Rebecca Stark is the author of The Good Portion: God, the second title in The Good Portion series.
The Good Portion: God explores what Scripture teaches about God in hopes that readers will see his perfection, worth, magnificence, and beauty as they study his triune nature, infinite attributes, and wondrous works.
Thursday, April 18, 2013 at 9:57PM 
The Evidence
from Romans 12, especially when combined with other texts. (Thoughts of Francis Turretin).
The Grounds
If our sins are finite, how is an eternity in hell a just punishment? (Ligonier Ministries Blog).
Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at 9:02PM Here’s one more quote from E. K. Simpson’s Ephesians Commentary [The New International Commentary on the New Testament (older version)] First, Ephesians 2:10:
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Simpson writes:
When the Lord has worked on us, He works by us, along the line of our talents and circumstances; for the Divine Craftsman empowers and employs human effort. Most vocations are not so much chosen as committed to the parties concerned. “The situation of a man”, wrote Burke, “is the main preceptor of duty”: and that situation is not the outcome of chance, but the appointment of the Disposer of all things. Good works are never to be relied on as items placed to our credit in the running account with our supreme Creditor; yet they are indispensable testifications of love and gratitude to an untold Benefactor and Saviour. “It is not against works that we contend”, said Luther, after trying both plans, salvation by dint of hard labour and then by faith, “but against trust in works”, a very different affair.
By nature we are would-be autocrats, persons of quality and standing; but new creatures in Christ Jesus ought to carry the mint-mark of humility. They should be content to serve their generation according to the will of God, to rank as trees of the Lord’s planting, bearing fruit unto Him. A “self-made man” is almost inevitably badly made, a jerry-built sample of overweening self-esteem; but when our Maker recasts us in His own image we are assimilated to the primeval pattern of manhood, no longer intent on steering our vessel for ourselves, but willing to will and do God’s good pleasure even at the expense of our own wills.
Recently I’ve heard two young women say that they are in a holding pattern, so to speak, waiting to find out what it is God wants them to do, as if God’s will for their lives is a mysterious plan they are required to discover. Their answer is in the first paragraph of this quote. God is the one who arranges all our circumstances; our present situations are God’s appointments to us. The good works God prepared beforehand for us are performed daily when we fulfill our duties in whatever circumstances he presents to us.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 5:35PM 
Sermon on the Mount
The title given to Jesus’ sermon recorded in Matthew 5-7.
Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying … . (Matthew 5:1-2 ESV)
This is the first of five major discourses in Matthew (chs. 5–7; 10; 13; 18–20; 24–25). Speaking to his disciples (5:1), Jesus expounds the reality of discipleship lived in the presence and power of the kingdom of God but within the everyday world. Some interpreters have thought the purpose of this sermon was to describe a moral standard so impossibly high that it is relevant only for a future millennial kingdom. Others have thought its primary purpose was to portray the absoluteness of God’s moral perfection and thereby to drive people to despair of their own righteousness, so they will trust in the imputed righteousness of Christ. Both views fail to recognize that these teachings, rightly understood, form a challenging but practical ethic that Jesus expects his followers to live by in this present age. The sermon, commonly called the “Sermon on the Mount,” is probably a summary of a longer message, but the structure is a unified whole.
Related term:
Filed under Person and Work of Christ
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