humbled and made happy by the grace of God in Christ.

The Apostle Paul wrote of himself in a way that demonstrates what he believed about himself. First he said he was "least of the Apostles" (1 Cor. 15:9), then "least of all the saints" (Eph. 3:8), and, at the end of his life, he saw himself as the "foremost" of sinners (1 Tim 1:15). This, combined with Paul's ongoing struggle with sin described in Romans 7:13-25, gives a picture of the Apostle's self-image. Though now a saint he remained, in his own eyes, the worst sinner he knew due to his wicked past and even his present corruption. Note what the Second London Confession has to say about the sin nature in believers:   Continue at Joe Thorn

“I Am Not a Monster”—Ariel Castro as Sinner and Sociopath

“I am not a monster. I am a normal person. I am just sick.”  Those were among the words Ariel Castro addressed to an Ohio judge as he faced the bar of justice yesterday. Shortly thereafter, Judge Michael J. Russo of the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court sentenced Castro to life in prison with no chance of parole, and then added an additional 1,000 years of prison time.

Castro, age 53, had kept three women imprisoned in his Cleveland home for a decade, treating them as sex slaves. All of the women were young when Castro abducted them; two were teenagers. He entered a guilty plea yesterday in order to avoid the death penalty. He eventually pleaded guilty to more than 900 criminal counts, including aggravated murder, rape, and kidnapping, among other crimes. The aggravated murder count was tied to Castro’s brutal beating of one woman when she was pregnant with his child. The unborn child died and the woman miscarried.    Continue at Al Mohler

Romans 7 and the Normal Christian Life

The poor, struggling sinner who is erroneously told that the struggle with sin he or she is currently experiencing is a sign of defeat and that the person is not yet a Christian, or else has chosen not to take advantage of the victory offered to all those in Christ, should instead see the struggle with sin as proof that sanctification is actually taking place.

In the evangelical world in which I was raised, it was the minister's job to ensure that everyone in his congregation was "living in victory." What this meant was that those who were truly committed to Jesus Christ and had made him Lord over every area of their lives would not be content to remain "carnal Christians." If you were truly committed to Jesus, you would strive with everything in you to move into the "victorious life" described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8. In that passage, the Apostle Paul supposedly speaks of victorious Christians as people who had made the determination to walk according to the Spirit and to no longer walk after the flesh (Rom. 8:1, kjv). Those hearty souls who managed to completely dedicate themselves to Christ could attain that lofty goal spoken of by Paul as "more than a conqueror" (cf. Rom. 8:37). To demonstrate that we were striving to attain victory, there were the familiar behavioral taboos. And you certainly did not want to be "left behind," forced to endure the seven-year tribulation and risk coming face to face with the minions of the Antichrist.    Continue at Kim Riddlebarger

In Christ I'm Not a Sinner

I'm learning that the more I see of the gospel, the more I see how little I see it. For every inch gained in gospel understanding, I gain a foot in seeing how little I grasp it. I peer over the ledge of grace and see a new hundred-foot drop, which enables me to see also that the cliff extends another mile beyond that.

There is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the Fall, is a near-constant emission of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing, nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering silliness that is not something I say or even think so much as something I breathe. You can smell this on people, though some of us are good at hiding it. And I'm seeing more and more, bit by bit, that if you trace this fountain of scurrying haste, in all its various manifestations, down to the root, you don't find childhood difficulties or a Myers-Briggs diagnosis or Freudian impulses. You find gospel deficit. All the worry and dysfunction and resentment is the natural fruit of living in a mental universe of Law. The gospel really is what brings rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom---that existential calm that for brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you see for a moment that in Christ you truly are invincible. The verdict really is in; nothing can touch you.

From another angle: Living by law, which we all believe we're not really doing (those silly Galatians!) is deep and subtle and pervasive. More pervasive than the occasional moments of self-conscious works-righteousness would indicate. Those moments of self-knowledge are indeed gifts of grace and not to be ignored. But they are only the visible tip of an invisible iceberg. They are surface symptoms. Law-ish-ness (in Gal 3:10 Paul uses the phrase, literally, "those who are of works of law") is by its very nature undetectable because it's natural, not unnatural, to us. Feels normal.   Continue at Dane Ortlund

Freedom of the Will and the Five Finger Death Punch of Theology

At some point in nearly every debate about “who does what” in salvation a certain phrase is dropped which strikes fear into the heart of all involved. “I believe men have free will.” Like a triple dog dare issued on a schoolyard, people back up to give the concept space. The discussion of free will is an intensely polarizing subject. It’s more often put forward as a theological trump card against Calvinism than any other concept. “More moderate” theological constructs may take refuge within its walls. For many it is the final and insurmountable fall back defense against the logical minions of Reformed theology. Free will is the mother of all theological comebacks.

In the realm of debate the issuance of free will is a classic emotional appeal intended to play upon the sympathies of the listener. For certain, it is palpable. Within this discussion it is the emotional equivalent of setting a basket of puppies in front of an oncoming and uncaring steamroller of hard determinism. Who would dare advance against a reality as noble as man’s capacity to freely choose and love God? Who would dare trample over the treasured premises that underlie free will?

Free will as a doctrine (men have/retain the capacity to choose God) is intended to protect the quality of love between God and sinner. If it is not a free choice it cannot be real love. If it is not real love it was not a real choice. This sequence eventually leads to the five-finger death punch of theological debate, “Are we just a bunch of robots?” Free will and its corollaries pin the opponent down in an (apparent) inescapable contradiction between sincere love and unfeeling predestination. How can one possibly object to freewill without appearing as the Ebenezer Scrooge of theology? Debate over. Right? Not hardly. “Bah humbug!”  Keep Reading >>>

IMAGE

The Lady in the Rose Garden.

A lesson for all of us to consider from the puritan Joseph Meade:

I once walked into a garden with a lady to gather some flowers. There was one large bush whose branches were bending under the weight of the most beautiful roses. We both gazed upon it with admiration. There was one flower on it which seemed to outshine all the rest in beauty.

This lady pressed forward into the thick bush, and reached far over to pluck it. As she did this, a black snake, which was hid in the bush, wrapped itself round her arm. She was alarmed beyond all description; she ran from the garden, screaming, and almost in convulsions. During all that day she suffered very much with fear. Her whole body trembled, and it was a long time before she could be calmed. That lady is still alive. Such is her hatred now of the whole serpent race, that she has never since been able to look at a snake, even a dead one. No one could ever persuade her to venture again into a cluster of bushes, even to pluck a beautiful rose.

Now this is the way the sinner acts who truly repents of his sins. He thinks of sin as the serpent that once coiled itself around him. He hates it. He dreads it. He flees from it. He fears the places where it inhabits. He does not willingly go into the haunts. He will no more play with sin than this lady would afterwards have fondled snakes.

HT:  Defending

The Personal Cure for Pride

Let these four phrases be the heartbeat of our ministries (and our lives):

1. I am a sinner (1 Tim. 1:15)

• Remember what I was (think on the sins you’ve been delivered from)
• Remember what I could be now (if God had not stopped you)
• Remember what I still am (research your own heart)
• Remember what I could yet be (if God removed His restraining grace)

Follow the example of godly me from the past who turned the devil’s deadly weapon of pride back upon himself by using it to keep them humble.

Robert M. McCheyne: “Oh, for true unfeigned humility; I know not how to be truly humble. I know I have cause to be humble, but I do not know one half of that cause; I know I am proud, and yet I do Not know half of my pride.”

J. Edwards: (twenty years after his conversion) “I abhor the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness and pride left in my own heart.”

Richard Baxter: “Pride not only goes with me into the study, but often chooses my very subject and sometimes my very words. Pride writes my sermon, pride goes with me to the pulpit; it forms my tone and animates my delivery. It takes me off of that which may be displeasing to the people and sets me in pursuit of vain applause from my hearers. And when I have preached, pride goes home with me and causes me to eagerly seek for sings that I am applauded, rather than signs that my message was useful in the saving of souls.” Keep Reading>>>

The Glorious Metamorphosis

Whether awareness of spiritual truth to the sinner dawns as something initially muted, remarkably distinct, or nuanced as an effect of the Father’s regenerating mercy, it is nevertheless consistent in its outcome: a steadfast love toward and hope expressed as faith in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. We affirm that by grace through faith a man is saved. That the initiative of the transition from death to life is with God the Apostle is emphatically clear to articulate. In the passage before us God’s sovereign work in redemption through the agency of His Spirit by means of the application of His Word is expressed unequivocally.
To the sinner the glorious metamorphosis from death to life appears and is often misinterpreted as his doing, for the Gospel is presented and he finds himself believing it, yet unbeknownst to him the new found faith expressed is the result of a prior work of grace; viz., the Spirit of God regenerating his dead heart of stone in bondage to sin, quickening the heart and creating a whole new nature, one inclined for the first time to the things of God, a nature drawn to that which earlier was considered detestable. Read it all HERE

To Cut off the Sinner from All Hope in Himself by John Hendryx

Mark Driscoll is a Sinner

HT: Truth Matters