Weekly Roundup: 2019.04.22
Kevin DeYoung on the critically important word “propitiation”, Mike Riccardi on the insanity of a Christian who boasts in himself, and John Calvin on the necessity of humility and constant learning in the Christian life.
Resources
Salvation by Propitiation | Kevin DeYoung | TGC
Because of this propitious gift, our sins can be removed, our debt can be paid, our relationship restored, and our legal status irrevocable altered. Jesus Christ is our righteous advocate (1 John 2:1), the one who turns away the wrath of God that was justly against us. And he does so—wonderfully and freely—not by pleading our innocence, but by presenting his bloody work on our behalf, so that in him we who were deserving of nought but judgment, might become the very righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).
The Christian and Boasting | Mike Riccardi | The Cripplegate
The beginning, middle, and end of the Gospel by which we are saved—the incarnation of Christ, the perfect life of Christ, and the substitutionary death of Christ—is a wholesale denial of self-exaltation and the embrace of self-abnegation. How incongruous, then, would it be for those whose salvation has been won by self-denial to go around boasting in ourselves.
For more articles saved over the years, see my Evernote collection.
Quote
We grant, indeed, that so long as we are pilgrims in the world faith is implicit, not only because as yet many things are hidden from us, but because, involved in the mists of error, we attain not to all. The highest wisdom, even of him who has attained the greatest perfection, is to go forward, and endeavor in a calm and teachable spirit to make further progress. Hence Paul exhorts believers to wait for further illumination in any matter in which they differ from each other (Phil 3:15). [As a footnote, the editor adds a quote from Augustine, Epist 102, translated as, “If Christ died for those only who are able to discern these things with true understanding, our labor in the church is almost in vain.”] And certainly experience teaches, that so long as we are in the flesh, our attainments are less than is to be desired. In our daily reading we fall in with many obscure passages which convict us of ignorance. With this curb God keeps us modest, assigning to each a measure of faith, that every teacher, however excellent, may still be disposed to learn.”
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Third, Chapter 2, Section 4