The Gospel for a Weary Pastor on Monday Morning

Yesterday, you preached God’s Word to God’s people – His Law and His Gospel.  You administered the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ.  You ministered in prayer.  And this morning, you feel like a failure.  Empty.  Like a Monday morning agnostic – not knowing whether your efforts were all in vain.  Feeling like …

The Second Commandment: our failure, Christ’s fulfillment (3)

Homily #3 on The Second Commandment:  “You shall not make for yourself a carved image – nor bow down to them nor serve them.” So we’re continuing to use the Westminster Larger Catechism, and its biblical exposition of the Ten Commandments.  This morning, let’s consider some of the sins forbidden in the Second Commandment. [A. …

One more First Commandment FAIL: legalism and the deification of man

A homily on the First Commandment:  You shall have no other gods before Me… The Westminster Larger Catechism gives an extensive explanation of the sins forbidden in the First Commandment, and this will be our last week on this commandment.  One of the ways in which we can violate this commandment, according to Westminster, is …

Rehabilitating “Evangelical Obedience”

No, this is not about evangelicals obeying Rick Warren’s purpose-driven popery (whose infallibility is assured not by apostolic succession, but good-old pragmatic results).  “Evangelical obedience” is a grand old phrase, which has sadly faded from use & familiarity in Reformation circles.  It captures the old, Reformed orthodoxy regarding sanctification and its source – not the …

Does regeneration mean we are now able to “keep” God’s Law?

Have you ever heard a Christian say, “Now that we’re regenerated, we can keep God’s Law”?  I have.  Usually this is based on the new covenant promise of Jeremiah 31.   In fact, I’ve heard well-meaning Reformed believers say such.  Is such an idea true / biblical / Reformed?  Well, it all depends on what you …

More on the nonsensical distinction between “Mortal Sins” and “Venial Sins”

There is still a bit of a discussion going on, in a thread that’s several months old, between a Protestant writer Curt Russell, and Bryan Cross, on the topic of sin. More specifically, it involves the nonsensical distinction between “mortal sins” and “venial sins”. I know, I know, the interlocutor is “Curt” Russell”, not “Kurt” …

Sin

Just how serious is it? And who has the correct understanding of its seriousness? Rome’s view of sin is based on an allegorical interpretation of Luke 10:30, as I describe below, as well as a view of reality provided by the neoplatonist imposter Pseudo-Dionysius. The Reformers had a much more honestly biblical view of sin, …