Nicholas T. Batzig highlights helpful observations from Geerhardus Vos’s Reformed Dogmatics in 9 Traces of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Old Testament

20 October 2013 — 10 AM Worship

20 October 2013 — 3 PM Worship

Stephen Altrogge writes:

When someone is going through a tough time we like to say, “Don’t worry, God won’t give you more than you can handle.” It sounds nice and is semi-inspirational, kind of like saying, “Whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger!” Kind of a Christian bootcamp, I’m in the Lord’s army, suck it up fella you’re gonna make it, saying. God won’t give you more than you can handle! You’re going to get through this! Bite the bullet, buckle down, suck it up, push through, dig deep, unleash your animal, huzzah, hip hip hooray.

One slight problem with this line of thinking: God will often give us more than we can handle. In fact, there will be times when God practically kills us.

In 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 Paul said:

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.

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Calvin D. Keller writes;

Many people have a very negative view of the term Calvinism. Most people are also ignorant of what true Calvinists believe. This article has been written to present a clear and simple statement of what Calvinism is, along with scriptural support for it. I hope that as you read this, you will find it to be what the Bible teaches. (For every Bible-believing Christian, that should be the end of the matter!) Also, I hope that you will find the truths of Calvinism to be powerful and life-changing, which we ought to expect the truth of God to be.

 

If you are trusting in your own goodness for salvation, you will be disappointed—no matter how good you are. But if you have a desire to know God and his truth, you will be challenged—and I hope moved—to trust him more and rely on his sovereign grace.

 

Let me first point out that “the five points of Calvinism” are not a summary of Calvinism or the Reformed faith. They are simply…

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Stuart Robinson, a leading Presbyterian pastor-theologian of the 19th Century in the USA, sought to highlight what our first parents could have known from the first preaching of the gospel (Genesis 3:15) in Discourses of Redemption.

Thus it will be seen, on careful analysis of these words, and deducing the truths embodied by implication in them, that they set forth these eight points of the gospel creed.

1. That the Redeemer and Restorer of the race is to be man, since he is to be the seed of the woman.

2. That he is, at the same time, to be a being greater than man, and greater even than Satan; since he is to be the conqueror of man’s conqueror, and, against all his efforts, to recover a sinful world which man had lost; being yet sinless, he must therefore be divine.

3. That this redemption shall involve a new nature, at “enmity” with the Satan nature, to which man has now become subject.

4. That this new nature is a regeneration by Divine power; since the enmity to Satan is not a natural emotion, but, saith Jehovah, “I will put enmity,” &c.

5. This redemption shall be accomplished by vicarious suffering; since the Redeemer shall suffer the bruising of his heel in the work of recovery.

6. That this work of redemption shall involve the gathering out of an elect seed a “peculiar people” at enmity with the natural offspring of a race subject to Satan.

7. That this redemption shall involve & perpetual conflict of the peculiar people, under its representative head, in the effort to bruise the head of Satan, that is, “to destroy the works of the Devil.”

8. This redemption shall involve the ultimate triumph, after suffering, of the woman’s seed ; and therefore involves a triumph over death and a restoration of the humanity to its original estate, as a spiritual in conjunction with a physical nature, in perfect blessedness as before its fall.

Such, then, is the gospel theology here revealed, in germ, through the very terms of the curse pronounced upon the destroyer of the race. It will be seen that here are all the peculiar doctrines of salvation, by grace, which every Christian accepts, who exercises the faith which is unto salvation. And in the broader and higher sense of the terms, Moses, as truly as Mark at the opening of his evangel, might have prefixed to this third chapter of Genesis the title, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.”