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Grace Conferred (6): The Admonitions of the Gospel: More than Repent and Believe
Last time I asked, “Is that the only thing—the call to believe, and possibly, repent—that God uses to preserve, continue, and perfect his work of grace in us (Canons 5.14)?” My answer is absolutely not! God uses the admonition of Matthew 5:24 to confer upon us the grace to reconcile with our brother, even though...
Grace Conferred (5): The Admonitions of the Gospel: An Important Grammatical Point
In the last blog post, I made a distinction, following Ursinus, between the bare law without the gospel (which is the killing letter of 2 Corinthians 3:6) and the law with the gospel, which is effectual by the work of the Spirit in the heart of the child of God, so that he, by the grace of God conferred to him, begins to obey the law.
Grace Conferred (4): The Sacred Precepts and Admonitions of the Gospel
If you were paying careful attention to the Canons and looked them up, and I hope that you make a practice of doing that, you might have thought that I changed the Canons last time. In the English version of Canons 5:14 we read of “the hearing and reading of His (God’s) Word, by meditation thereon, and by exhortations, threatenings, and promises thereof.” I wrote, “The exhortations, threatenings, and promises of the gospel.” Which is it, “the exhortations of the Word” or “the exhortations of the gospel”? And is there an important difference or distinction?
Grace Conferred (3): The Means Which God Employs: Admonitions
If God’s grace works in rational, moral creatures “endowed with understanding and will” (Canons 3-4.16), how does God’s grace operate? He works by means of admonitions. Of course, he does because you cannot admonish a stock or a block, but you can admonish—and God does admonish—a rational, moral creature; a living, thinking, willing human being, whether man, woman, young person, or child. “Grace,” we read, in Canons 3-4.17, is conferred.
Grace Conferred (2): The Grace Which God Confers
The truth that “grace is conferred by means of admonitions” (Canons 3-4.17) is often misunderstood. How can grace, we wonder, be conferred? And how can it be conferred by means of admonitions? Is grace not the unmerited favor of God by which we are saved? And do we not all agree that “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9)?Recent Posts
