Coram Deo Blog
19 April 2011 at 11:15 am by Bob Thune · announcement
Back in the fall of 2003, my friend Will Walker invited me to contribute to a new blog he had started called Musings. At that time, Coram Deo wasn’t even on the horizon. And neither was blogging, really. In fact, it seemed the only people who had blogs were political reporters and uber-techie early-adapters. But Walker thought it would be a good way for us to write about theology and invite interaction. So, along with our friends Brett and David, we started typing out our reflections on the gospel and mission and church and culture and ministry philosophy. At the very least, the four of us had great arguments discussions. And eventually other people started chiming in. The Musings blog ended up providing the raw material for a book Will wrote called The Kingdom of Couches.
So naturally, when we planted Coram Deo in 2005, we started a new blog as a place to hash out our thinking. If you go back and read the archived posts from 2005 and 2006, you’ll see lots of good healthy dialogue as our launch team wrestled through the dynamics of creating a theologically rich, missionally focused, city-center church. When Walker joined Coram Deo in 2006, we parked Musings and made the Coram Deo Blog our main outlet for writing, creativity, and interactive learning. For the past five years, we’ve enjoyed a rich season of theological reflection, satire, vision, and humor.
And now, in 2011, the time has come to make another shift. With the departure of my co-creators Kendal Haug and Will Walker into the work of church planting, the Coram Deo Blog has lost much of its creative punch. Additionally, in God’s providence, Walker and I – and Coram Deo in general – have established a broader reputation for creating good gospel-driven resources. And as technology has progressed, resources like The City by Zondervan (which both Coram Deo and Providence use) have begun to facilitate the kind of communication and interaction that was previously possible only through the blog format.
So as of this month (April 2011), the Coram Deo blog will not see any new posts. In its place, I will be writing on a new site called bobthune.com. In addition, Walker and Kendal and I are planning a broader gospel resource website that we hope to roll out sometime later this year. And we’ll be utilizing The City more fully for internal communication within our churches.
Perhaps you’re thinking: a website named bobthune.com? That certainly seems assertive. We toyed with all sorts of other names because I hate anything that smacks of self-promotion. But in the end, this domain just made the most sense. Here’s why:
- It’s primarily a personal blog and website. It doesn’t make much sense to retain the title “Coram Deo Blog” when I’m the only person consistently writing on behalf of Coram Deo.
- Not all my writing is “on behalf of Coram Deo.” This was one of our most consistent frustrations with the Coram Deo blog. Both Walker and I are human beings who love to write, and who often form convictions and hash out ideas through our writing. On the Coram Deo blog, discussion was often stifled because people assumed that our opinion was the “official pastoral position” on any given issue. Bobthune.com makes it clear that I am writing on my own behalf and not always on behalf of Coram Deo.
- God has given me a ministry that is broader than Coram Deo. I spend time coaching church planters, teaching on gospel renewal, and training leaders in missional-church dynamics. It’s tough to know how to categorize these resources effectively and make them available to people who want them. When I teach at a church planting conference, do we put that audio up on the Coram Deo podcast? When I write something that’s specifically intended for church planters, should we post it on the Coram Deo resources page, or does that just confuse people? Bobthune.com will be a clearing house for those broader resources, allowing cdomaha.com to remain focused on our particular mission in the city of Omaha.
Logistics: The BLOG link on the main cdomaha.com page will redirect to bobthune.com. The Coram Deo blog will remain accessible at www.cdomaha.com/blog, though it will not receive new posts. If you use an RSS reader, I’d encourage you to point it to bobthune.com. Rest assured that the death of the Coram Deo Blog does not mean the death of any good content… rather, it marks an escalation of good content via bobthune.com, The City, the Coram Deo and Providence Austin websites, and other online resources still in development.
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25 March 2011 at 9:18 am by Bob Thune · leadership
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8 March 2011 at 5:06 pm by Bob Thune · announcement, gospel, materials
In the summer of 2007, Will Walker and I locked ourselves in a room for a week to write some missional community content for our fledgling church. (JD Senkbile was there, too, in between trips to the boxing gym). We had begun to identify a serious problem in our church’s gospel fluency. What we meant when we said “gospel” and what people in our church heard were two different things. Though everyone used the language of gospel centrality, many held wide-ranging and erroneous notions of what the gospel is and how it functions.
The fruit of our brainstorming session was a nine-week study we titled The Gospel-Centered Life. That fall, God used it to bring about a mini-revival within Coram Deo. Some people were converted. Others began to identify deep patterns of idolatry and unbelief. They began asking if they could send the material to their friends, their parents, their youth pastor. And we began to discern that maybe the Holy Spirit had used our gifts to create something that could be helpful to others. So we sent the study off to World Harvest Mission, an missions agency in Philadelphia from whom we had borrowed some of the concepts. The GCL material sat idly on a desk at WHM for a couple of months until one of my former seminary professors mentioned it to WHM’s director. That conversation put in motion a chain of events that forged a partnership and led to the eventual publication of The Gospel-Centered Life in 2009.
The response to GCL has been an overwhelming sign of God’s grace. It’s sold over 50,000 copies. It’s been used by churches and ministries all over the globe. It’s been translated (officially and unofficially) into a handful of foreign languages. Almost weekly we hear stories that cause us to celebrate; just today I heard from a man who’s using GCL with prison inmates and has seen four men converted to Jesus in the past four weeks. And WHM has been an incredible partner in the whole journey. They have displayed humility and grace even in such mundane matters as working out intellectual property rights. At every turn they have modeled what kingdom-minded, Christ-centered partnership should look like.
Late last year, WHM admitted that handling GCL and other printed materials was starting to tax their resources. They are a missions sending agency, not a publishing house. They started producing gospel resources for much the same reason Coram Deo did – not out of a desire for mass market, but as a way to serve their own people. Filling 50,000 orders was never a part of their business plan.
Enter New Growth Press – a small boutique publisher with a “gospel niche.” NGP’s catalog consists primarily of books and resources put out by the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF), an offshoot of Westminster Seminary focused on biblical counseling. Seeing an opportunity to expand their array of gospel resources, NGP struck a deal with World Harvest to handle all of their print publishing. The material is still marketed through WHM, but NGP handles all the printing and fulfillment. So now World Harvest is free to focus on training and sending foreign missionaries. NGP gets to focus on producing high-quality gospel resources. And as a side benefit of the partnership, The Gospel-Centered Life gets a facelift!
Until now, GCL has only been available as a digital download. But as of this month, in addition to the digital version, New Growth has released a very nicely produced hard copy that’s about the size of a small journal. So if your printer has run out of ink – or if your non-tech-savvy grandma wants a good gospel-centered Bible study resource – you now have a solution. You can buy both the Participant’s Guide and the Leader’s Guide in various quantities at the WHM bookstore.
Thanks to all of you who have helped make The Gospel-Centered Life a success. May the cross loom larger in your life – and in the church at large – as you rediscover the transforming power of the gospel.
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2 March 2011 at 12:29 pm by Bob Thune · baptism, city renewal, gospel
Some of our most worshipful moments at Coram Deo happen when we gather to celebrate baptism. Last week we baptized ten people at the downtown YMCA. This video captures some of the moment. As you watch it, we hope you’ll worship Jesus for what he’s doing in our city.
Coram Deo Baptisms – Feb 2011 from Coram Deo Church on Vimeo.
When we interview people for baptism, we ask them to write a short account of how they were converted. Here are some of the excerpts from our most recent baptism candidates:
“Jesus died for me and for my salvation. At the cross, he bore my sin upon his shoulders. Why? Because God’s love is so indescribably I can’t even begin to fathom its beauty. For this I say, thank you and I love you.”
“I know that I belong to Jesus because, by grace, I have become a new creation through the faith given to me by God. It is only by God’s grace that, on September 19, 2010, I walked into a worship gathering at Coram Deo as an unbeliever and walked out as a disciple.”
“When I consider what Jesus did on the cross three adjectives ring true for me: precious, costly, and beautiful.”
“I know I belong to Jesus. I previously scoffed that the story of Jesus sounded like a fairytale, but now consider Jesus my only hope.”
“He showed me the self-centeredness of my faith and sinfulness of my heart, how nothing I had done or ever could do made me deserving of Him, and that his death on the cross was not just a nice concept but a real event that changed everything — it reconciled me to my creator God, who was big and holy but who knew me deeply and loved me.”
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8 February 2011 at 11:14 pm by Bob Thune · A29, church planting, city renewal
A year ago, I walked into the dingy vacant shell of an old bar in the Haymarket district of Lincoln. The walls were still painted Husker red and the smell of spilled beer seemed to linger in the wooden floorboards. The sheer aesthetic tastelessness of the place was hard to miss. But the century-old brick walls and the exposed ceiling trusses hinted at some hidden potential.
I’m back in that same space today. But it’s not the same. Local art hangs with purposeful randomness from the repainted walls. Drums, guitars, microphones, and effects pedals sit idly on the handmade stage as if beckoning me to wait around for a jam session. Neat rows of chairs fill the room from front to back – someone clearly expects quite a few people to show up. And a close look at the ceiling trusses suggests hours of thoughtful ingenuity: new electrical conduit, fresh lighting, carefully designed speaker supports, subtle LCD-projector mounts. Someone has made this space their own.
That someone is Two Pillars Church. A year ago Two Pillars consisted of Acts 29 church planter Todd Bumgarner and his wife and kids. Today it boasts almost 50 committed core members and a weekly attendance that’s pushing 100. The first floor of this historic Haymarket building has become “The 815” – the Sunday morning home of Two Pillars and a sometime art-gallery-and-music-venue that has become a contributor to the local culture of downtown Lincoln.
I love church planting because I love Jesus. But I also love church planting because of what it does for cities, communities – and spaces. Eight-fifteen O Street has become a hub of life, activity, cultural contribution. People care about this space. People have owned this space. And they’ve begun to steward it for the good of the city. It has a vibe of life and joy and creativity. When you walk in the door, you think: I want to be here when the band is playing and the candles are lit and people are milling about. There’s a compelling attractiveness to this place.
The 815 is living proof that the gospel renews not just people, but places. Locations. Addresses. When the gospel is at work, people begin to view their life – and their real estate – as a part of something much bigger than themselves. The Christian hope in their souls begins to flow out in their tangible assets. They take care of stuff. They make things better. They use what they have to bless others. And brick by brick, the city becomes a more beautiful place.
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27 January 2011 at 9:01 am by Bob Thune · book reviews, theology
Derrick Metschke is a thoughtful, articulate medical student who’s been part of Coram Deo since the very beginning. A few months ago he observed that our church community seems to have a weak understanding of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. I invited Derrick to put his thoughts to paper in a way that would bring these gaps to light and help us remedy them. Unsurprisingly, he has done excellent work! Below is his thoughtfully composed essay on the subject. May God use it to stir us up in our worship of the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God has blessed our community with a healthy pursuit of what Anselm called “faith seeking understanding,” characterized in our core value as learners. We are an intellectual lot, both on the communal and individual level, seeking to pursue right understanding of and obedience to what God has revealed of Himself in his word. Perhaps as a result of this we are collectively inclined toward the more readily tangible realities, which our mind is able to grasp. But one result of this in our church, as well as the evangelical church at large, is that we have developed a rather large blind spot in our intellectual life, and thus worship life. This blind spot is the substance and the work of the Holy Spirit. Our predilection for the tangible is further compounded by the fact that many of us become a bit uneasy when it comes to the idea of a spiritual realm intersecting with our material realm. The following is a bit of a book review of The Holy Spirit by Sinclair B. Ferguson. My goal is not to convince you to read this particular book but rather, through some of my reflections from study, to encourage our community to pursue understanding of and appropriate emphasis on the Holy Spirit.
A. W. Tozer has some penetrating words about what we do and do not readily believe God is like:
“The most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his heart conceives God to be like… That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions an may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is.”
If we do the work of exposing our actual beliefs about God, many of us would find ourselves with very real conceptions of God as one who is distant. To be sure, we assent to and truly believe that God has intervened in a hopeless would in sending Jesus, our Immanuel or God with us. And we hope in the day when sin will be ultimately defeated. Further, we may be confident that he has called us to Himself and that we live with a new status as sons and daughters. But when it comes to the time in between, or what has classically been referred to as the age of “already but not yet,” we too often perceive a God that is away for the weekend. In other words, we live on the hope of a God that has come and will come again, but we neglect the great hope of a God who is currently in us and with us. A result is that in the process of being conformed to the image of Christ we find ourselves relating to a God who acted at a series of points in time, but we must now do the hard work on our own, albeit with the resources given us in the initial work of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The implications of this are twofold. Primarily, the de-emphasis in the modern Church on the Holy Spirit is at its core a worship problem, resulting from the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. The work of the Spirit from Genesis 1 and throughout the Bible reveals a God of creativity, presence, power, intimacy, order, purpose, and companionship among other attributes. This is what God is like, and He is worthy of our full worship for who He is. The knowledge of the reality of His presence inevitably culminates in Christ-exaltation, as Ferguson says, “Jesus the Messiah becomes the thirsty one under God’s covenant curse, so that to those who are thirsty he may hand over his thirst-quenching Spirit.” God became flesh and suffered in order that he might fulfill a promise that he so longed to fulfill (Ezek 36:26-27). We must be a people that is striving to ascribe to God the Glory due His name.
A second implication of our neglect of the Spirit of God is rooted in that previously stated. What we believe about God and His present relation to us greatly affects our daily activities. The bible commonly pairs “indicatives,” what God has done for us, and “imperatives,” what we are to then do. Paul provides one of many applications of this as regards the Holy Spirit with a pattern for dealing with sexual immorality. While offering commands (imperatives) regarding sex, he reminds the Christians of what is already true of them, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, you were bought with a price (1 Cor 6:19-20).” The reality of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit has major ramifications in how we approach areas of sin, relationship to our Father, and mission. We must learn to live with an acute awareness of the inhabitation of a personal God – this is the cure for a mechanical spirituality. This awareness helps define our proper role and enables us to live within it. Many of us with utmost sincerity pursue the imperatives of the bible to follow Christ, obeying his commandments, but many of us do this without knowing the raw materials we are working with. Just as no man would go on building a house without sizing up his inventory, we also ought to begin to uncover the raw materials with which we are working. The size, approach, and grandeur of the goal rely on this principle. In this the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is truly revolutionary, because unparalleled with any material project, in our pursuit of holiness we have the executor of holiness in us. Our expectations for the elimination of sin and the extent of transformation in our lives should be adjusted accordingly.
Another freeing aspect of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is that he is another counselor (allos parakletos in Greek). This is an old forensic term, which describes one who is a legal advocate or character witness. He would not be a hired professional but a friend who vindicates you by telling the truth. Now, another counselor implies a first counselor, who is Jesus. As Hebrews depicts, Jesus dwells in the heavens pleading our case and demanding acquittal before a just God based on the facts of what He has done. He is the star witness in our case. But God has bestowed on us a further blessing, in that He gives us another advocate here on earth. In this, the Holy Spirit pleads with us when our hearts condemn us. Just as Satan is described as our adversary or plaintiff, the Spirit defends and comforts us in our hearts when we feel condemned. He confirms in us that we are God’s beloved (Rom 5:5) and are his sons and daughters (Rom 8:16), continually appealing to the facts of the case. That is, when our world and our hearts try to convince us that we need to build our own reputation or that we are not good enough for relationship with God, what we desperately need is to hear the voice of our advocate, our allos parakletos, who whispers a comforting truth in the midst of a cacophony of lies.
If we would follow Christ through His Spirit in a world filled with half-truths, we must seek and train ourselves to discern the “Wisdom of God,” which is “spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:6-16).
As Dallas Willard eloquently points out, “Understanding is the basis of care. What you would take care of you must first understand, whether it be a petunia or a nation. If you would care for your spiritual core – your heart or will – you must understand it.” Let us pursue a knowledge of the Holy Spirit with at least as much intention as gardening. My further hope is that we would pursue this in community, and it must, indeed, be in community to stave off the quackery of which we are so reticent.
One resource that I would recommend as a starting place is the work by Ferguson previously noted. It is not bedtime reading, as it is densely packed, but in it you will find a solid foundation for this pursuit, rooted in historic biblical Christianity.
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16 January 2011 at 5:14 pm by Bob Thune · formation, masculinity
Last Saturday we hosted a unique event for men called Sexual Detox Day. Many have asked for access to some of the notes and statistics we referenced… so here they are.
Why did we call it Sexual Detox Day? From Tim Challies: “Detoxification takes place when something has gotten inside you that doesn’t belong there and needs to be removed. If it stays or builds up, you will only get sicker… Detox therefore is a reset to normal, a return to health. It’s the reversal of a corrupting, polluting process. It gets you back to where you ought to be” (Challies, Sexual Detox, Cruciform Press 2010).
We need a “reset to normal” in our understanding of sexuality. Why? Because we live in a porn-saturated culture.
- Dr. Jason Carroll and his colleagues published a widely cited paper in the Journal of Adolescent Research revealing that 87 percent of college males and 31 percent of college females view pornography.
- Porn is a 60 billion dollar a year industry. $3000 a second.
- More money is spent on porn than on pro baseball, basketball, football combined.
- In the last 10 years, Americans have spent more money each year on pornography than on foreign aid.
- A new porn film is made in the US every hour.
- The average child sees porn for the first time at age 11.
- Porn accounts for 25% of the search requests on Google.
- (Stats compiled from various sources including Mars Hill Church, Salvo Magazine, and personal research)
Colossians 3:5 instructs us to “put to death what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Our sin is not to be managed, hidden, or tolerated; it is to be killed.
HOW DO YOU PUT SIN TO DEATH? (A basic paradigm of gospel change)
- You are enslaved (Jn 8:34: whoever commits sin is a slave of sin)
- You need to be set free; Jesus is the one who can do that
- The way he sets you free is by demanding your worship
- Sin is ultimately a worship problem. Underneath your external sin (porn/lust) is a false God that you are worshipping.
- That false God maintains power in your life through a set of lies (Satan is a liar, the Father of lies, a counterfeiter)
- In light of this, the process of biblical change is really pretty simple:
- replacing lies with truth
- so that the power of idols is broken
- and you can repent and worship Jesus freely “in Spirit and in truth” (instead of worshipping your idols)
- You put sin to death by replacing lies with truth and worshiping Jesus instead of idols.
Our goal at Sexual Detox Day was to apply this change model to porn. As a means of disempowering our idols, we tackled four common lies men believe that keep them enslaved to pornography. Guys have specifically asked for my notes pertaining to the first lie; so they are posted below.
Lie #1: It’s Not That Big a Deal
- In other words: “This is something all guys struggle with… It’s bad, it’s not preferable… but it’s not the end of the world.”
- Question: If a guy in here were addicted to heroin, would that be a big deal?
- Keep that connection in mind, and let me talk for a few minutes about neuroscience.
- You’ve probably heard the analogy that your brain is like a computer. A standard computer has hardware and software. But your brain doesn’t have that distinction. Neurosurgeons use the word “plasticity” to describe the brain – the hardware of your brain actually changes in response to input.
- The highest level of your brain is the neocortex. That’s also the most plastic part of your brain. It’s a densely connected network of neurons that grows and changes over time in response to stimuli.
- When you master a difficult sport or learn to play the piano, you form neural connections that actually increase the amount of tissue in your brain. In other words: The physical makeup of your brain changes.
- Dr. Jeffrey Satinover is a Harvard-educated psychiatrist who studies sexual behavior. He makes the following observations:
- “Complex patterns of behavior become progressively more ‘embedded’ in actual physical changes in the brain itself… Behaviors become increasingly strengthened through repetition. This strengthening physically alters the brain in a way that cannot be entirely undone… our responses, in other words, become ‘second nature.’”
- [In other words: if you are habitually looking at pornography, you are literally changing the structure of your brain.]
- “The pleasure areas of the brain are most intensely activated at the moment of sexual orgasm. The mechanism whereby this occurs is chemical… the chemical released from the nerve endings is a special type called an ‘opioid,’ meaning ‘opium-like…’ Apart from the repetitive ingestion of such external opiates as heroin, no experience is more intensely pleasurable.”
- “When biological impulses – especially the sexual ones – are not at least partially resisted, trained, and brought under the civilizing influence of culture and will, the pressure to seek their immediate fulfillment becomes deeply embedded in the neural network of the brain… in short order, unregulated sexual tendencies become habits, then compulsions, and finally something barely distinguishable from addictions.”
- [So habitually acting on your sexual impulses creates a chemical dependency in your brain that’s exactly the same as heroin addiction.]
- [All quotes from Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, Baker Books 1996]
- This is a huge deal. Pornography and lust are changing the physical makeup of your brain. This isn’t some ethereal, “spiritual” struggle; it’s a biological, neurological one.
We said some other things in pursuit of holy, Christlike masculine sexuality… but some of them aren’t suitable for all audiences.
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16 January 2011 at 4:15 pm by Bob Thune · sermon, theology
Philip Ryken offers this helpful analogy to understand God’s sovereignty in salvation and how it interfaces with our responsibility:
The famous American Bible teacher Donald Grey Barnhouse often used an illustration to help people make sense of election. He asked them to imagine a cross like the one on which Jesus died, only so large that it had a door in it. Over the door were these words from Revelation: ‘Whosoever will may come.’ These words represent the free and universal offer of the gospel. By God’s grace, the message of salvation is for everyone. Every man, woman and child who will come to the cross is invited to believe in Jesus Christ and enter eternal life. One the other side of the door a happy surprise awaits the one who believes and enters. For from the inside, anyone glancing back can see these words from Ephesians written above the door: ‘Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.’ Election is best understood in hindsight, for it is only after coming to Christ that one can know whether one has been chosen in Christ. Those who make a decision for Christ find that God made a decision for them in eternity past.
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16 January 2011 at 8:32 am by Bob Thune · gospel
This morning in the Doctrines of Grace preaching series, I quoted JI Packer’s observation that “we have bartered the gospel for a substitute product…” here is the quote in its fuller context.
Without realizing it, we have during the past century bartered [the] gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing… This new gospel conspicuously fails to produce deep reverence, deep repentance, deep humility, a spirit of worship, a concern for the church… It fails to make men God-centred in their thoughts and God-fearing in their hearts, because this is not primarily what it is trying to do. One way of stating the difference between it and the old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively concerned to be “helpful” to man—to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction—and too little concerned to glorify God. The old gospel’s centre of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new gospel the centre of reference is man. This is just to say that the old gospel was religious in a way that the new gospel is not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach men to worship God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better. The subject of the old gospel was God and His ways with men; the subject of the new is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed.
The old gospel tells men that they need God, but not that God needs them (a modern falsehood); it does not exhort them to pity Christ, but announces that Christ has pitied them, though pity was the last thing they deserved… Thus it labours to overthrow self-confidence, to convince sinners that their salvation is altogether out of their hands, and to shut them up to a self-despairing dependence on the glorious grace of a sovereign Saviour, not only for their righteousness but for their faith too.
It is not likely, therefore, that a preacher of the old gospel will be happy to express the application of it in the form of a demand to “decide for Christ,” as the current phrase is. For, on the one hand, this phrase carries the wrong associations. It suggests voting a person into office—an act in which the candidate plays no part beyond offering himself for election, and everything then being settled by the voter’s independent choice. But we do not vote God’s Son into office as our Saviour, nor does He remain passive while preachers campaign on His behalf, whipping up support for His cause. We ought not to think of evangelism as a kind of electioneering. And then, on the other hand, this phrase obscures the very thing that is essential in repentance and faith—the denying of self in a personal approach to Christ. It is not at all obvious that deciding for Christ is the same as coming to Him and resting on Him and turning from sin and self-effort; it sounds like something much less, and is accordingly calculated to instil defective notions of what the gospel really requires of sinners. It is not a very apt phrase from any point of view.
- from Packer’s Intro to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ
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15 January 2011 at 7:25 pm by Bob Thune · liturgy
Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 3 (to be recited at Coram Deo’s Sunday gathering on 1/15/11)
Q6. Did God, then, create man so wicked and perverse?
A. No, on the contrary, God created man good and in His image, that is, in true righteousness and holiness, so that he might rightly know God His Creator, heartily love Him, and live with Him in eternal blessedness to praise and glorify Him.
Q7. From where, then, did man’s depraved nature come?
A. From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise, for there our nature became so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin.
Q8. But are we so corrupt that we are totally unable to do any good and inclined to all evil?
A. Yes, unless we are regenerated by the Spirit of God.
Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 4 (to be recited at Coram Deo’s Sunday gathering on 1/22/11)
Q9. Is God, then, not unjust by requiring in His law what man cannot do?
A. No, for God so created man that he was able to do it. But man, at the instigation of the devil, in deliberate disobedience robbed himself and all his descendants of these gifts.
Q10. Will God allow such disobedience and apostasy to go unpunished?
A. Certainly not. He is terribly displeased with our original sin as well as our actual sins. Therefore He will punish them by a just judgment both now and eternally, as He has declared: Cursed be every one who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them (Galatians 3:10).
11. Q. But is God not also merciful?
A. God is indeed merciful, but He is also just. His justice requires that sin committed against the most high majesty of God also be punished with the most severe, that is, with everlasting, punishment of body and soul.
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