Westminster Shorter Catechism #88

Q: What are the outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption?
A: The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption are his ordinances, especially the word, sacraments, and prayer; all which are made effectual to the elect for salvation
Acts 2:41-42 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Recently at Proclamation, our youth Sunday School class did a series on "The Worship of God's People". During that series, we talked about how our worship services need to be services of "Word and Sacrament", soaked and saturated in prayer. And why? Because these are the very means that God has chosen to communicate his grace to us, his people. These are the very means by which God applies the benefits of redemption, reminds us and feeds us with the gospel of Jesus Christ, reminds us that we are part of God's covenant people, and through the working of the Holy Spirit as he works in and through these ordinary means, molds and conforms us to the image of Jesus Christ. Listen to what Starr Meade says about this section of the catechism:

The Lord Jesus paid fully to redeem his people when he died on the cross. Nothing more needs to be done to redeem them. But the benefits of being redeemed need to be brought to God's people. The Lord Jesus has chosen ways to bring those benefits to us. This answer lists those ways. The Word of God, the sacraments (baptism and the Lord's Supper), and prayer are the 'ordinary, external ways Christ has chosen to bring us the benefits of redemption.' As we read and hear God's Word, as we pray, and as we receive baptism and communion, we enjoy the benefits of redemption Christ bought for us.

This is God's plan for Christian discipleship! This is the ministry of Christ's Church. The Christian cannot thrive without these means of communicating God's grace, and this should be at the heart of every Christian church's "discipleship plan". Whatever else the local church does to disciple her people, at the center of it all needs to be the Word preached and read, the right administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and prayer. Everything else is negotiable. Everything else is an add-on. Everything else, quite frankly, is unnecessary. God's plan for feeding his people, for communicating his grace, for "applying the benefits of redemption", for raising up disciples, revolves around these "ordinary means" of grace, and if a church is grounded in the Word, in the sacraments, and in prayer, then that church is doing its job. Your local church may not have all the programs you desire. They may not have the youth group or the VBS or the women's Bible study or the men's fellowship group or even a small group ministry. But if she is saturated in the Word read and preached, if she feeds God's people with the sacraments, if she is steeped in prayer, then your local church is doing her job in discipleship. She is being faithful in her call because she is making use of the God-ordained means by which the "benefits of redemption" are communicated to us, God's people!

Please understand, I'm not saying these other "programs" are bad. In fact, they can be ways by which churches can feed their people and provide more opportunity for the Word to be read and taught and for God's people to join together in prayer. And they can certainly provide ways for the people of God to enjoy fellowship and encourage one another. These are good things! But we've come to a place in Evangelicalism where, in our consumer culture, we decide whether a church is giving us what we need or not based upon the "extras". The reality is, a church can have wonderful programs for babies up through seniors. A church can have every financial resource in the world. A church can provide you with an activity every single night of the week. But if the church is not feeding you with the Word, the sacraments, and with prayer, then that church is not giving you what you truly need as a son or daughter of the Living God.

If you are attending a church that is failing to feed you with these means of communicating God's grace, with these means of communicating the benefits of Christ's redemption to you, then I encourage you to find a church that is faithful in this call. Even if that church does nothing else, if they are faithful in reading and preaching the Word, in administering the sacraments, and in prayer, then you can have the assurance that that church is providing you with what you need as a disciple of Jesus Christ. 

And if you belong to a church that is faithful in feeding you with Word, sacrament, and prayer, then praise the Lord! Whatever else you may feel that church lacks, you can rejoice in knowing that God is indeed communicating the benefits of redemption to you, and that through these ordinary means your faith is being fed and you are faithfully being discipled!

Just one final note. We've been talking about the role that the means of grace play in our gathered, corporate church life, but there is a personal side to the means of grace as well. Apart from the sacraments, which are signs and seals given to the church and have their meaning within the context of the covenant community (which will be discussed in coming weeks), believers should be making full use of these means of grace in their personal and family lives. The reading of the Word and prayer should be staples in every believer's life, and for parents, we should be striving to make use of the reading of the Word and prayer in our homes as we seek to raise Godly children. And we can trust that, just as God has given these means of grace to the gathered church for Christian discipleship, these means of grace will continue to communicate the benefits of our redemption in Jesus Christ in our personal and family lives. 

This blog was written by Andy Styer

Worth Reading

Psalm 145

Do you come to our gathered worship service expecting God to speak to you through his Word? We encourage you to prayerfully read through the passage that will be preached prior to the service to help you prepare.

All of these will help prepare you for this Sunday:

God has a name, and he's given it to Jesus

. . . the claim of the New Testament is exactly that: Jesus Christ now bears the name Yahweh. And rather than detract from God’s glory, confessing Jesus as Yahweh magnifies it.

It takes a little bit of work to see this, however. . .

. . . as our God becomes that much more magnificent in the eyes of all, we will offer our praise to him, to his glory.

Singing Helps Us Feel the Gospel

God gave us singing to affect the things we love, to remind us of the things that are most important about what Jesus Christ has done to save us, to redeem us — those things are most important in life. We want to be amazed by those truths.

The Past, the Trinity, and the Community: Reflections on Race and the PCA

If we as a denomination long to delight in racial reconciliation, such truth-telling is required. To put it another way, the PCA needs confession and dialogue in order to live out the implications of our theological commitments. We need these things in order to pursue the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. What’s more, such truth-telling is an outworking of what it means to image our Triune God.

This blog was written by Andy Styer

Westminster Shorter Catechism #87

Q: What is repentance unto life?
A: Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, does, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience.
2 Corinthians 7:10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

We've been discussing how God provides everything we need for salvation. This is sometimes referred to as "monergism". Monergism is a fancy way of saying that salvation is the complete work of God. In other words, salvation is not a "team effort" between God and man. The Triune God does it all. Most of you may be familiar with the term "synergy". Synergy, or synergism, is the idea of a cooperative effort. When people team up, work well together, and accomplish a great task, we say that team of people has synergy. Some people view salvation in the same way. They believe salvation requires teamwork between God and the person being saved. But the catechism, and we believe the Bible itself, teaches that salvation is all together, from start to end, a work of the Holy God. It is not a synergistic work (a cooperative work between God and man), it is a monergistic work-the work of one, namely, the one true and living God. 

So two weeks ago we saw how God requires faith and repentance for salvation. But then last week, we saw how faith itself is a gift from God, and when someone expresses saving faith, that too is a work of the Holy Spirit in that person's life. Now, this week, we see that repentance is also a gift from God. The catechism, just as it did with faith, refers to repentance as "a saving grace". This means that even repentance is a gift from God. Once again, God is requiring something for salvation, but also is providing what he requires! 

Last week we asked, "what is faith"? And it's only right that we ask the question, "what is repentance?" I don't think there's really a better answer for this question than what the catechism already gives us. Repentance is not merely "being sorry" for your sins. It's also not the act of simply confessing that you have sinned and that you are a sinner. Repentance is much more than this. First, it's a grief and hatred for our sin. Nothing should grieve us more than the fact that we are sinners and that we have sinned against a Holy God! There is nothing more terrible than to sin, to rebel, to offend the infinitely Holy God. And that grief for and hatred of our sin should cause us to flee from sin. It should cause us to turn away from it. Repentance isn't just deep sorrow for sin, it includes action. It means that we desire to turn away from our sinful patterns. And what are we turning to? We're turning to lives lived with a "full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience."

Thank God that repentance is a gift from him! Who could ever achieve repentance apart from the work of the Holy Spirit? Part of me cringes to write this blog because, like all of you reading this, I know that I fail even at repentance. I'm so quick to fall back into the same sinful habits time and time again. We're so often like the Israelites. God delivered them from the bondage of the Egyptians, and yet in their desert wanderings, how many times did they cry out, "oh that we were still in Egypt!" God has delivered us from an even greater bondage. He has delivered us from the bondage and slavery of the power of sin, death, and the devil, and yet we live our lives in a way that screams, "we want to go back to our old slave masters!" But just the fact that we recognize this, just the fact that we battle against this day in and day out, shows us God's grace at work in our lives. Repentance is not a once-done action. It's a pattern for the life of the believer in Jesus Christ. As we live day in and day out, we should be grieved by our sin, and continue to look to God in grief and sorrow, confessing our sins, and striving to live lives with a "full purpose of, and endeavor after" obedience to God. We do this not to maintain our salvation, but rather, because our salvation has already been accomplished. And that's the great hope in all of this. We have the promise that, as the author of Hebrews wrote, he (Jesus Christ), by a single offering has "perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Heb. 10:14). In other words, at the cross Christ has already perfected his people. And while the sanctification process is a life-long grace of the Holy Spirit in our lives, a work that will only be completed when we are either called home or Christ returns, we know that as we live lives of repentance, as we strive to live lives that reflect the reality that we are indeed new creations in Jesus, our salvation-our perfection-has already been accomplished at the cross. It is a once-and-done, finished work. What better hope do we have than that!? What better motivation do we have than that to live lives of obedience to the Word of God!?

Worth Reading

Psalm 124

Do you come to our gathered worship service expecting God to speak to you through his Word? We encourage you to prayerfully read through the passage that will be preached prior to the service to help you prepare.

13 Reasons You Are Precious To God

Reading this will also help prepare you for the wonderful truths of Psalm 124…

We who believe in Jesus can often be more aware of our sin and unworthiness than God’s love for and delight in us. We may believe that God accepts us in his son, but it’s hard to believe he takes pleasure in us and views us as precious to him. Yet 1 Pe 5:7 tells us that God cares for us. Zephaniah 3:17 tells us God delights in his children and rejoices over them. Here are thirteen reasons you are precious to God:

When My Parents Left Me at Hardee’s

When my parents drove me to college, they left me at Hardee’s. For three hours. And I was the only other person in the car.

What Is Distinctive about Preaching, and How Does It Differ from Other Ministries of the Word?

People read their Bibles at home. People go to Bible studies. Children and young people are taught the Bible. So members of churches are hearing the words of God all the time. What is different about the Sunday sermon? What is distinctive about the Sunday sermon is that is addressed to the church?

Westminster Shorter Catechism #86

Q: What is faith in Jesus Christ? 
A: Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel. 
Ephesians 2:8–9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 

What I really appreciate about this week's catechism is, it shows us (along with the Scripture passage in Ephesians), how God is the one who provides everything needed to save men. We discussed last week what God requires of us to escape his wrath and curse due to us for sin. The answer is, God requires faith in Christ and repentance. And over the next few weeks, we'll see how God gives his people what is required. It's amazing that God doesn't just require something, but also provides it (for a little more insight on these things, re-read our blog on the catechism's 30th and 31s questions concerning redemption and effectual calling).

But what IS faith? "Faith" seems to be a word that we, even as Christians, can find confusing. The catechism reminds us of a few things. First, it's a saving grace. What does that mean? Well, if we remember what grace is-God blessing us with something that we don't deserve-then we see that faith is a gift from God! God provides us with something that we, ourselves lack, and what we, ourselves, do not deserve; namely, faith in Jesus Christ. This is what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 2:8-9 when he says, "And this is not your own doing; it (faith) is the gift of God". 

Okay great. Faith is a gift, a saving grace, from God himself. But what, exactly, is faith? What is this gift God gives us? Some people think that "faith" simply means believing. They equate "faith in Christ" with "belief in Christ". There's a problem with that, though. As James reminds us, even the demons believe! Believing, then, that Jesus Christ is real, that he is who he said he is, that he did what the gospels declare he did, that doesn't do us any good. Belief is not the same as faith, unless anyone wants to translate James 2 to say, "Even the demons have faith..." The joke in our youth group at Proclamation, as we constantly seek to remind the students of the definition of faith, is that "believing in Jesus qualifies you to be a demon!" There has to be more than simply, "belief". 

The catechism shows us how faith moves beyond simply believing the truth about Jesus Christ. Notice, "we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation". The saving grace of faith that God gives us is not mere believe in facts, but rather, a full trust and reliance upon Jesus Christ for our salvation. The faith God gives us is a trust in the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. It's a faith that declares, "I can do nothing to save myself from the wrath and curse of sin that I deserve! I can only look to, trust in, and place my hope upon Jesus Christ". This is the saving grace of faith! This faith is a declaration that, as Jonathan Edwards said, "You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary", and it is a faith that relies solely on and trusts fully in the finished work of Jesus Christ.