Coram Deo: It is not enough to believe in a generic God or to affirm any form of monotheism other than the monotheism of Scripture. There are many monotheists who will die in their sin because they believe in God but not in the true God, the covenant Lord of Israel. Salvation is only in His name, so when we proclaim the existence of God and defend it against detractors, let us be insistent that we are proclaiming that the one God is the God revealed in Scripture.
Coram Deo: As Christians, we should be the most courageous of peoples because we serve the one true God. We need not be afraid of what this world and the servants of other gods can do to us because they cannot win in the end. But those who are on the side of the one true God are secure in Him forever. Let us remember that we serve the only true God and need never fear the enemy.
Coram Deo: Good earthly fathers will do whatever is necessary to protect and provide for their sons and daughters. If that is true of our earthly fathers, how much more true is it of the Lord? Our Father who cares for us is omnipotent and nothing can stand in the way of His providing for us. Let us thank Him this day for meeting all our needs, and let us trust that He will continue to do so.
Some say the desire for success is inherently evil. Others believe earthly success is all that matters. Both are wrong. God gave us the desire for success, and by striving for biblically defined success, we bring glory to our Creator. However, biblically defined success doesn’t always look like success to the world. —Burk Parsons in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Jesus calls those who serve Him His friends (John 15:13–15), but this should not lead us to see Christ as merely a friend. The One who is our friend is also our Lord, and we are to seek to worship and honor Him in all that we do. To be a Christian is to worship Jesus as God.
While there are times to minister to others instead of replenishing your soul or body, as a long-term practice this is neither wise nor fruitful. Jesus could have met literally every need presented to Him. But even He sometimes walked away from needy crowds to pray. Jesus is our example of all things good, including the priority of meeting with the Father. —Donald Whitney in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Because God transcends the limits of our creaturely minds, we cannot fully comprehend Him. This is a necessary facet of His greatness, and we should be overwhelmed by God’s greatness whenever we think on the Trinity. Knowing the greatness of God will fuel our worship.
How do you make your life count forever? The only way is to follow Jesus Christ. That may sound simple and trite, but it is nevertheless true. How do we follow Jesus Christ? In Luke 9:23, Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” In the context of Luke 9, Jesus is calling His followers to live in a different way. Not the way the world tells us to live, but to follow and live His way, the way of the cross. —Jeffrey K. Jue in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Jesus no longer walks the earth in the flesh, but Scripture does not paint this as disadvantageous. Jesus has given us another Advocate or Helper like Himself. God incarnate has given us God the Holy Spirit (John 14:15–17), so our worship and service are animated by the very God of the universe. Thus, we can be confident that our worship and service have purpose and will accomplish what God intends for them.
The sexual revolution is a war that is fought on many fronts. It includes the abuse of “free speech” to legalize the vilest and most explicit forms of pornography. It includes attacking all notions of traditional gender norms and labeling as “hateful bigots” those who want bathrooms segregated by biological sex differences. It involves abortion on demand and the elimination of every restriction on the procedure. It includes making promiscuity the norm and chastity the aberration. It includes elevating homosexuality as a positive good. —R.C. Sproul in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: If God is an impersonal force, then we should pay Him little attention. We cannot know or relate to Him, and an impersonal being cannot be concerned with the affairs of human beings. But if God is a personal being, then we had better pay Him the closest attention of all. He is not unconcerned with us but pays heed to our every need, hope, and fear. We can bring everything before Him, knowing that He cares for His people.
There’s no part of us that escapes the ravages of our sinful human nature. The whole person is fallen. —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: Jesus sometimes says that the Father is greater than He is (John 14:28). But that is not a reference to His divine essence; rather, in taking on our flesh, God the Son submits to the Father as a man, for that is what human beings are to do. Submission does not refer to realities with respect to the divine essence, however. Thus, we worship the Son as fully God and do not think of Him as in any way less than the Father with respect to His essence.
Over the course of the last several decades, we have seen this revolution coming. Erotic liberty has been elevated as a right more fundamental than religious liberty. Erotic liberty now marginalizes, subverts, and neutralizes religious liberty—a liberty highly prized by the builders of this nation and its constitutional order. —Albert Mohler in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Our doctrine of perichōrēsis shows the perfect unity of God. Because the three persons cannot be pulled apart, we know that They are never at odds with one another. The Father is never opposed to the Son or the Holy Spirit. This perfect unity means we can trust that when one of Them speaks, He is revealing the same purpose as the other two. God is not divided against Himself but speaks coherently and in an absolutely trustworthy manner.
Coram Deo: Why should we care to know these things about divine unity and distinction? It is not merely to fill our heads with theological knowledge. These concepts give us a further glimpse at who God is, allowing us to be filled with awe at how much greater God is than we can imagine. Knowing His set-apartness moves us to worship Him for His greatness, and thus we fulfill the purpose for which we were made.
Sin causes some to have exalted views of themselves (and a corresponding low view of others) because of the type of work they do. Our culture is full of glamorous jobs that deceive us into thinking we are inherently better than others because of our positions. This leads to condescending judgments about the work, character, and dignity of those who do not have “glamorous” jobs. —Ken Jones in Tabletalk Magazine
When we live a life focused on temporary pleasures, we can only expect temporary happiness. In contrast, by living for that which is eternal, we find purpose and joy in our daily life. We have a home that is waiting and an inheritance coming. It’s imperishable, unfading, and undefiled. It’s safe. —Melissa Kruger in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Because the three persons of the Trinity work in common, God is never at odds with Himself. One person does not coerce the others, but all three work in tandem to achieve Their common purposes. As His bride, we who form His church should strive for such unity of purpose that we might reflect His perfect unity to the world around us.
Coram Deo: Touching His divine nature, it was impossible for Christ to die. Touching His human nature, Christ could and did die. Christ could atone for our sin because He was truly man, but He was offered up for our salvation by all three members of the Trinity. In the humanity of Christ, God bore His own curse against sin, and now we live because of His work. Let us praise our Creator for His salvation.
Coram Deo: God’s people are important to Him. That is proven in the fact that all three persons act to save us. We are not important to the Lord because of anything we are in ourselves. Rather, having decided to save us, God makes us important to Him. Because all of God is involved in our salvation, we know that He pays attention to whatever we are doing, saying, or thinking.
Across New England, conservative churches are on a slow increase, while all others are in a continuing decline. You would think this should not be the case, given that the “safe Jesus” is found in the more liberal mainline and heterodox congregationalist churches. But the compelling Jesus, it turns out, is found in the evangelical communities. —Jared Wilson in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: God is truth, so the unity that He is effecting between believers is a unity grounded in truth. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do not unite people by neglecting truth, so where we see essential truths being ignored or downplayed, we know that whatever “unity” produced is not truly the work of God. Let us strive for unity with other believers, but always in a way that honors the love of truth shared by the three persons of our triune Creator.
When the light comes the darkness cannot stand in its presence. —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: That the Father loves us—by grace—with the love He has for the Son is some of the best news we could ever hear. The Father cannot stop loving the Son, so if He chooses to set such love on us, He cannot stop loving us either. We persevere and have assurance because God loves us with an everlasting love. Let us be grateful for this love and call others to trust in Christ that they would know this love as well.
Coram Deo: God is unlike anything else we can study. We can master other subjects, but we can never master the Lord. His incomprehensibility means there will always be new things for us to learn about Him. Thus, we dare not think we have ever arrived at the point where we know God fully. We must study His Word deeply that we would know Him better every day.
If we steward the pain of our failure, a holy longing for glory will be awakened in our hearts that will fuel greater faithfulness and passion for the kingdom of God to come. In the end, failure will fail, and we will reign. So, we say with the Apostle John, “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” —J.R. Vassar in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: Analogical speech about God has its limits, but it is fully adequate to tell us truth about the Lord. As we hear God referred to as a rock, a light, a shepherd, and a host of other metaphors, we should think carefully on how the Lord is like such things. That will enrich our view of God and our prayers and worship.
To say that God's sovereignty is limited by man's freedom is to make man sovereign. —R.C. Sproul
Coram Deo: We live in a fallen world, and so it is easy to be fearful. Change is ever present, and not every change is positive. If we trust in Christ, however, we have no reason to be afraid. We are relying on the One who is incapable of changing and who will never allow His promises to fail. When we are fearful, let us remember that God and His goodness to us are unchanging; thus, we are ever secure in Him.
That salvation precedes rather than follows good works is just as vital for understanding the nature of salvation and good works as it is for understanding salvation and good works as isolated topics. Indeed, one cannot have a biblical understanding of either topic without understanding the relationship between them. —Michael Allen in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: We live in a fallen world, and so it is easy to be fearful. Change is ever present, and not every change is positive. If we trust in Christ, however, we have no reason to be afraid. We are relying on the One who is incapable of changing and who will never allow His promises to fail. When we are fearful, let us remember that God and His goodness to us are unchanging; thus, we are ever secure in Him.
Coram Deo: God’s being has no spatial limitations, but that does not mean there are not some things that the Lord cannot do. Our Creator, for example, is incapable of doing evil. He is morally constrained by His own character, which is perfectly good and holy. Because this holy God is infinite, He can bring His holiness to bear anywhere. No act of goodness or evil escapes His notice, so we should strive to obey our infinite God so that we will please Him.
The evangelical church’s chief strategies to end abortion have been to put pressure on abortion clinics and on elected officials. There is nothing wrong with these strategies; however, one strategy that has not been used or adopted widely is that of protesting those churches that support the ghastly murder of unborn babies. It is time for Christians to give prophetic criticism to the church, specifically to those churches that support abortion on demand or remain silent on this major issue. —R.C. Sproul in Tabletalk Magazine
Why does anxiety steal our spiritual strength? Because our spiritual strength derives from a person—Jesus Christ. The Christian life is a life of trusting and resting in Him. When we fail to do that, our strength fails. We fail to live by faith. —Thomas Brewer in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: God’s omnipresence is a comforting truth. If God is everywhere, then we know He is never far away and can come quickly to our aid. Because He is present everywhere, we can know that He is acting in each and every place according to His holy will for our good and to achieve His purposes. This is true even when He seems to be far away.
Fruitfulness is ultimately God’s work, accomplished as we commit ourselves to Him in seeking to be faithful in all aspects of our lives and in all to which He calls us. We must resist the temptation to view fruitfulness in the same way that a stockbroker views his portfolio. It is a spiritual misstep of enormous proportion for us to look at our lives and labors and say, “If I simply do this today and this tomorrow, the result will be x, y, or z.” —Nicholas Batzig in January's Tabletalk Magazine
Coram Deo: God’s love is not a wishy-washy love that overlooks evil. Even in His love, God manifests His justice. He does not love sinners without dealing with their sin, and if we are in Christ, our sin has been dealt with in our Savior’s atonement. Let us proclaim all aspects of God’s goodness and call people to repent so that they will receive God’s goodness and His mercy.
When the gospel is at stake, everything is at stake. —R.C. Sproul
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