The blessing of God's Free Grace

By faith I believe Jesus appeased the wrath of God by taking upon himself the sins of His people and giving them His righteousness.

Do I believe now?

"My confidence that I am born again does not rest in being able to remember the point when it happened, but in his finished work on the cross and in the relationship I have with the Lord now." - John Piper


I am not to trust in past accomplishments, but in the Cross. Paul also says this to the Corinthians I do not boast in anything other than the Cross of Jesus Christ.

How are Christians saved by faith alone in Christ Alone?

"It is to be remembered that efficacy of faith does not reside in itself. Faith is not something that merits the favour of God. All the efficacy unto salvation resides in the Saviour. As one has aptly and truly stated the case, it is not faith that saves but faith in Jesus Christ; strictly speaking, it is not even faith in Christ that saves but Christ that saves through h faith… The specific character of faith is that it looks away from itself and finds its whole interest and object in Christ. He is the absorbing preoccupation of faith." - John Murray

What is Justification?

"Justified" is not "Just as if I'd never sinned." That is a great truth. But it is actually better than that: "Just as if I'd always obeyed." God has credited the very righteousness of Jesus Christ to every believer. - Jerry Bridges

The unfairness of Man and the fairness of God

"Why do they not accuse God because He punishes innocent beasts and baptized infants with no small physical pain? indeed He gave up his own most innocent Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to a most painful, cruel, and tormenting punishment. But since God is omnipotent, completely free Lord of His whole creation, whose will alone is the most righteous law for all creation - if He should eternally punish the innocent, particularly sin He does it for the perfection of the universe, for the profit of others, and for the honor of God Himself, who would presume to dispute with Him, no one! 'Has the potter no right over the clay to make of the same lump one vessel for honor and another for menial use'?" - Bradwardine


God, who sent His own Son Jesus Christ to die the most horrific death ever imagined, cannot be charged with indecency when he does judge and destroy Man who have fallen and sinned and disobeyed Him.

God is still in charge and involved in the world

"Rather, we reduce God by making him a figurehead. We too often portray him as standing back from a world that runs on its own. We banish him to the hidden corners of our lives while we amble through life, pursuing our own ambitious goals driven by narcissism, hedonism, and materialism, and refusing to allow God to bridle our self-sufficiency." - John H. Walton

We should always live our lives knowing the fact that God who presents himself all through out salvific History (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is still ruling over it and ordering it and also moving it toward an end. When we think that God is too far away from us or not there we will start ruling our own lives and living how we think is right.

Reprobation is not the cause of sin

"It is by no means clear that if Adam had not sinned no one would have been reprobated. It seems possible that even if Adam had not sinned, all his descendants would not necessarily have been made sinless and confirmed until the end. Rather they would have had the freedom to choose or accept good or evil.... Therefore, the sin of Adam is not the primary cause of reprobation, but rather, as said above, if Adam had not sinned, God would have ordained differently." - Bradwardine

God's love for His People is perfect for those whom it intended to save

..."Preaching the gospel, he tells us, is not a matter of telling the congregation that God has set His love on each of them and Christ has died to save each of them, for these assertions, biblically understood, would imply that they will all infallibly be saved, and this cannot be known to be true. The knowledge of being the object of God’s eternal love and Christ’s redeeming death belongs to the individual’s assurance, which in the nature of the case cannot precede faith’s saving exercise; it is to be inferred from the fact that one has believed, not proposed as a reason why one should believe." - J.I. Packer


In other words because I am regenerated and justified and am being sanctified to believe is the fact that God did love me; that God did atone for my sins. John 3:16 - Are you believing now? For God loved the world in this way (qaulitatively) by giving up His son Jesus Christ so that any believing one will not perish but have eternal life. Christ actually took upon himself the due punishment that the sinner deserved, if the sinner on the one hand did not believe and was cast into the firey lake then it was because Christ did not atone for His sin.

On God, Evil, and Man

"God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established." -Westminster Confessions of Faith 3.1

God in ordaining that man should fall did not himself cause man to fall so that He is the author of sin, but that He ordained that man should fall by man being let go. So that man fell because he truly desired to fall and God permitted him to fall.

The importance of God's eternal Predestination

"The question of God's eternal predestination is not curious, or unprofitable, but of great importance, and very necessary in the church of God." - Theodore Beza

On Salfivic History

I have been thinking about this one: That the saint has been justified in Christ in eternity past. But that it is played out in time a certain point.