Guest Blogger

OK, here I am, guest blogging to see if I can get a link to work. So here goes...

Let's head on over to this site and see what monergism is all about.

Mark, you just e-mail me and let me know if this works, 'k? :-)

New Covenant Confession of Faith

Please check out this link...

New Covenant Confession of Faith

Wikipedia on NCT

Please check out this link. Also, look at the external links within this article...

Wikipedia On New Covenant Theology

A Brief Description of NCT - Fred Zaspel

A Brief Description of New Covenant Theology By Fred Zaspel

Piper on NCT

Please check out this link...

Piper Artical

More Spurgeon

The future you can safely leave with the Lord, who ever liveth and never changeth. The past is now in your Savior's hand, and you shall never be condemned for it, whatever it may have been, for the Lord has cast your iniquities into the midst of the sea. Believe at this moment in your present privileges. YOU ARE SAVED. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus, you have passed from death unto life, and YOU ARE SAVED. In the old slave days a lady brought her black servant on board an English ship, and she laughingly said to the Captain, "I suppose if I and Aunt Chloe were to go to England she would be free?" "Madam," said the Captain, "she is now free. The moment she came on board a British vessel she was free." When the negro woman knew this, she did not leave the ship—not she. It was not the hope of liberty that made her bold, but the fact of liberty. So you are not now merely hoping for eternal life, but "He that believeth in him hath everlasting life." Accept this as a fact revealed in the sacred Word, and begin to rejoice accordingly. Do not reason about it, or call it in question; believe it, and leap for joy.

Have You Thanked Him Today?

Small note here: I recently had the pleasure of meeting a new friend in the blogosphere. She calls herself "Baptist Girl". You can find her on my blogroll. I asked her permission to republish one of her posts. She gave me permission. As you read it you'll know why I was interested. So, here it is...

All He endured for the Elect

John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (NASB). The KJV says, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."


It brings me to tears reading what He suffered so that we could be forgiven......

A cross is placed on the ground. The one being crucified is thrown backwards with his shoulders against the wood. His wrists are felt for depressions at the front of the wrists. A heavy square wrought-iron nail is driven through the wrist and deep into the wood. It is repeated on the other wirst, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow flexibility and movement. The patibulum is then lifted in place at the top of the stipes and the titulus reading Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews is nailed in place.

The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees moderately flexed. The victim is now crucified. As He slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating, fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain - the nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As He pushes Himself upward to avoid this wrenching torment, He places His full weight on the nail through His feet. Again there is the searing agony of the the tearing through the nerves between the metatarsal bones of the feet. At this point, another phenomenon occurs. As the arms fatigue, great waves of cramps sweep over the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless,throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push Himself upward. Hanging by His arms, the pectoral muscles are paralyzed and the intercostal muscles are unable to act. Air can be drawn into the lungs,but cannot be exhaled. Jesus fights to raise Himself in order to get even one short breath. Finally carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream and the cramps partially subside. Spasmodically, He is able to push Himself upward to exhale and bring in the life-giving oxygen.

It was undoubtedly during these periods that He uttered the seven short sentences which are recorded:The first, looking down at the Roman soldiers throwing dice for His seamless garment, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do".

The second, to the penitent thief, "Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise".The fourth cry is from the beginning of the 22nd Psalm, "My God, my God,why hast thou forsaken me?" Hours of this limitless pain, cycles of twisting joint- rending cramps,intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from His lacerated back as He moves up and down against the rough timber. Then another agony begins. A deep crushing pain deep in the chest as thepericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart.Let us remember again the 22nd Psalm (the 14th verse), "I am poured outlike water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels". It is now almost over - the loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level - the compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissue - the tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to draw in small gulps of air.The markedly dehydrated tissues send their flood of stimuli to the brain.Jesus gasps His fifth cry, "I thirst".Let us remember another verse from the prophetic 22nd Psalm: "My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou has brought me into the dust of death".A sponge soaked in Posca, the cheap, sour wine which is the staple drink of the Roman legionnaires, is lifted to His lips. He apparently does not take any of the liquid. The body of Jesus is now in extremis and He can feel the chill of death creeping through His tissues. This realization brings out His sixth words - possibly little more than a tortured whisper."It is finished".His mission of atonement has been completed. Finally He can allow his body to die.With one last surge of strength, he once again presses His torn feet against the nail, straightens His legs, takes a deeper breath, and utters His seventh and last cry, "Father into thy hands I commit my spirit".

Cristina

Apostolic Exhortation

"All true conversion is the work of the Holy Ghost. You may rightly pray in the words of the prophet, "Turn thou us, and we shall be turned;" for until God turn us, turn we never shall; and unless he convert us, our conversion is but a mistake."- CH Spurgeon

Oh here's a bit More:

Hear it as a gospel summons—
"True belief and true repentance,Every grace which brings us nigh;Without money Come to Jesus Christ and buy.""And yet," say you, "and yet the apostle Peter actually says to us, 'Repent, and be converted!' That is, you tell us with one breath that these things are the gift of the Holy Spirit, and then with the next breath you read the text, 'Repent, and be converted.'" Ay, I do, I do, and thank God I have learned to do so. But you will say, "How reconcile you these two things?" I answer, it is no part of my commission to reconcile my Master's words: my commission is to preach the truth as I find it—to deliver it to you fresh from his hand. I not only believe these things to be agreeable to one another, but I think I see wherein they do agree, but I utterly despair of making the most of what is written in Scripture, and to accept it all, whether we can see the agreement of the two sets of truths or no—to accept them both because they are both revealed. With that hand I hold as firmly as any man living, that repentance and conversion are the work of the Holy Spirit, but I would sooner lose this hand, and both, than I would give up preaching that it is the duty of men to repent and to believe, and the duty of Christian ministers to say to them, "Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out." If men will not receive truth till they understand it, there are many things which they never will receive.

- CH Spurgeon, Apostolic Exhortation

Free Grace!

Free grace! Unmerited mercy! Sovereign love!

(Octavius Winslow, "The Soul After Conversion")

No truth shines with clearer luster in the Bible
than that salvation, from first to last, is of God.

God is sovereign in salvation!

He often selects . . .
the poorest,
the vilest,
the most depraved,
the most fallen,
as if utterly to explode all idea of human
merit, and to reflect the free grace of His
heart in its richest luster.

O precious truth!

It stains the pride of human merit!

It lays the axe at the root of self!

It humbles and abases!

It empties and lays low!

It ascribes all the praise, honor and glory,
might, majesty and dominion, of the new
creation in the soul, to the Triune God!

No worthiness of the creature allures Him to the
sinner's heart! What worthiness can be supposed
to exist--what merit can there be in . . .
a guilty criminal,
an outlawed rebel,
a poor insolvent,
one whose mind is enmity,
one whose heart is swelling with treason against
God, His government, and His Son? One who owes
millions, but has 'nothing to pay'? None whatever!

And that the eternal Spirit should enter
the heart of such a one . . .
convincing of sin;
subduing the hatred;
breaking down the rebellion;
leading to Jesus, and
sealing pardon and peace upon the conscience;
oh! what but free grace, unmerited mercy, and
sovereign love could thus have constrained Him?

"Lord, what did You see in me," exclaims the
converted soul, "that moved You with compassion,
that drew You to my heart, and that constrained
You to make me Your child? Nothing on my part,
but poverty, wretchedness, and misery! Nothing on
Your part, nothing but love, sovereignty, and
unmerited favor!"

O the riches of His grace!

The Gospel of Substitution - Spurgeon

The Gospel of Substitution

What a sight it was to see Him in the garden oppressed with our load of guilt till the bloody sweat was forced from Him! To see Him bearing that stupendous weight up to the Cross and there hanging in agonies of death, bearing the desertion of His Father and all the thick clouds of darkness that came of it—dying—the “Just for the unjust to bring us to God”! It was the Glory of Christ that He was there bereft of all Glory! Never can a more glorious thing be said of Him than that He, for our sakes, was obedient to death, even the death of the Cross! And this is the Gospel we preach, the Gospel of Substitution, that Jesus stood in the sinner’s place and bore in the sinner’s stead what was due to the Law of God on account of man’s transgression.

-Charles Spurgeon-

The Carnal Mind is Enmity Against God pt.12 Spurgeon

I tell you, Sirs, if you change yourselves and make yourselves better and better and better, a thousand times, you will never be good enough for Heaven. Till God’s Spirit has laid His hand upon you. Till He has renewed your heart—till He has purified your soul, till He has changed your entire spirit and made you a new man—there can be no entering Heaven. How seriously, then, should each stand and think. Here am I, a creature of a day, a mortal born to die, but yet an immortal! At present I am at enmity with God. What shall I do? Is it not my duty, as well as my happiness, to ask, whether there is a way to be reconciled to God?

Oh, weary Slaves of sin, are not your ways the paths of folly? Is it wisdom, O my fellow Creatures, is it wisdom to hate your Creator? Is it wisdom to stand in opposition against Him? Is it prudent to despise the riches of His grace? If it is wisdom, it is Hell’s wisdom. If it is wisdom, it is a wisdom which is folly with God. Oh, may God grant that you may turn unto Jesus with full purpose of heart! He is the Ambassador. He it is who can make peace through His blood. And though you came in here an enemy, it is possible you may go out through that door a Friend yet, if you can but look to Jesus Christ, the brazen serpent which was lifted up.

And now, it may be, some of you are convinced of sin by the Holy Spirit. I will now proclaim to you the way of salvation. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up—that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Behold, O trembling Penitent, the means of your deliverance! Turn your tearing eye to yonder Mount of Calvary. I see the Victim of justice—the Sacrifice of atonement for your transgression. View the Savior in His agonies, with streams of blood purchasing your soul and with most intense agonies enduring your punishment.

He died for you, if now you confess your guilt. O come, you condemned one, self-condemned—turn your eye this way, for one look will save. Sinner, you are bitten. Look! It is nothing but “Look!” It is simply “Look!” If you can but look to Jesus you are safe. Hear the voice of the Redeemer—“Look unto Me and be you saved.” Look! Look! Look! O guilty souls—


“Venture on Him, venture wholly,
Let no other trust intrude.
None but Jesus,
Can do helpless sinners good.”


May my blessed Master help you to come to Him and draw you to His Son, for Jesus’ sake. Amen and Amen

The Carnal Mind is Enmity Against God pt.11 Spurgeon

IV. But there are one or two doctrines which we will try to deduce from this.
Is the carnal mind at “enmity against God?” Then salvation cannot be by merit, it must be by grace. If we are at enmity with God, what merit can we have? How can we deserve anything from the being we hate? Even if we were pure as Adam, we could not have any merit. For I do not think Adam had any desert before his Creator. When he had kept all his Master’s Law, he was but an unprofitable servant. He had done no more than he ought to have done. He had no surplus—no balance. But since we have become enemies how much less can we hope to be saved by works!

Oh, no. The whole Bible tells us, from beginning to end, that salvation is not by the works of the Law but by the deeds of grace. Martin Luther declared that he constantly preached justification by faith alone, “because,” he said, “the people would forget it—so that I was obliged almost to knock my Bible against their heads, to send it into their hearts.” So it is true we constantly forget that salvation is by grace alone. We always want to be putting in some little scrap of our own virtue. We want to be doing something. I remember a saying of old Matthew Wilkes—

“Saved by your works!? You might as well try to go to America in a paper boat!” Saved by your works!? It is impossible! Oh no!

“The poor legalist is like a blind horse going round and round the mill, or like the prisoner going up the treadmill and finding himself no higher after all he has done. He has no solid confidence, no firm ground to rest upon. He has not done enough—never enough.” Conscience always says, “this is not perfection. It ought to have been better.”
Salvation for enemies must be by an ambassador—by an atonement—yes, by Christ.

Another doctrine we gather from this is the necessity of an entire change of our nature. It is true that by birth we are at enmity with God. How necessary then, it is that our nature should be changed. There are few people who sincerely believe this. They think that if they cry, “Lord, have mercy upon me,” when they lie a-dying, they shall go to Heaven directly. Let me suppose an impossible case for a moment. Let me imagine a man entering Heaven without a change of heart. He comes within the gates. He hears a sonnet. He starts! It is to the praise of his Enemy. He sees a Throne and on it sits One who is glorious. But it is his Enemy. He walks streets of gold, but those streets belong to his Enemy. He sees hosts of angels. But those hosts are the servants of his Enemy. He is in his Enemy’s house. For he is at enmity with God.

He could not join the song, for he would not know the tune. There he would stand—silent, motionless—till Christ should say, with a voice louder than ten thousand thunders, “What are you doing here? Enemies at a marriage banquet? Enemies in the children’s house? Enemies in Heaven? Get you gone! Depart you cursed, into everlasting fire in Hell!” Oh, Sirs, if the unregenerate man could enter Heaven, I mention once more the oft-repeated saying of Whitfield, “he would be so unhappy in Heaven that he would ask God to let him run down into Hell for shelter.”

There must be a change, if you consider the future state. For how can enemies to God ever sit down at the banquet of the Lamb? And to conclude, let me remind you—and it is in the text after all—that this change must be worked by a power beyond your own. An enemy may possibly make himself a Friend. But enmity cannot. If it is but an adjunct of his nature to be an enemy he may change himself into a Friend. But if it is the very essence of his existence to be enmity, positive enmity, enmity cannot change itself. No, there must be something done more than we can accomplish. This is just what is forgotten in these days. We must have more preaching of the Holy Spirit if we are to have more conversion work.

The Carnal Mind is Enmity Against God pt.10 Spurgeon

Oh, Sinner, is this the cause of your enmity? Are you so estranged that you give enmity for love? And when He surrounds you with favors, girds you with mercies, encircles you with loving kindness, do you hate Him for this? He might say as Jesus did to the Jews—“For which of these works do you stone Me?” For which of these works do you hate God? If an earthly benefactor fed you, would you hate him? Did he clothe you, would you abuse him to his face?

Did he give you talents, would you turn those powers against him? Oh, speak! Would you forge the iron and strike the dagger into the heart of your best Friend? Do you hate your mother who nursed you on her knee? Do you curse your father who so wisely watched over you? No, you say, we have some little gratitude towards earthly relatives. Where are your hearts, then? Where are your hearts that you can still despise God and be at enmity with Him? Oh, diabolical crime! Oh, Satanic enormity! Oh, iniquity for which words fail in description! To hate the All-lovely—to despise the essentially Good—to abhor the constantly Merciful—to spurn the Ever-beneficent—to scorn the Kind, the Gracious One! Above all, to hate the God who sent His Son to die for man!

Ah, in that thought—“the carnal mind is enmity against God”—there is something which may make us shake. For it is a terrible sin to be at enmity with God. I would I could speak more powerfully, but my Master alone can impress upon you the enormous evil of this horrid state of heart.

The Carnal Mind is Enmity Against God pt.9 Spurgeon

III. I have said that I would endeavor, in the third place, to show the great enormity of this guilt.
I do fear, my Brethren, that very often when we consider our state we think not so much of the guilt as of the misery. I have sometimes read sermons upon the inclination of the sinner to evil, in which it has been very powerfully proved and certainly the pride of human nature has been well humbled and brought low. But one thing always strikes me, if it is left out, as being a very great omission—the doctrine that man is guilty in all these things. If His heart is against God, we ought to tell him it is his sin. And if he cannot repent we ought to show him that sin is the sole cause of his disability—that all his alienation from God is sin—that as long as he keeps from God it is sin.

I fear many of us here must acknowledge that we do not charge the sin of it to our own consciences. Yes, say we, we have many corruptions. Oh, yes. But we sit down very contented. My Brethren we ought not to do so. The having those corruptions is our crime which should be confessed as an enormous evil. If I, as a minister of the Gospel, do not press home the sin of the thing, I have missed what is the very virus of it. I have left out the very essence if I have not shown that it is a crime. Now, “the carnal mind is enmity against God.” What a sin it is! This will appear in two ways. Consider the relation in which we stand to God and then remember what God is. And after I have spoken of these two things, I hope you will see, indeed, that it is a sin to be at enmity with God.

What is God to us? He is the Creator of the heavens and the earth. He bears up the pillars of the universe, His breath perfumes the flowers. His brush paints them. He is the Author of this fair creation. “We are the sheep of His pasture, He has made us and not we ourselves.” He stands to us in the relationship of a Maker and Creator and from that fact He claims to be our King. He is our Legislator our Law-maker. And then, to make our crime still worse and worse, He is the Ruler of Providence. For it is He who keeps us daily. He supplies our wants. He keeps the breath within our nostrils. He bids the blood still pursue its course through the veins. He holds us in life and prevents us from death. He stands before us, our Creator, our King, our Sustainer, our Benefactor. And I ask, is it not a sin of enormous magnitude—is it not high treason against the Emperor of Heaven—is it not an awful sin, the depth of which we cannot fathom with the line of all our judgment—that we, His creatures, dependent upon Him, should be at enmity with God?

But the crime may be seen to be worse when we think of what God is. Let me appeal personally to you in an interrogatory style for this has weight with it. Sinner! Why are you at enmity with God? God is the God of Love, He is kind to His creatures. He regards you with His love of benevolence. This very day His sun has shone upon you. This day you have had food and raiment and you have come up here in health and strength. Do you hate God because He loves you? Is that the reason? Consider how many mercies you have received at His hands all your lives long! You are born with a body not deformed, you have had a tolerable share of health. You have been recovered many times from sickness.

When lying at the gates of death His arm has held back your soul from the last step to destruction. Do you hate God for all this? Do you hate Him because He spared your life by His tender mercy? Behold His goodness that He has spread before you! He might have sent you to Hell, but you are here. Now, do you hate God for sparing you? Oh, why are you at enmity with Him? My fellow Creature, do you not know that God sent His Son from His bosom, hung Him on the tree and there suffered Him to die for sinners, the Just for the unjust? And do you hate God for that?

The Carnal Mind is Enmity Against God pt.8 Spurgeon

Now, my Hearers, “the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants”—but whenever I find a certain book much held in reverence by our Episcopalian Brethren, entirely on my side, I always feel the greatest delight in quoting from it. Do you know I am one of the best Churchmen in the world, the very best, if you will judge me by the Articles and the very worst if you measure me in any other way? Measure me by the Articles of the Church of England and I will not stand second to any man under Heaven’s blue sky in preaching the Gospel contained in them. For if there is an excellent epitome of the Gospel, it is to be found in the Articles of the Church of England.

Let me show you that you have not been hearing strange doctrine. Here is the 9th Article, upon Original or Birth Sin.

“Original Sin stands not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk) but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam. Whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusts always contrary to the spirit. And, therefore, in every person born into this world, it deserves God’s wrath and damnation.

“And this infection of nature does remain, yes, in them that are regenerated, whereby the lust of the flesh, called in the Greek, phronema sarkos which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh, is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized, yet the Apostle does confess that concupiscence and lust has of itself the nature of sin.”
I want nothing more.

Will anyone who believes in the Prayer Book dissent from the doctrine that “the carnal mind is enmity against God”?