This is awesome. Watch this and I challenge you not to be moved… a few simple words on a piece of cardboard, but so powerful.

Cheers Dan Green.

“The very act of setting out Calvinistic soteriology [the doctrine of salvation] in the form of five distinct points (a number due, as we saw, merely to the fact that there were five Arminian points for the Synod of Dort to answer) tends to obscure the organic character of Calvinistic thought on this subject. For the five points, though separately stated, are inseparable. They hang together; you cannot reject one without rejecting them all, at least in the sense in which the Synod meant them. For to Calvinism there is really only one point to be made in the field of soteriology: the point that God saves sinners.

“God – the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father’s will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of Father and Son by renewing.

“Saves – does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory: plans, achieves and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies.

“Sinners – men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, unable to lift a finger to do God’s will or better their spiritual lot. God saves sinners – and the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man’s own, or by soft-pedalling the sinner’s inability so as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Saviour. This is the one point of Calvinistic soteriology which the “five points” are concerned to establish and Arminianism in all its forms to deny: namely, that sinners to not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever; amen.”

J.I. Packer, “Introductory Essage,” in The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, by John Owen (London: Banner of Truth, 1959) 4-5.

HT: Scott Thomas

I don’t often cry, but it’s hard not to when listening to Gianna Jessen speak of her hope in Christ. Part 1 is her story, a child who survived an abortion, part 2 is a moving call for men to be men, women to be women, and to live for Jesus.

I’d never heard of this lady before, so thanks to Adrian Warnock for blogging it.

When’s the last time you looked another Christian in the eye and said ‘Mate you’re a sinner.  I know you have struggles, I know you’re tired but, deep down you’re wicked!  That’s your real problem.  But Mate – you’re clothed in the righteousness of Christ, carried on His heart before the Father, rejoiced over in the presence of the angels.’

Glen Scrivener

Things in life haven’t gone quite the way I hoped or desired just recently…

My general responses have been to sin, to be angry at God and others, and to not trust God’s purposes – yeah it’s easy to quote Romans 8:28 – I’m sure that is true, but it doesn’t look or feel that way at the moment.

I don’t have anything more to say on sin other than what Glen Scrivener has written – how should we respond to sin? Except maybe a thought from Romans 7…

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

As for responding to God, it’s the lack of trust and blindness to ‘seeing the big picture’ that expose idolatry, false motives, selfishness and sin. I guess I just want to go back and listen to CJ Mahaney on Unanswered Prayers.