Coram Deo: Dr. R.C. Sproul comments that praying in faith means being willing to acquiesce to God’s will when He says no to our requests. Faith fuels prayer, but it is not faith in what we ask for but faith in the Lord. He alone knows what is best for us, and we trust Him to answer us as He sees fit, for His answer is ultimately for our good and His glory.
If God is just and I am not just, and I have to face His just judgment, how can I possibly stand? —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: When others ask for our forgiveness, we must not hold a grudge even though we may say we have forgiven them. As always, God is most concerned with our hearts, and our forgiving hearts indicate that we have seen our sin and have truly cast ourselves on the Lord’s mercy.
Coram Deo: When others ask for our forgiveness, we must not hold a grudge even though we may say we have forgiven them. As always, God is most concerned with our hearts, and our forgiving hearts indicate that we have seen our sin and have truly cast ourselves on the Lord’s mercy.
Coram Deo: The parable of the tenants was a prophecy to its original hearers of the death of Christ, but it also shows us how much unredeemed people hate God. As Dr. R.C. Sproul points out in his commentary Mark, that people had Christ—God incarnate—murdered proves that sinners would kill God if they could get away with it. Only by grace do we love God and not hate Him. Let us thank Him for giving us hearts to love Him.
The church is not a business organization where the pastor is the paid visionary, entertainer, program director, and CEO. On the contrary, the church is a living organism wherein each and every communing member of the church serves the church with his or her gifts. —Burk Parsons in September's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: It is easy for us to be discouraged when we see the enemies of God seem to prevail against us and against the church. But the parable of the tenants, as well as many other biblical passages, tells us that every up and every down of history is under God’s control. We can be confident for the future because we know that nothing happens outside of the Lord’s sovereign plan for all things.
Whatever God makes, He owns. —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: Believers give to God the things that are God’s, and what belongs to Him is supreme authority even over the state. That Caesar has things that belong to him does not mean that he has a right to everything that he claims for himself. Thus, the state is not permitted to overstep its bounds and intrude in matters—such as worship and church discipline—that God has not delegated to the state.
It seems our thinking can get distorted when our actions are mediated through a screen. I call it the “digital deception.” Words we would not dare say in person, we tweet or post as a comment. Instead of taking a matter to our elders or the church courts, we take it to the blogosphere. It’s almost as if we believe that if it happens online, the Word of God doesn’t apply. —Nathan Bingham in September's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: God’s authority supersedes the authority of the civil government, so we must have a nuanced view of civil obedience and disobedience. Still, that the Lord establishes civil governments reveals that government is not evil in itself. Evil governments may appear at times, but the general existence of authorities to preserve law and order is a good thing. Let us thank God for the gift of government, which protects us from civil anarchy.
Radical corruption means that the fall from our original state has affected us not simply at the periphery of our existence. It is not something that merely taints an otherwise good personality; rather, it is that the corruption goes to the radix, to the root or core of our humanity, and it affects every part of our character and being. —R.C. Sproul in Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: God intended government to help us fulfill the task given to all people, so we should not view the existence of government in itself as a necessary evil. In particular, government is a blessing as long as it sticks to the tasks that God has given it and does not try to take additional power for itself. Good citizens work to prevent the government from doing things it has not been appointed to do.
That we are to teach our children the truth of God’s Word is a sacred, holy responsibility that God gives to His people. And it’s not something that is to be done only one day a week in Sunday school. We can’t abdicate the responsibility to the church. The primary responsibility for the education of children according to Scripture is the family, the parents. —R.C. Sproul in September's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Civil authorities do not have to be perfect or even Christian for us to obey them. We are to obey even the mandates we consider silly or onerous if doing so does not require us to break God’s law. In rendering such obedience, we bear witness to the final authority of the Lord, for bowing to His authority means submitting to the civil government.
Coram Deo: We cannot have life itself if we do not have Christ. Indeed, we need Him more than we need to eat and drink physical food for the sake of our bodies. The Lord’s Supper helps to remind us of our total dependence on the Savior, so let us be cognizant of how much we need Him this day and every day.
I have often spoken with young people who told me they had declared their love for someone, only to receive the answer, “Oh now, I don’t want to get too serious!” There are many who say that to God. Could you be one of them? —Eric Alexander in September's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: The history of church-state relations is messy, and often the church has ended up compromised, blessing sinful aims of certain states. It is far better for the church and the state to respect the division God has ordained. When the state and the church each focus on their areas of competency—punishing evildoers and administering Word and sacrament, respectively—all people are blessed.
To say that God's sovereignty is limited by man's freedom is to make man sovereign. —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: It is easy to grumble and complain about our civil leaders and then stop there. But God would have us not merely speak up when the government acts unjustly; rather, He calls us also to pray for our leaders. Let us regularly pray for our leaders, even those leaders whom we have not chosen.
Coram Deo: Being used by God to reach the world and call the elect to faith is a great privilege. Of course, the Lord will save all those whom He has chosen, which is good news because it means our outreach failures cannot derail God’s plan to save all His elect. But this should not make us complacent. When we preach the gospel, we are participating in the greatest rescue mission in all of history, namely, the salvation of sinners. What could be more motivating than that?
Secularization in America has been attended by a moral revolution without precedent and without endgame. The cultural engines of progress that drive toward personal autonomy and fulfillment will not stop until the human being is completely self-defining. This progress requires the explicit rejection of Christian morality for the project of human liberation. —Albert Mohler in September's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Identifying the precise moment when a state becomes beastly can be difficult. Nevertheless, it is possible for the state to turn on God and His people, and we must be vigilant so that we notice when this happens. If we use patriotism to justify breaking the Lord’s commandments, we have confused our earthly citizenship with our eternal, heavenly citizenship.
We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: Choosing to obey Christ when His commands conflict with the state’s may earn us the designation of criminals or traitors. But that should not dissuade us from submitting first to Christ’s commandments before we do what the government says. Let us pray for discernment so that we might rightly know when and when not to obey the state, and let us encourage one another to be faithful to Christ even when the state disallows it.
Our Lord Jesus tells each of us that we must seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness. That kingdom is bigger than just me, bigger than just you. It is us, along with our fathers, our children, and as many as are afar off. It includes those whose musical tastes annoy us, whose weak theology frustrates us, whose sins shame us. We are called not just to identify with all those with whom we are in union, but to seek their good, to pursue their blessing. —R.C. Sproul Jr. in September's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: If we are going to know the truth, we must know the Bible. Let us take the time to study it personally and to hear it preached and taught accurately so that we may not err as the Sadducees did. John Calvin comments, “Since God makes known His will clearly in the Scriptures, the want of acquaintance with them is the source and cause of all errors.”
Coram Deo: Scripture refers to the Lord as the “living God” (Deut. 5:26) not only because He is the only God who is alive—the other gods being dead because they do not truly exist as gods—but also because He is the God of the living. God’s relationship to His people does not end at their death, for they live on to worship Him in heaven. Because God is the God of the living, we know that all His promises to us will be kept either now or in the world to come.
Coram Deo: Dr. R.C. Sproul writes in his Mark commentary, “We do not really progress in the Christian life until we understand that we are to love God simply because He is lovely and wonderful, worthy of every creature’s unqualified affection.” Love for God on account of who He is in Himself is the highest form of love that creatures can show. Let us pray that the Lord would give us such love for Him.
There is only one genuine cure for legalism. It is the same medicine the gospel prescribes for antinomianism: understanding and tasting union with Jesus Christ himself. This leads to a new love for and obedience to the law of God, which he now mediates to us in the gospel. —Sinclair Ferguson in September's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: In our day, many people will not preach the law of God because they believe news of God’s judgment creates a barrier to people’s entering the kingdom. Yet Jesus Himself shows us that we cannot come close to the kingdom of God unless we first know God’s law and what it demands. Let us encourage our pastors and teachers in their endeavor to preach and teach the law of God.
When the gospel is at stake, everything is at stake. —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: The church’s confession that Jesus is both truly God and truly man goes right back to the self-understanding of the Lord Himself. He proclaimed His humanity and deity; therefore, so must we. We are not preaching the whole Christ unless we proclaim His true manhood and His true deity. Because He is man, He could atone for the sins of mankind. Because He is God, this atonement can cover all of our sins past, present, and future.
We are dependent on the ministry of the church as the means by which the Word of God is channeled to us, for our education, our direction, our counseling, and our growth in holiness. —Iain Campbell in September's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: None of us fully lives up to God’s standards, but we are not hypocrites for trying. We are hypocrites only when we pretend to be holier than we are, when we present ourselves as humble when in fact our hearts are proud and conceited. Let us repent daily for any true hypocrisy that we might find in our hearts, and may we ask God to give us the grace to be honest about ourselves with others.
Satan can do only what the sovereign God allows him to do. —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: In his commentary Mark, Dr. R.C. Sproul writes, “God is not so much concerned with what we give as how we give.” Above all, the Lord is looking at our hearts, and He esteems those who have hearts that are willing to make sacrifices for His kingdom. Are you giving to the work of God in a way that pleases Him?
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