Linked Together: The Trinity

Credo Magazine
The latest issue of Credo Magazine (pdf) brings together “some of the sharpest thinkers in order to bring our minds back to the beauty, glory, and majesty of our triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  The purpose? “[T]o help us think deeper thoughts about how God is one essence and three persons, and what impact the Trinity has on who we are and what we do as believers.”

Here are links to three articles:

• Why a Triune God Is Better Than Any Other (Michael Reeves)
• Salvation—Trinitarian Through and Through (Matthew Barrett)
• The Trinity: The God Behind the Gospel (Fred Sanders)

Teaching Series
Ligonier Ministries has six free videos of R. C. Sproul lecturing on the doctrine of the Trinity. The lectures include:

1. Monotheism
2. The Biblical Witness
3. Early Controversies
4. Fifth-Century Heresies
5. Contradiction vs. Mystery
6. One in Essence, Three in Person

Theological Term of the Week

Beatitudes
The “blessed are” pronouncements made by Jesus at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

• From scripture:

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, fortheirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:2-12, ESV)

• From the MacArthur Study Bible notes on Matthew 5:3:

The word [blessed] lit., means “happy, fortunate, blissful.” Here it speaks of more than a surface emotion. Jesus was describing the divinely bestowed well-being that belongs only to the faithful. The Beatitudes demonstrate that the way to heavenly blessedness is antithetical to the worldly path normally followed in pursuit of happiness. The worldly idea is that happiness is found in riches, merriment, abundance, leisure, and such things. The real truth is the very opposite. The Beatitudes give Jesus’ description of the character of true faith.

• From The Good News in Jesus’s Beatitudes (R. W. Glenn):

The context makes it clear that Jesus is describing what happens in a person’s life when they come to understand God’s grace in the gospel (see Matthew 4:23).

• God’s grace in the gospel shows you your moral and spiritual bankruptcy. You must be spirit-poor if the cross is what it took to rescue you.
• God’s grace in the gospel makes you mourn. To know that your sin nailed Jesus to the cross breaks your heart.
• God’s grace in the gospel makes you meek. How can you be touchy and defensive now that you’ve seen Jesus dying for you? There’s nothing in you worth defending.
• God’s grace in the gospel lets you see how hungry and thirsty you are for a righteousness that will open the door to God’s acceptance. Jesus is that righteousness given to you freely as a gift.
• God’s grace in the gospel makes you merciful. How can you choke your neighbor over what they owe you when both hands are already occupied receiving the mercy of Jesus Christ?
• God’s grace in the gospel makes you pure in heart. Knowing that God has accepted you on the basis of Jesus’s blood and righteousness frees you to live honestly before God and people, admitting who you really are and how desperate you are for Christ.
• God’s grace in the gospel leads you to be a peacemaker. Your experience of God’s grace puts so much joy in your heart that you cannot help but tell others how they can be at peace with God.
• And finally, your experience of God’s grace in the gospel will get you persecuted. There is something simultaneously beautiful and repulsive about a gospel-centered life. In the fallen human heart, there is a deep aversion to salvation not based on our own resume — if we didn’t have to earn a seat at the table, it’s not worth much. So when non-Christians hear that all their efforts to make themselves acceptable to God are a galactic waste of time, they’re going to get angry, and we will be the object of that anger.

Learn more:

1. Got Questions.org: What are the Beatitudes?
2. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Beatitudes
3. Arthur W. Pink: The Beatitudes
4. John MacArthur: The Beatitudes (audio series)
5. R. W. Glenn: The Beatitudes (audio)

Related term:

• Sermon on the Mount
• Great Commission

Filed under Person, Work, and Teaching of Christ

Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Round the Sphere Again: The Big Picture

 … in short videos.

A Quick Summary of the Bible

Greg Koukl

The Whole Story of Redemption

NCC Q26: What else does Christ’s death redeem? from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Stephen Um

A Catechism for Girls and Boys

Questions about the Word, the Church and the Ordinances

129. Q. What is Baptism?
        A. The dipping of believers into water, as a sign of their union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection.

(Click through to read scriptural proofs.)

Click to read more ...

Sunday's Hymn: Be Still, My Soul

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,
And all is darkened in the vale of tears,
Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,
Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.
Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay
From His own fullness all He takes away.

Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord.
When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past
All safe and blessèd we shall meet at last.

Be still, my soul: begin the song of praise
On earth, believing, to Thy Lord on high;
Acknowledge Him in all thy words and ways,
So shall He view thee with a well pleased eye.
Be still, my soul: the sun of life divine
Through passing clouds shall but more brightly shine.

— Ka­tha­ri­na A. von Schle­gel

Other hymns, worship songs, sermons etc. posted today:

• Jesus Shall Reign at Jam and Books
• Behold the Lamb at By Grace Alone
• O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus at Gospel Grace
• How Great Thou Art at The Happy Wonderer
• God Moves in a Mysterious Way (hymn story) at Challies.com
• Resting On God at Theology for Girls
• Voices from the Past #16 at Tried With Fire 
• Lord’s Day 16, 2013 at The Thirsty Theologian
• You Weekly Dose of Spurgeon at Pyromaniacs: Earnest Andrew

Have you posted a hymn (or sermon, sermon notes, prayer, etc.) today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by contacting me using the contact form linked above, and I’ll add your post to the list.

Bread of Life

I’ve posted the second installment in a series I’m calling Scriptural Lessons from the Natural World at Out of the Ordinary. 

My husband loved to take our children fishing, so they’ve understood since they were very young that when we eat fish, we’re eating something that was, not long ago, a living, breathing creature. My youngest son went bison hunting with his school class when he was 12 or so. They got their bison, helped butcher it, and served it fresh as bison burgers at a community feast. These children knew from experience that burgers don’t come from a fast food joint—ultimately, anyway—but from living animals killed so we can eat burgers made from their flesh.

Read all of Living Things Die So You Can Live. 

Round the Sphere Again: Eternal Hell

The Evidence
from Romans 12, especially when combined with other texts. (Thoughts of Francis Turretin).

The Grounds
If our sins are finite, how is an eternity in hell a just punishment? (Ligonier Ministries Blog).

The Divine Craftsman

Here’s one more quote from E. K. Simpson’s Ephesians Commentary [The New International Commentary on the New Testament (older version)] First, Ephesians 2:10:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Simpson writes: 

When the Lord has worked on us, He works by us, along the line of our talents and circumstances; for the Divine Craftsman empowers and employs human effort. Most vocations are not so much chosen as committed to the parties concerned. “The situation of a man”, wrote Burke, “is the main preceptor of duty”: and that situation is not the outcome of chance, but the appointment of the Disposer of all things. Good works are never to be relied on as items placed to our credit in the running account with our supreme Creditor; yet they are indispensable testifications of love and gratitude to an untold Benefactor and Saviour. “It is not against works that we contend”, said Luther, after trying both plans, salvation by dint of hard labour and then by faith, “but against trust in works”, a very different affair.

By nature we are would-be autocrats, persons of quality and standing; but new creatures in Christ Jesus ought to carry the mint-mark of humility. They should be content to serve their generation according to the will of God, to rank as trees of the Lord’s planting, bearing fruit unto Him. A “self-made man” is almost inevitably badly made, a jerry-built sample of overweening self-esteem; but when our Maker recasts us in His own image we are assimilated to the primeval pattern of manhood, no longer intent on steering our vessel for ourselves, but willing to will and do God’s good pleasure even at the expense of our own wills.

Recently I’ve heard two young women say that they are in a holding pattern, so to speak, waiting to find out what it is God wants them to do, as if God’s will for their lives is a mysterious plan they are required to discover. Their answer is in the first paragraph of this quote. God is the one who arranges all our circumstances; our present situations are God’s appointments to us. The good works God prepared beforehand for us are performed daily when we fulfill our duties in whatever circumstances he presents to us.

Theological Term of the Week

Sermon on the Mount
The title given to Jesus’ sermon recorded in Matthew 5-7.

• From scripture:

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying … . (Matthew 5:1-2 ESV)

(Read the whole sermon.)

• From ESV Study Bible notes on Matthew 5-7:

This is the first of five major discourses in Matthew (chs. 5–7; 10; 13; 18–20; 24–25). Speaking to his disciples (5:1), Jesus expounds the reality of discipleship lived in the presence and power of the kingdom of God but within the everyday world. Some interpreters have thought the purpose of this sermon was to describe a moral standard so impossibly high that it is relevant only for a future millennial kingdom. Others have thought its primary purpose was to portray the absoluteness of God’s moral perfection and thereby to drive people to despair of their own righteousness, so they will trust in the imputed righteousness of Christ. Both views fail to recognize that these teachings, rightly understood, form a challenging but practical ethic that Jesus expects his followers to live by in this present age. The sermon, commonly called the “Sermon on the Mount,” is probably a summary of a longer message, but the structure is a unified whole. 

Learn more:

1. The Bible: Matthew 5-7
2. Got Questions.org: What is the Sermon on the Mount?
3. Greg Herrick: A Summary of Understanding of the Sermon on the Mount
4. Bob Deffinbaugh: The Sermon on the Mount
5. R. W. Glenn: A Sermon on the Sermon on the Mount (audio)

Related term:

• Beatitudes
• Great Commission

Filed under Person and Work of Christ

Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Round the Sphere Again: The Older Woman of Titus 2

Will you like me less if I tell you I find the phrase “Titus 2 woman” very annoying? Even as I type the words I feel slightly irritated. (I’m not fond of the phrase “Proverbs 31 woman,” either.)

I do want to follow the instructions of Titus 2. I’m happy with the job description, but not the contrived (and “christianesey”?) title for it. What’s up with women and scripture passage labels? There are instructions to older men in Titus 2, and I’ve never heard an older man called a “Titus 2 man.” Have you? 

I think that might be the worst possible introduction for these two recent pieces on the Titus 2 woman. I recommend them.

• Who She Is and What She Does
  Kim Shay:

  Who (or what) is a Titus 2 woman?  She is part of a wonderful network of relationships meant to encourage women and build the Body of Christ.

  From A Walk Through the Word: Titus 2 at CBMW’s Woman’s Channel aka Karis.

• When You Don’t Have One
  Diane Bucknell encourages young women who don’t have this kind of mentor: 

  I never had the privilege of having the kind of “Titus 2” mentor in my life that I think women are looking for today … . As a young believer in the early 70’s, our rural church life in North Idaho consisted of co-ed Bible studies and prayer meetings and the only “women’s” thing I attended were baby showers. The things I was learning from the Bible were sufficient to teach me what I needed to know in order  to  love my husband and children and to stay at home and mind my own business.

  Read the whole piece  at Theology for Girls.