Coram Deo (April 2017)

The most necessary thing as a Christian parent is the Christian parent’s own life in Christ. That may seem simplistic, but it is fundamental. As Christian parents, our own lives need to be marked by godliness. Godliness manifests itself in various ways, but one of the chief ways is a love for God’s Word. It is a blessed child who is raised by parents who know and treasure Christ according to His Word. A godly mother or father steeped in God’s truth is an effective instrument in the hands of God. —Jason Helopoulos in April's Tabletalk Magazine

Coram Deo: Because of Adam’s sin, we are born corrupt and cannot please God apart from grace. We are wholly dependent on the Lord’s unmerited favor for our salvation and for any of the good works that we do in gratitude for salvation. Let us remember our dependence on God’s grace that we would be moved to great humility and thankfulness.

The gospel seed planted by the fifteenth-century forerunners of the Reformation was watered and tended by the Reformers in the sixteenth century. However, it is in the seventeenth century that we begin to see the full flowering of Reformed doctrine, piety, and practice. During the seventeenth century, so much of what it means to be Protestant and Reformed was codified in the creeds and confessions that we affirm and confess today. —Burk Parsons in April's Tabletalk Magazine

Coram Deo: God could have abandoned all people when Adam fell, leaving us totally under the devil’s domain with no desire to resist him. But the Lord graciously intervened to give His people the will to resist Satan and, even better, God pledged to send the Savior to do all the work needed to save us. Let us thank God for our salvation this day and pray that He would strengthen us against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The principal rule of interpreting Scripture is that Scripture interprets Scripture. —R.C. Sproul

Coram Deo: How often do we think about the good gift of a stable and predictable natural order? The consistent rhythm of the seasons, the sun and moon, and even the weather enables us to make plans, grow crops, and do a host of other things. Let us thank God for the natural order He has established, and may we use the stability it offers for the sake of His glory.

When we walk into a prayer meeting and hear others praying words of deep affection for our covenant-keeping God, we find ourselves among friends. Each person who is united to Christ, everyone who loves Him and is loved by Him, is also bound together with us in love. Any friend of Jesus is a friend of ours. —Megan Hill in April's Tabletalk Magazine

Coram Deo: What is to be our response to the Abrahamic covenant? It is to forsake any claim to merit that we might think we have and to rest on Christ alone for salvation. We must continually turn to Jesus in faith, repenting of our sin and admitting that we have no merit of our own. Let us trust in Christ this day and exhort others to do so as well.

How we treat God's name reflects how we feel about Him. —R.C. Sproul

Coram Deo: Even after we have trusted in Christ, the law continues to show us our need for Him. If we meditate on God’s commandments, we soon see that we have not kept any of them with our whole heart, mind, soul, or strength. We are driven to our knees in repentance before God. Meditate on one of the Ten Commandments and consider how you have failed to keep it. Then, go before the Lord in repentance.

Well before I could ever articulate a clear theology of the Lord’s Day, I contracted the happy contagion of joyful Sabbath observance. Were there nothing to support a well-spent Lord’s Day but the practical benefits of it, I would still commend this day of rest as an excellent mechanism for promoting our spiritual best. —David Strain in Tabletalk Magazine

How to mortify sin? The first thing to do is: Turn to the Scriptures. Yes, turn to John Owen (never a bad idea!), or to some other counselor dead or alive. But remember that we have not been left only to good human resources in this area. We need to be taught from “the mouth of God” so that the principles we are learning to apply carry with them both the authority of God and the promise of God to make them work. —Sinclair Ferguson

Coram Deo: In addition to making His people righteous before God, Jesus, Son of David and Son of God, also restores to humanity the rule over creation originally given to us in creation. Those who are in Christ by faith will reign with Him over the universe. No matter our present vocation, we who are in Christ have a glorious destiny as corulers with Him over creation. Let us praise Him for showing us such grace.

If nothing can be discerned as true, then what will be destroyed are the norms by which people determine what is good and what is evil. And if we cannot know the good, Socrates said, ethics will disintegrate and civilization will return to barbarianism. —R.C. Sproul in April's Tabletalk Magazine

Coram Deo: The process of God’s writing His law on our hearts begins in this life but is not completed until our glorification. Christians grow slowly but surely in their willingness to obey and to repent for even the smallest sins, and at Christ’s return, the covenant of grace will be consummated in a new heaven and earth where righteousness dwells. Until then we pursue holiness, anticipating that great day to come.

The worst sin against stewardship is to waste your life. —R.C. Sproul

Coram Deo: That nothing in us moved God to choose us for salvation is hard for many people to accept. But Scripture is clear that God chose us only on account of His good pleasure. We cannot take credit in any way for our salvation. We believe only because God first chose us. This should lead us to great humility and to never consider ourselves more highly than we ought.

Even now, the preaching of the gospel testifies that God’s kingdom is here now and that any human being without exception may receive it by faith. This is why the author of Hebrews describes those who profess faith in Christ as having “tasted … the powers of the age to come." From that angle, as to their salvation, Christians have already arrived at their destination. —R. Carlton Wynne in April's Tabletalk Magazine

Coram Deo: The elect get what they do not deserve—salvation—but the reprobate get what they deserve—condemnation. The doctrine of election should not lead us to pride or to consider ourselves inherently holier than others. It should be a continual reminder to us that we are among the worst of sinners and that we are in Christ only because God chooses to love undeserving sinners. May the doctrine of election make us more aware of our sin and the grace of the Lord.

Coram Deo: God’s saving grace is not weak but powerful and effectual to save. It can bring dead souls to life, and since the life that God gives is far more powerful than death, no one to whom saving grace is shown will fail to be regenerated. If God wants to save someone, that person will be saved. No resistance to divine grace can endure. We therefore pray for God to change hearts, knowing that salvation is His powerful work alone.

We live in a fearful world. There’s so much we cannot control. God does not offer us the promise of an easy life or trouble-free existence. He gives us a better promise: Himself. There is nothing greater we could ask for, nothing more that we need. —Melissa B. Kruger in April's Tabletalk Magazine

Coram Deo: It is critical that we know our good works do not and cannot justify us. The very honor of Christ is at stake in this. If we suggest our works are necessary for justification, we are saying what Christ gives us is insufficient, which denigrates His work. By upholding justification by grace alone, we are honoring the Lord Jesus Christ.

More than a year before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, New  York Times columnist Ross Douthat had written that once the decision was handed down, the winning liberal side would “recognize its power.” There would be no negotiation then. “Instead, all that’s left is the timing of the final victory—and for the defeated to find out what settlement the victors will impose.” —Albert Mohler in April's Tabletalk Magazine

Coram Deo: Until we are glorified, the presence of sin remains in us, affecting all that we do. Thus, our obedience cannot merit salvation because none of our obedience is perfect. But God is pleased to accept good works done in Christ and by grace, using them to conform us ever more to the Lord. So, we act and obey, not to earn heaven but because heaven has been earned and secured for us by Jesus.

Our beliefs dictate our behavior. —R.C. Sproul

Coram Deo: Knowing that God will keep us in grace inspires us to work out our salvation, obeying Him as evidence that He is indeed preserving us. And when we see someone apparently fall from grace, that is our cue to pray for that person. We do not know whether God may yet restore that person, and we know that the Lord works through our prayers to accomplish His will.

Protestants did not invent the need for confessions. Over the centuries, the church has always confessed the faith in the midst of confusion or crisis. The role of a creed or confession was never to replace Scripture, but rather to sum up the church’s witness to the truth in Scripture over against error. —Ryan Reeves in April's Tabletalk Magazine

Coram Deo: Sin is a harsh master, leading its slaves finally to death. Christ, however, is a kind master who gives us an easy yoke. His servants will not experience eternal death but eternal life. If we think that we can find freedom and life outside of Christ, we are fooling ourselves, so let us cast aside our sin and look for life only in Jesus. He alone can satisfy us this day and every day.

We always choose according to our greatest inclination at the moment. —R.C. Sproul

Coram Deo: Few would claim the mantle of Pelagius today, but it is a common belief that God’s commands imply our ability to obey. Thus, many people overestimate the degree to which they have kept God’s law. We must have a strong, biblical doctrine of sin, or we will view ourselves more highly than we ought. Are you convinced that you are a sinner and without hope save for the grace of the Lord?

Christians must regularly gather with the church. So says the author of Hebrews (10:25). My own church will excommunicate people who stop attending church altogether. Such discipline is a plea for honesty. Don’t say you belong to the family if you’re never with the family. —Jonathan Leeman in April's Tabletalk Magazine

Coram Deo: Augustinianism and semi-Pelagianism ultimately disagree regarding the power of God’s love and beauty. Is God’s love so effectual and is He so lovely that those to whom He reveals His salvation cannot finally reject Him, or are His love and beauty of a lesser character that cannot convince everyone whom He wants to save? By upholding Augustinian thought, we are powerfully declaring the glorious love and beauty of our Creator.

People who don't believe that prayer matters, or that prayer works, are people who simply don't pray. —R.C. Sproul

Coram Deo: Either God is the source of all good or He is not. If we deny the necessity of grace to do what the Lord considers truly good, then we end up calling into question whether He is the ultimate source of every good thing. It then makes it easy for us to claim the credit for the good that we do. Understanding our fallenness, that we will not seek God without His effectual grace, enables us to worship Him more fervently as the source of every good and perfect gift.

Coram Deo: Passages such as Titus 2:11 are invoked as proof of prevenient grace, but the biblical doctrine of election forces us to reject Arminian and Wesleyan interpretations. When Paul says the grace of God has brought salvation to all people, he must mean God has saved all kinds of people. Salvation is not restricted to one gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group, so we must preach the gospel to people of every background.

When the Protestant Reformers turned to Scripture to answer the question as to how God’s intent to save is accomplished, they discovered that if the Lord really wants to save a person, He always succeeds. But this was not an entirely new discovery, for the Reformers were following in the footsteps of Augustine who, following Paul and the other biblical authors, stressed the sovereignty of God’s grace in salvation and the power of God to save all those whom He has chosen for salvation. —From "Grace Alone" in April's Tabletalk Magazine

Coram Deo: The power of God for conversion is in His grace working through the preaching of the gospel (1 Cor. 1:21). We do not have to invent fancy techniques to bring people to faith; we just have to preach God’s Word accurately and trust Him to save His people. Let us put our hope not in methods but in faithfulness to God’s Word.

The fear of man is not simply the fear of the harm that men may do to us. Surely the fear of harm partly drives our desire to be approved by men. However, most properly, the fear of man is, as Bunyan put it, “the fear of losing man’s favor, love, goodwill, help, and friendship.” Simply put, it is “an idol of approval.” —Nicholas Batzig in Tabletalk Magazine

Our time is coming. Remember this the next time you observe a funeral. Take it in and let it sink deep. Yours is coming too. But the day is also coming when the last enemy—death—will be destroyed. The One who was dead and is now alive holds the keys of death. Our death is sure, if Jesus tarries. Do you hear its footsteps behind you? “Do not be afraid”—after death has had its claim on you, you will live on. Death will pass away, but you, Christian, will not. —Aaron Garriott in April's Tabletalk Magazine