Sunday's Hymn: We Praise Thee, O God, Our Redeemer, Creator

We praise thee, O God, our Redeemer, Creator,
In grateful devotion our tribute we bring.
We lay it before thee, we kneel and adore thee,
We bless thy holy name, glad praises we sing.

We worship thee, God of our fathers, we bless thee;
Through life’s storm and tempest our guide hast thou been.
When perils o’ertake us, escape thou wilt make us,
And with thy help, O Lord, our battles we win.

With voices united our praises we offer,
To thee, great Jehovah, glad anthems we raise.
Thy strong arm will guide us, our God is beside us,
To thee, our great Redeemer, for ever be praise.

—Julia B. Cory

St. Olaf Choir

Piano prelude

Other hymns, worship songs, prayers, sermons excerpts, or quotes posted today:

• Let All Things Now Living at Graces Daily
• In Memory of the Savior’s Love at The Happy Wonderer
• Ground and Settle Us In Your Truth from Trevin Wax
• The story is God’s story at Blogging Theologically
• Lifting Up Our Hearts - 34 at The Upward Call
• Genuine Birth at Tried With Fire
• Lord’s Day 31, 2014 at The Thirsty Theologian
• Your weekly dose of Spurgeon: First love at Pyromaniacs

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.

Linked Together: Questions About Salvation

Recommended reading for your weekend.

Who Is Salvation About?
“Salvation is for us … but it’s not mainly about us” (Jared Wilson).

What Does Salvation Include?
It includes both imputed and imparted righteousness (Rick Phillips).

What Did He Mean?
In 1 Timothy, Paul writes, “women will be saved through childbearing.” What in the world does that mean? (Denny Burk).

Theological Term of the Week

Pelagianism
A kind of theism that claims to be Christian but has been condemned as heretical throughout Christian history. In this view, human beings are not born sinful, but are able to live good moral lives and thus receive eternal life as a reward.

• Scripture disproving Pelagianism: 

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV)

…as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12 ESV)

• From the Belgic Confession: 

Article 15: The Doctrine of Original Sin 

We believe that by the disobedience of Adam original sin has been spread through the whole human race. 

It is a corruption of all nature—an inherited depravity which even infects small infants in their mother’s womb, and the root which produces in man every sort of sin. It is therefore so vile and enormous in God’s sight that it is enough to condemn the human race, and it is not abolished or wholly uprooted even by baptism, seeing that sin constantly boils forth as though from a contaminated spring.

Nevertheless, it is not imputed to God’s children for their condemnation but is forgiven by his grace and mercy—not to put them to sleep but so that the awareness of this corruption might often make believers groan as they long to be set free from the “body of this death.”

Therefore we reject the error of the Pelagians who say that this sin is nothing else than a matter of imitation.

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