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Faith: A Bond, a Gift, and an Activity (1)
What follows is from Martyn McGeown's article "Faith: A Bond, a Gift, and an Activity,...
Peter (1): Sinfully Deviating From the Guidance of Divine Grace
by Rev. Martyn McGeown In Canons 5:4 the Reformed faith addresses the question of “lamentable...
Depravity and Regeneration (1): Understanding Total Depravity
What follows is the first entry of a series of articles written by Rev. Wilbur Bruinsma....
March 1, 2021 Standard Bearer preview article
What sin destroyed, grace restores. In the fullness of time, He sent the eternal Word, Jesus Christ, to take our flesh and to atone for our sins. As our chief Prophet and Teacher, He “fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption” by His death on the cross (Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 12). Now from heaven, He speaks to us the glad tidings of our salvation and gives us ears to hear and hearts to believe. He speaks to us words of instruction, rebuke, exhortation, comfort, and encouragement. Wonder of wonders, the Shepherd speaks and the sheep hear His voice!
By His work in us, Christ sanctifies our tongues and teaches us to use them rightly, to God’s glory and our neighbor’s edification. As His covenant friends, we delight to hear His voice and listen to His Word, and we also respond by speaking to Him in prayer and song. Such communication is at the heart of our daily experience of covenant friendship with God.
Consider two applications in closing. First, while learning to communicate rightly with others is important, most important is our communication with God. Imagine what one of your friends would think if you never listened to him and never spoke to him. That friend might think that you are not really friends. Now think about your friendship with God.
Do you love to listen to Him speak in the preaching and in the Bible? Do you speak to Him often in prayer? Second, what we have said about the gift of communication ought to make us grateful for it and motivated to make sanctified use of it.
The enduring freedom of the Standard Bearer (1 of 6): The relationship between the RFPA board and her Standard Bearer editors
Writing a blog is a new experience for me. So why not jump in and write a six-part series? My topic may seem dry at first glance, but I assure you it is not. This blog series is about Christian brotherhood, authority, influence, freedom, and criticism. This blog series seeks to answer the following question: what is the relationship between the RFPA board and the editorial staff of her Standard Bearer?
The question is not: what is the relationship between the church and the Standard Bearer? This answer is simple. The Standard Bearer is free from ecclesiastical control. Writers are still responsible for what they write though. Writers, like all of us, have their membership papers in a church. Church members abide by the decisions of those churches. Simply put, the church order governs all of us in these matters.
The question we will be addressing in this series is about how much control the RFPA board has over the Standard Bearer.
As To Conditions (1)
In his editorial in the March 15, 2020 issue of the Standard Bearer, Prof. Russell Dykstra recommended reading ‘As to Conditions,’ a series of Standard Bearer articles written by Rev. Herman Hoeksema in 1949. Over the next eleven weeks, we will be posting one article from the series each week.
This first article in the series 'As to Conditions' was written by Herman Hoeksema in the October 15, 1949 issue of the Standard Bearer.
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As the reader knows there has been, for the last year or so, a controversy in our papers about the question of conditions in the covenant of God. The question was really whether the term “condition” could be used properly in Reformed theology, and especially whether it could be used to express Protestant Reformed thought.
The controversy was introduced by the Rev. A. Petter who defended the use of the term and evidently conceived of the possibility of its being used in a sound Reformed sense. He even thinks that we need the term in order to express a necessary element in the Reformed conception of the covenant, the element of the responsibility of man.
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