A Catechism for Girls and Boys

I give my opinion of the answer to this question in the first comment. Tell me what you think.

Part III: Questions about Salvation

92. Q. What is justification?
      A. It is God’s regarding sinners as if they had never sinned and granting them righteousness.  

 (Click through to read scriptural proof.)

Click to read more ...

Sunday's Hymn: I Love to Tell the Story

I love to tell the story of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love.
I love to tell the story, because I know ’tis true;
It satisfies my longings as nothing else can do.

Refrain

I love to tell the story, ’twill be my theme in glory,
To tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love.

I love to tell the story; more wonderful it seems
Than all the golden fancies of all our golden dreams.
I love to tell the story, it did so much for me;
And that is just the reason I tell it now to thee.

I love to tell the story; ’tis pleasant to repeat
What seems, each time I tell it, more wonderfully sweet.
I love to tell the story, for some have never heard
The message of salvation from God’s own holy Word.

I love to tell the story, for those who know it best
Seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.
And when, in scenes of glory, I sing the new, new song,
’Twill be the old, old story that I have loved so long.

—A. Ka­ther­ine Hank­ey

Other hymns, worship songs, sermons etc. posted today:

• Thy Loving Kindness Lord at Field Stone Cottage
• O My Soul, Bless Thou Jehovah at Rosemary at Home
• There Is a Fountain Filled With Blood at Gospel Grace
• The Light of the World Is Jesus at The Happy Wonderer
• Lord’s Day 37 at Tried With Fire 
• Lord’s Day 37, 2012 at The Thirsty Theologian
• Faith Alone - September 9, 2012 at The Upward Call
• Your Weekly Dose of Spurgeon at Pyromaniacs: Abundunt Pardon
• A Sunday Psalm: The Treasury of David - Psalm 9:1-2 at Theology for Girls

Have you posted a hymn (or sermon, sermon notes, prayer, etc.) today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by contacting me using the contact form linked above, and I’ll add your post to the list.

Reading Classics Together: The Discipline of Grace, Chapter 5

I have been keeping pace with Tim Challies as he reads yet another Christian classic for his Reading Classics Together program, although I didn’t post anything on the chapter we read last week. This week, I’m a day late posting, and it’ll consist mostly of two quotes from the chapter. One of these weeks my real life will slow down and I’ll get back to posting something more like a chapter summary of the week’s chapter.

 Jerry Bridges writes:

[W]e see in Titus 2:11-12 … that salvation and spiritual discipline are inseparable. The grace that brings salvation to us also disciplines us. It does not do the one without the other. That is, God never saves people and leaves them alone to continue in their immaturity and sinful lifestyle. Those whom He saves, He disciplines.

This means that if we are being saved, there will be evidence of “God’s discipline in our lives, and the desire to pursue holiness on our part, be it ever so faint.” 

The same thing should be true for those around us who claim to be believers.

Many of us have friends and relatives who profess to be Christians but in whose lives there appears to be no evidence of the discipline of grace. Oftentimes we cling to a frail hope that such persons are believers because they made a profession at some time, despite the lack of any evidence of the Spirit’s work in their lives. It seems parents are especially prone to this form of denial regarding children who show no evidence of a genuine work of grace.

We certainly cannot determine the reality of another person’s salvation, and we can never say a certain individual is not a Christian. Nevertheless, we should not be naive in the face of a lack of evidence of any spiritual life. Instead of clinging to what may well be a false hope, we should pray earnestly that God will bring that person to salvation, of if perchance He has, will begin to manifest the discipline of grace in the person’s life.

The term “fruit inspector” is used derogatorily to refer to a mean-spirited judgmentalism, but it’s important to remember that a little fruit inspecting is a necessary thing. False hope is deadly. If someone is being saved there should be evidence of it because the Lord graciously disciplines those he loves, and the work God begins, he completes.