Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

Kibitzing With The R2Kt Guys

And the Apostles get martyred…hmmm. Does a transformed society really string up those to whom they owe all this wonder?

One doesn’t get to transformed without going through transforming Zrim my friend. So, yes, on the way to transformed people may very possibly get ‘strung up.’ It’s the postmillennialists, because of their advocacy of Christ’s Lordship who are persecuted for the Kingdom. I’m never quite sure why anybody would want to persecute an a-mill person unless they somehow were mistaken for being post-mill — I mean, why would anybody find an a-mill believer to be threatening enough to want to persecute?

Does your prebytery know you are really a Methodist?

Does your Session know you are really a cultural relativist?

Seriously, theonomy (hard and soft) is the propserity gospel of statecraft. “Transformation” is the power-word of the spirit of this age: transform your inner-being, your society, your relationships, your health, etc. There are just so many versions of “health and wealth.”

Seriously, Radical two Kingdom theology is the cultural anti-nomianism of the Church. R2Kt is the means by which a-millennialism thinks it can achieve self-fulfilled prophecy. “If we don’t engage the culture, then it will get worse and worse and that will force Jesus to come back.”

Oh, and by the way, it was the Holy Spirit who used your, so called, ‘power word of this age.’ “Be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Guess the Holy Spirit should have checked with you R2Kt guys before inspiring that word.

You should get your own show on Christian TV.

Will you be my Vanna and turn the pretty letters?

R. Scott Clark asks,

Why should Christians engage the culture? Because it’s a creational law. We were commanded to name things. We are commanded to steward creation.

And what does Redemption accomplish except to Redeem ALL of Creation? Now if Redemption has that effect on Creation by what standard will creation, upon redemption, live if not from God’s revealed word?

This is why Theonomy is just like Barthianism. Neither one of you folks believe in nature. You’re both quasi-gnostic. It’s no surprise that both groups have trouble with the covenant of works and you end up confusing law and gospel. Barth did. You guys do it regularly. You’re both making fundamental theological mistakes.

This is nothing but a series of unsubstantiated assertions. You’d think a Ph.D. at one of the flagship Reformed Seminary’s in America could do better then making unsubstantiated assertions.

First, Barthianism holds that God is so other — so Transcendent — that his Word doesn’t really have meaning unless one has some kind of mystical encounter with the Word. How Bob can associate that with an expression of basic Christianity that holds that all should be governed by God’s revealed Word just reveals how desperate Bob is to do guilt by association.

The fact of the matter is that it is R2Kt that is quasi gnostic. God is concerned about the Spiritual realm of the Church but He is, at best, only indirectly concerned with the ‘yucky material realm.’

Bob is making the fundamental hermeneutical mistake of gnostically divorcing Redemption from Creation. God likes matter Bob — he made it and he has determined to Redeem it. According to Bob’s hermeneutic the Old and Worst covenant found God more engaged with the Creation realm then he is in the new and better covenant. In the Old Covenant God was concerned with gross ceational things like laws, and parameters for magistrates, and just weights and measures. However in the new and improved covenant God is glad to be done with the yucky material creational realm.

Great hermeneutic Bob.

The pattern for our life in this world is not Israel. They were the pattern for the CHURCH not for civil life. The USA isn’t Israel. No civil entity is Israel. That’s the point of WCF 19. That’s why we confess “general equity” and not “the abiding validity….etc”

And you know as well as I do that there is a raging debate over just what ‘general equity’ means. Clearly Israel was a pattern for the Kingdom, which has the Church at its center but the Kingdom includes every area over which Jesus reigns.

R. Scott Clark — The Typhoid Mary carrier of R2Kt virus

I will continue to engage on the R2Kt (radical two Kingdom Theology) virus which with Westminster West is seeking to infect the Church. Beyond my basic problems with R2Kt I get annoyed at guys like Dr. R. Scott Clark and Westminster West toadies because they are forever insisting that they alone are the pure expression of Confessional Reformed Theology, and they do so with faces firmly set against hurricane force winds of contrary evidence blowing against them. I understand that Westminster West is considering changing their motto to ‘Never let the facts get in the way of your ideology.’ It’s almost as if they are practicing the ‘Big Lie’ philosophy, which teaches that if you tell a big enough lie long enough people will eventually begin to believe your lie.

Dr. R. Scott Clark offers,

Why must “the church” engage the culture?

Why can’t Christians engage the culture?

Why must we form this kind of dichotomy between personal individual responsibility and corporate responsibility?

Naturally, no Reformed Christian teaches that individual Christians can’t engage the culture. But that’s not really Bob’s beef. Bob’s beef is that the Church should have any role speaking to anything except personal and individual salvation. Bob refuses to believe that Christ brings salvation not only to individuals but also to the institutional and cultural infra-structures that people, in societal relationships build. So the first reason why the Church must engage the culture is because the salvation that Jesus brought extends beyond individuals to the whole Cosmos. Jesus intends to save the WHOLE WORLD — which includes culture. The second reason that the Church must engage the culture is because culture is people group theology made manifest. Now since the Church is THE PLACE where Theology is supposed to be most ardently pursued, one would think that it would have a word or two to speak to the incarnated concrete theology that we call ‘culture.’ I just find it all inexplicable that I should have to explain this. The third reason that the Church must engage culture is because it can’t help but engage culture. Look, if the Church refuses to engage culture that refusal is itself an engaging of culture. An engagement which says to the culture, ‘do as you please, we have no authoritative Word for you.’ Such a Word is an engagement The consequence of such a engagement by way of disengaging is that the larger culture begins to incarnate a Theology that is not biblical, which in turn leads to the Church being impressed and shaped in its theology by those individuals who have been impressed and shaped by the theology they are absorbing from the culture that is not being spoken to by the Church.

Let’s also keep in mind that the last time the Theology of R. Scott Clark prevailed on a geographically wide scene was the Lutheran Church in Germany between 1933-1945. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the Church not engaging the culture.

Nothing about two-kingdoms theology says that Christians can’t engage the culture. Why can’t the institutional church be left to its proper business: preaching Christ, administering the sacraments, and administering discipline. As far as I can see the visible, institutional church can hardly manage that let alone taking back whatever for Jesus.

But Bob, what is the reason that it ‘can hardly manage that’? I would contend the reason that the Church can hardly manage that is because the pagan culture that we have not been speaking to appropriately has come into the Church. Bob, you can’t realistically think you can make the Church an island that is unaffected by the tides of the culture in which it exists. If we will not engage the incarnated pagan theology (culture) then the incarnated pagan theology (culture) will engage us (the Church) — and not beneficently so.

And just to be clear, I don’t know of any bellwether Theocrats or Theonomists throughout Reformed History that didn’t believe and wouldn’t agree that the Church needs to be preaching Christ, administering the sacraments, and administering discipline. It’s not as if Theocrats and Theonomists throughout Reformed Church history haven’t week in and week out been about the proper business of the Church in Worship.

Yes, CHRISTIANS SHOULD ENGAGE THE CULTURE — pay attention! Yes, I’m shouting. Yes, there is a kulturkampf, but there probably has always been one of sorts. The question is not “whether” but rather the questions are by whom and how and to what end? Christians should engage the culture on the basis of natural REVELATION and they should preach the law to the culture which is what culture is about. Art, language, music, law, and whatever else composes a culture is about law. All these things must be done in obedience to certain laws. It is about understanding these laws.

Bob would have us draw laws by appeal to natural revelation and not from God’s Holy Word. And yet, natural revelation or natural law has as many variants as there are types of beetles in the world. What standard will adjudicate between the varying natural laws that men espouse?

Now, to be sure there is only one true natural law. But we can’t expect non-Christians, because of how they suppress the truth in unrighteousness, to find any reason to tip their hats to the one true natural law. Does Bob need a refresher course on total depravity?

Second, Bob doesn’t realize that it is also entirely possible and even likely that Christians won’t even agree on how to ‘understand these laws.’ Since, Bob would have individual Christians appeal to natural law as their authority then it is conceivable that there will be as many Natural laws as there are individual Christians.

The gospel (which is the basis for any Christian notion of “transformation”) has been committed to the church and is found there, not in the culture. Transformation, properly defined, belongs to Christians and to the visible church in anticipation of the eschaton.

I agree that the Gospel is found uniquely in the Church. It is the institution where Redemption is proclaimed. However, all because we admit that Gospel is found uniquely in the Church doesn’t mean that the Church can’t speak about what that Gospel looks like as it effects the Culture. The Church is where Redemption is proclaimed. The culture is where the proclaimed redemption incarnates itself. The Church must speak both to the essence of what the Gospel is and the consequent of what the Gospel looks like. We cannot divorce the message of the Gospel from the implications or outworkings of the Gospel.

The attempt to apply the category of “transformation” to the culture is the result of an over-realized eschatology and goes hand-in-hand with the confusion of the church with the culture.

And Bob’s amillennialism and his R2Kt theology is the result of an under-realized eschatology and goes hand in hand with the expectation that in this world the Gospel is defeated.

Building A Worldview — I — Larger Questions And The Conflicts They Generate

We should note that all individuals and peoples have a worldveiw. This is not to say that all individuals are epistemologically self-conscious as to what their worldview is. Neither is it to say that individuals always live consistently with their worldview, nor is it to say that individuals don’t have significant contradictions within their worldviews. On a corporate level not all individuals living within a people group will accept the preponderant worldview, though the consequence of not accepting the preponderant worldview will always be some kind of social marginalization.

Second, it is important to note that any given culture is the visible clothing of a people’s unseen worldview beliefs. You can’t see beliefs but those who have eyes to see can see how those beliefs incarnate themselves into cultural arrangements.

Any coherent Worldview is sustained by its ability to answer what is called ‘the larger questions.’ These questions would include,

1.) Nature, destiny, & origin of the cosmos

2.) Nature, destiny, origin, & role of man

For example in the West these larger questions are answered as follows,

The origin of the cosmos is that something came from nothing. The nature of the cosmos is solely material. The destiny of the cosmos is eternal inhabitation.

The nature of man, compositely speaking is that he is matter. The nature of man ethically speaking is that he is basically good, being swept along by the inevitability of progress. The destiny of man is self achieved utopia in the long term with the grave being the final end for those who don’t endure to Utopia. The origin of man is time + chance + circumstance. The role of man is to glorify himself.

When one compares the above to the Christian worldview one begins to understand why their should be a great amount of tension and friction between epistemologically self-conscious Christians and epistemologically self-conscious materialists.

For the Christian the origin of the cosmos is that God spoke it into existence. The nature of the cosmos is that it is material in its outward expression but that it is governed and sustained by Spiritual realities (God). The destiny of the cosmos is renewal along with the rest of creation.

The nature of man, compositely speaking is that he is modified unichotomous being composed of matter and spirit, who upon death will experience, for a brief time, an unnatural division between his natural, and modified unichotomous existence. The nature of men, ethically speaking, is that man is inherently sinful, but is capable of Redemption. When such a redemptive eventuality takes place, ethically speaking, man’s nature is at the same time sinner and saint. The destiny of man is the Kingdom of God, and the role of man is to glorify God by fully enjoying Him forever.

Another thing that we hasten to add here is that sitting atop every worldview is a God from which the worldview descends. In the two examples given above the God at the top of the first worldview is man. All things exist for man and all things must serve man. In the second worldview the God of the Bible is what animates that worldview.

Such divergent worldviews make for conflict among their differing adherents as each seeks to loyally advance the cause of their God and their worldview. Increasingly we see that conflict in Western culture as these two worldviews continue to vie for supremacy.

We see this conflict manifest itself in a host of different cultural expressions of which I offer only a few,

1.) If man is only matter then he is disposable and therefore creating men to be replaceable parts through cloning or abortive pregnancy is acceptable. On the other hand if man is created in the image of God then all life needs to be esteemed and protected, especially life at its beginning and end.

2.) If man is basically good then any fault of man must be found in man’s environment. Therefore, man must take the initiative to control his environment through social engineering, endeavoring to create a cultural climate that allows man express his innate goodness. On the other hand if man is fallen then no amount of manipulation of his environment will heal his fallen-ness. Remedies for man’s fallen sin nature come not through manipulating man’s material surroundings or social engineering the way he thinks. Rather the remedy for man’s fallen-ness is spiritual and comes through the work of the Holy Spirit in keeping with the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

3.) If the chief role of man is to glorify himself and if there is no super-mundane God above to whom men must give an account or who gives men an absolute standard by which to adjudicate right and wrong then man is free to do whatever he, in his majority expression, determines will glorify himself. On the other hand if the chief role of man is to glorify God then obedience to God’s Law Word is the motivation of all that man does, and one thing that a redeemed man does in order to glorify God is to oppose the agenda of those who desire to glorify man.

Friction emanating from people living in the same geographic space who hold to these diametrically opposed worldviews will ripple, rend and tear all across the culture as the adherents of each worldview seek to implement their Worldview answers to the larger questions. Indeed, so stark is the combat that the Christian is taught to pray for the destruction of the opposing kingdom (‘Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ It is necessary to understand that the coming of one Kingdom implies the destruction of all that which opposes it) while the Materialist, in reference to the Christian can say things like,

If you (Christians) insist on teaching your children falsehoods … — that ‘man’ is not a product of evolution by natural selection — then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us (evolutionary Materialists) who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. Our future well being — the well being of all of us on the planet — depends on the education of our descendants.

The division between those who are consistent in their answers to the larger questions is total and complete. Would that Christians would begin to awaken to that.

In Defiance Of The R2Kt virus

A Conquered Kingdom: Biblical Civil Government
Daniel Ritchie

Foreword 1 Rev. Paul Michael Raymond (Dutch Reformed)

Foreword 2 Rev. Douglas Comin (RPCNA)

Foreword 3 Rev. John Otis (RPCUS)

Preface

Explanation of why I wrote the book, and a definition of terms such as Theonomy and Christian Reconstruction (this also explains the relevance of Presuppositional Apologetics, VanTillan Epistemology and Postmillennial Eschatology).

Introduction

Regeneration and Christian Reconstruction

The Dominion Mandate

Chapter 1: The Kingship of Christ over the Nations

Exegetical study of various texts relating to Christ’s kingship over the nations and civil government.

Chapter 2: Political Polytheism and Toleration

The Myth of Neutrality

Political Polytheism and the First Commandment

God’s Judgment Upon Pluralism
Pluralism is Logically Impossible
The Issue of Toleration

Chapter 3: National Confessionalism and the Establishment Principle
Religious Establishment: An Inescapable Concept

The Necessity of a National Recognition of Christ (Social Covenanting)
Erastianism, Ecclesiocracy and the Separation of Powers

Alliance Between Church and State

The Precise Nature of a Christian Establishment (Divergent views of the Establishment Principle considered)

Chapter 4: The Limited Role of Civil Government

Sola Scriptura and Sphere Sovereignty
Crime and Punishment
Just Warfare
Quarantine
Taxation and Private Property

Chapter 5: Christianity versus Statism

What is Statism?

Biblical Examples of Statism (Tower of Babel, Egypt, Babylon, Medo-Persian, Roman, Jewish Compromise with Statism)

Christianity Confronts Statism (how the early church confronted Statism both practically and theologically)

Christianity versus Statist Welfare
Christianity versus Statist Education
Statist Law and the Attack Upon Biblical Freedom
Statism and Private Property

Chapter 6: The Biblical Form of Civil Government

Theocratic Republicanism: The Divinely Established Form of Civil Government

The Principle of Decentralization
The Qualifications and Duties of Civil Officers
Voting Rights

Unbiblical Forms of Civil Government (Anarchy, Monarchy, Oligarchy, Bureaucracy, Parliamentary Sovereignty and Democracy)

Appendix One: Civil Disobedience and Just Revolution

Appendix Two: For Whom was God’s Law Intended by Greg Bahnsen

Appendix Three: The Perpetual Obligation of the Scottish Covenants

Appendix Four: The Westminster Standards and Older Testament Penology (this is 26 pages long)

Appendix Five: Federal Vision Disclaimer

Appendix Six: Appointed for the Defense of the Gospel: The Life and Ministry of Greg L. Bahnsen by Kenneth Gentry

Appendix Seven: Rousas John Rushdoony: A Survey of His Life and Work by Gary North

Appendix Eight: A Summary of the Theonomic Position by Greg Bahnsen

Appendix Nine: George Gillespie and Biblical Civil Law: Did He Change His Mind?

Some Statistics

Over 780 pages long.

Over 250,000 words

Over 1400 footnotes.

Bibliography of more than 300 books and articles.

Includes Theocractic and Theonomic quotes from:

Reformers – John Wycliffe, Walter Brute, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Martin Bucer, John Knox, Heinrich Bullinger, John Hooper, Hugh Latimer, Peter Martyr, Ulrich Zwingli, Johannes Piscator and Theodore Beza.

Puritans – Thomas Cartwright, James Ussher, Jeremiah Burroughs, John Flavel, Thomas Shepherd, John Cotton, Cotton Mather, John Eliot, Thomas Edwards, William Ames, David Clarkson, John Owen, Samuel Bolton, William Perkins, Edward Deering, Thomas Brooks, John Foxcroft, Herbert Palmer, Thomas Vincent, William Jenkyn, Thomas Gilbert, Matthew Poole, Matthew Henry, William Gouge, Thomas Manton, Henry Barrow, Peter Chamberlain, Richard Sibbes, Stephen Charnock, Increase Mather, Thomas Ridgeley, Isaac Ambrose, Thomas Pickering, Richard Vines, Phillip Stubbs, Edward Reynolds, William Reyner, Thomas Goodwin, Richard Greenham, Prelates opposed to Puritan Theonomy and the Geneva Bible.

Early Covenanters – Samuel Rutherford, George Gillespie, Alexander Henderson, Donald Cargill, John Brown of Wamphry, Alexander Shields, James Guthrie, Richard Cameron, James Durham, George Hutcheson, Robert Baillie, Patrick Walker, James Welwood, David Dickson, James Ferguson, 2nd Reformation General Assembly and Parliament.

Later Reformed Writers – John Gill, Thomas Scott, R.L. Dabney, J.H. Thornwell, John Brown of Haddington, Thomas Boston, Ebenezer Erskine, James Fisher, Johannes Wollebius, Junius Brutus, Gardiner Spring, William Symington, C.H. Spurgeon, J.G. Machen, Alexander McLeod, R.P. Joseph, J.G. Vos, Thomas Houston and James Willson. [Most of these are only Theocractic, except for Gill, Scott, Boston, Brown, Erskine, Fisher, Wollebius and Wilson].

Westminster West… are you listening?

Paul At Athens — Part VI — ‘BUT NOW TIMES’

16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. 17 Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. 18 Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,” because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.

19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? 20 For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.” 21 For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

22 Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; 23 for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: 24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one blood[c] every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. 30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.” 33 So Paul departed from among them. 34 However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

In giving only one sermon addressed to Gentiles by the great Apostle to the Gentiles, namely the Aeropagus speech in Athens, his (Luke’s) primary purpose is to give an example of how the Christian missionary should approach cultured Gentiles.

Martin Dibelius
Studies in the Acts Of The Apostles

There was a chap in history named Marcion who, among teaching other devilish things, taught that the Old Testament and the New Testament were speaking about different gods. For Marcion, the Old Testament God was a mean God of wrath, while the New Testament God was a God of love and Grace. Naturally, Marcion was wrong for Scripture teaches us that the God of the Scriptures is one and that the one God is immutable.

When we look at Acts 17 we find an interesting statement that suggests the incredible graciousness of God as he worked in history pre-dating the New Testament, as well as an interesting implication that God’s anger is as incredibly intense now as it ever was in the Old Testament economy.

Paul, has finished explaining the character of God and in reference to the Athenian idolatry the Apostle says, ‘Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked.’ The Apostle declares something similar in his encounter with the citizens of Lystra when he explains to them, “God…who in bygone generations allowed all nations to walk in their own ways (A. 14:16).” Here is the proclamation of God’s incredible grace to the ancient world. The idolatries of the Nations were overlooked and the Nations were not given what their idolatry deserved. Marcion was wrong, God in the OT cannot be justly described as a God who is mean and vengeful. Any outpouring of the wrath of God we see in the Old Testament was altogether just but the outpouring of wrath we do see is nothing in comparison to the grace, mercy, and love of God in ancient times that St. Paul proclaims in His sermons. God, in His kindness and forbearance, overlooked these previous times of ignorance. God, in restraint and compassion, allowed all nations to walk in their own ways. He did not visit sin with what it deserved, waiting instead to visit upon His Son the deservings of sin.

However with the advent and work of Christ the Apostle suggests that the ‘overlooking times’ are finished. God overlooked previously, ‘BUT NOW,’ the Apostle says, ‘God commands all men everywhere to repent.’ The reason for the difference between the ‘overlooking times’ and the ‘Now times’ is that with the death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and session of Christ sin has been dealt with, and the great graciousness of God has been publicly placarded. Sins, like idolatry, committed in these ‘BUT NOW times’ leave men even more responsible then the sins committed before God revealed the fulsomeness of His grace in Christ. God was abundantly gracious in the ‘overlooked times’ but now that these ‘NOW TIMES’ have arrived, where God’s grace has overflowed, the expectation is that all men everywhere would repent.

For those who minister the Gospel one would think that all of this would ratchet up our earnestness. Those who refuse Christ are sinning against greater grace with the consequence that greater judgment will be their portion. All men living post Christ’s finished work can be characterized as men from whom much will be required (in terms of judgment) because much was given (in terms of grace.)

Our hearts ought to be burdened for people who will not turn to Christ but who instead will keep to their tired old idolatries. With ever more prayer we should ask God to give us the nations for the inheritance of the Son, that they might know what the good life is and that God may be glorified.

God, having given greater portions of grace in these ‘BUT NOW TIMES’ we should pray for a greater ability to understand and communicate the jaw dropping splendor of the Gospel that saves men in these ‘BUT NOW TIMES.’