Asked by Anonymous
From Alex Kim:
posture is circumstantial to corporate prayer which is an element. Just in public worship do it in a manner that is edifying and doesn’t detract from the corporate covenantal worship of God, because public worship isn’t a time to worship God alone but worship God as a body.
for example, you have your whole heart into it but you keep swinging your arms and hitting your brother as you pray, and he can’t pray. Is that edifying?
Asked by Anonymous
The difference is that someone saved and struggling fight their sins and someone still enslaved never struggle with sin because they never fight it.
- also known as: radical depravity, corruptible nature
- also known as: unconditional choosing
- also known as: particular redemption
- also known as: effectual grace
- also known as: preservation of the saints, perseverance of the Lord
I’ve been wanting to write posts about them, and there they are. Some call the doctrines of grace the five points of Calvinism, but that is a rather pointless and entirely misleading title, so I defer to a more appropriate name: the doctrines of grace. If you have any questions about the doctrines of grace, ask away and I shall attempt to answer them. God bless, and search the Scriptures. God is more magnificent and inexhaustible in His riches than we can fathom. Dios te bendiga.
The doctrine of total depravity does not mean we are as evil as we could be, as if we think their is a limit to the wickedness of man. No, total depravity refers to how the entirety of the faculties and affections in man are entirely or wholly enveloped by sinful tendencies springing from the sinful nature inherited from Adam. From that sinful nature, every aspect of us is infected and saturated in sin through our Head, Adam. We are dead in our sins, spiritually dead, and are in need of quickening- being made alive, by the Holy Spirit who raises the dead. We are darkened in our minds and come to futile and vain conclusions. Our hearts are so wicked and corrupt that no one can comprehend how deep that fountain of sin is. Even our very will, which dictates what we do, is enslaved to sin and caught up in the throes of iniquity without escape. Our affections are for ourselves and the world, which are entirely at odds with the will of God. We are dead, and the dead cannot raise themselves, nor even reach out the finger in any part to will life into them. We are darkened in our minds, and our minds cannot comprehend in the slightest spiritual things because we do not have the Spirit to help us discern. We are futile in our understanding, and our vain thinking perverts the truths of God and even suppresses His very existence as if we were our own sovereign autonomous rulers. We are wicked in heart, and our hearts give lifeblood to every other part of the body, so if the source is corrupt, the deeds springing forth from the source will be in cohorts with the source, our wicked and sinful hearts. We are enslaved to sin, and we cannot set ourselves free when we do not even know we are held captive. We cannot overcome our slavery by force, when we enslave ourselves to sinful passions and lusts. Our very affections and desires come from a sinful standpoint; there is no desire for God or seeking for Him when we hate Him and deny His power and existence. We cannot choose God or receive Him or believe in Him on our own in the slightest, because what will answer the beginnings of grace? Our dead spirits? Our suppressive minds? Our futile schemes? Our deceitful hearts? Our enslaved will? Nay, nothing in us can answer grace. The spiritual life known as regeneration must come to us wholly and sovereignly from the Holy Spirit. It is not a matter of a bit of grace and a bit of us, because if even a hint of our work is in it, we pollute it and it is no longer grace. The Holy Spirit alone gives life- no part of us in the flesh can assist. Total depravity is how sin has infiltrated every aspect of each person, and how we cannot save ourselves, even if we wanted to. It is that we are not in whole nor in part attributing to anything but sin in the world.
Cf. John 3:3-8, 17-21, John 5:21, John 6:44, 63, 65, John 8:31-36, 47; Romans 3:1-9, 5:12-19, 6:16-23, 8:7-8, 11:6; 1 Corinthians 1-2; Ephesians 2:1-3; Colossians 2:13.
Asked by Anonymous
Here’s some lovely quotes ben gave us. Hope this helps!
”Your choices as a rational person are always based on various considerations or motives that are before you at the time. Those motives have a certain weight with you, and the motives for and against reading a book, for example, are weighed in the balance of your mind; the motives that outweigh all others are what you, indeed, choose to follow. You, being a rational person, will always choose what seems to you to be the right thing, the wise thing, the most advisable thing to do. If you choose not to do the right thing, the advisable thing, the thing that you are inclined to do, you would, of coarse, be insane. You would be choosing something that you did not choose. You would find something preferable that you did not prefer. But you, being a rational and sane person choose something because it seems to you the right, proper, good, advantageous thing to do.” —John H. Gerstner
Embedding an Edwards quote into his essay “Reflections on Jonathan Edwards’ view of free will”, Tullian Tchividjian has this to say:
” ‘We are said to be naturally unable to do a thing, when we can’t do it if we will, because what is most commonly called nature doesn’t allow it… Moral inability consists in the opposition or want of inclination’ (Edwards, Freedom of the Will 159) In other words, I am said to be naturally unable to do a thing, no matter how hard I desire it, if nature doesn’t allow it, such as flying or walking on water. In this sense, we are all naturally able to do what is right. After all, we have all of the natural capacities to understand the law of God. We have a mouth that is physically capable of uttering praises to God. We have a will that enables us to choose to do what we want to do. Original sin does not eradicate our humanity or ability to make choices. The natural ability remains intact. God has endowed us with the natural ability to do what he requires of us. What we lack, however, is the moral ability. What was lost in the fall is the want or inclination to do that which is righteous. We have no desire to obey God. We have, in fact, no desire for God at all. Fallen man has the natural ability to choose God but he lacks the moral ability to do so. For this reason, God can justly command our obedience (because we have the necessary faculties of choice), and at the same time hold us responsible for the choices we make.” —Tullian Tchividjian
And again:
“By nature [man] possesses natural ability but lacks moral and spiritual ability. The fact that he does not possess the latter does not destroy his responsibility, because his responsibility rests upon the fact that he does possess the former” —A.W. Pink
“as it is written:
‘None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.’”
(Romans 3:10-11)
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved”
(Ephesians 2:1-5)
This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. 1 Timothy 2:4-6
Oftentimes, newborn Calvinists get this verse thrown in their faces as the “HA!” of Arminian-anti-Calvinistic reservoir of proof texts (a reservoir, which I might add, is no deeper than a man-made puddle). It can cause them to sweat, have nervous ticks they never knew they had before, and bring about more “ums” and “ers” than they had ever uttered in their entire lives. Is this a hopeless endeavor to try to explain the verse? Is it truly an indestructible axe that strikes the side of the Calvinistic tree of doctrine? Is it only exegetical hoop-jumping and “explaining away” that will fix this sore thumb in the systematics of the Doctrines of Grace (or, better yet, shoving it under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist)?
The answer is a definitive “No.” With the help of an argument of one of my professors from seminary, we can actually see that Paul’s use of his wording here directly parallels another of his epistles.
Recognize that Paul here makes the claim that God ”desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth…” not as a standalone verse. He connects an explanatory reasoning in the following verse: ”For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men…” In other words, there is a logical connection being made between God desiring all men to be saved and God being one. Does this mean that God desires every single human being to be saved because He is one? Or does this mean that God desires every type of human being to be saved because He is one? Well, let’s be good exegetes and look where Paul uses the same phraseology of “God is one”: Romans 3:29-30
Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. (my emphasis).
Indeed, Paul uses the same phrase “God is one” here in Romans 3, but he clarifies what he means when he talks about the desiring of salvation. Because God is one, He is the God of all types of people, including the Jews and the Gentiles, as this passage in Romans 3 tells us. Therefore, if we know that all Scripture is God-breathed, and just as God is truth and does not (and cannot) lie or contradict Himself, we must realize that the passage in Romans 3 is in accordance with 1 Timothy 2. One clearer passage brings clarity to a less clear passage. As Calvinists, we can use Scripture to interpret Scripture alone as our strongest point of exegesis. We do not have a mere handful of proof texts that free-float and may or may not agree with the rest of Scripture. No, we have a system of doctrine that the entirety of Scripture teaches itself, with more clarity in some verses and less clarity in others, but can be used as a whole to understand the whole counsel of God. So now, we can see that because God is one, He can be the only Mediator, and He is the only Mediator for all types of people, so that there is no other name under heaven by which a man can be saved.
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands… Revelation 7:9
I leave you with this, brothers and sisters: do not be hesitant about your newfound doctrines of grace. The glorious high doctrines of Calvinism are not a set of man-made teachings that cannot be supported without tip-toeing around and avoiding huge swaths of passages in Scripture that might contradict them. No, the Scriptures themselves testify to the truth of the doctrines of grace. It takes some work to be able to see the trees in the forest, the forest of the trees, and the peripheral of one side of the forest to the other, but trust me, the reward is beautiful and amazing, and you will see your God as He has truly revealed Himself, with all praise and adoration due His name.
Asked by supajump
All the reformed confessions happened before the dispensational pre-millennial view of the rapture
This is from the Belgic Confession of Faith:
“Finally we believe, according to the Word of God, when the time appointed by the Lord (which is unknown to all creatures) is come, and the number of the elect complete, that our Lord Jesus Christ will come from heaven, corporally and visibly, as he ascended, with great glory and majesty to declare himself judge of the quick and the dead; burning this old world with fire and flame, to cleanse it.
And then all men will personally appear before this great judge, both men and women and children, that have been from the beginning of the world to the end thereof, being summoned by the voice of the archangel, and by the sound of the trumpet of God.
For all the dead shall be raised out of the earth, and their souls joined and united with their proper bodies, in which they formerly lived. As for those who shall then be living, they shall not die as the others, but be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and from corruptible, become incorruptible.
Then the books (that is to say the consciences) shall be opened, and the dead judged according to what they shall have done in this world, whether it be good or evil. Nay, all men shall give an account of every idle word they have spoken, which the world only counts amusement and jest: and then the secrets and hypocrisy of men shall be disclosed and laid open before all. And therefore the consideration of this judgment, is justly terrible and dreadful to the wicked and ungodly, but most desirable and comfortable to the righteous and elect: because then their full deliverance shall be perfected, and there they shall receive the fruits of their labor and trouble which they have borne.
Their innocence shall be known to all, and they shall see the terrible vengeance which God shall execute on the wicked, who most cruelly persecuted, oppressed and tormented them in this world; and who shall be convicted by the testimony of their own consciences, and being immortal, shall be tormented in that everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels.
But on the contrary, the faithful and elect shall be crowned with glory and honor; and the Son of God will confess their names before God his Father, and his elect angels; all tears shall be wiped from their eyes; and their cause which is now condemned by many judges and magistrates, as heretical and impious, will then be known to be the cause of the Son of God. And for a gracious reward, the Lord will cause them to possess such a glory, as never entered into the heart of man to conceive.
Therefore we expect that great day with a most ardent desire to the end that we may fully enjoy the promises of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. AMEN.”
Salvation is always supernatural.
A good, short and simple explanation of how knowing that salvation is entirely God’s doing, and not dependent on our words, empowers evangelism and gives hope for evangelism.
This tumblr group was made by a bunch of members of the facebook group, “Reformed Tumblrite Christians.” If you hold fast to the five solas and five points of calvinism, we would love to fellowship with you! Its one thing to answer questions, out of the grace of God, but we would love to be able to meet more sons and daughters of God who hold fast to the reformed tradition as being wholly biblical. By the grace of God we humbly wish to fellowship and get to know you from this side of life. Grace and peace to you and we hope this tumblr has been a blessing.
