Grace

The Best Bailout Plan

            When times are hard financially and we're near the end of our resources, we naturally look for help. We tap family and friends, and even research all the government help plans available. Every one of those sources is finite; that is, limited in ability to help as many as need help.             But there is a source that is unlimited. Almighty God reigns in heaven, owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10), and declares in Haggai 2:8, "The silver is Mine and the gold is Mine." Logic dictates that we look to God, who is the ...

"A Double Grace": John Calvin on Justification and Sanctification

John Calvin, the sixteenth-century Reformer of Geneva, is talked about more than he is read. This is unfortunate, because Christian leaders who risk reading through his Institutes of the Christian Religion will discover a treasury of Christ-centered theology precise in exegesis and lyrical in expression.
Calvin may be most helpful in Book III of the Institutes, on “The Way We Receive the Grace of Christ.” Here is a powerful summary statement:

Christ was given to us by God’s generosity, to be grasped and possessed by us in faith. By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace: namely ...

Grace Relationships

After God created man and woman, one of their earliest acts as Earth's first human inhabitants was to mess up. Huge. Think about it. They were set for eternity. The only perfect people to ever live on the planet (until Jesus, of course) are settled into the perfect job tending the coolest zoological park ever created. And God dropped by for fellowship every day.   It was the perfect start to a beautiful love story! But rather than living happily ever after, Eve took a taste of sin, Adam followed suit, and the blaming and shaming started. Now, if the ...