Why Choose a Deficient Righteousness?

“Since, then, Christ has made an atonement for sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness, why will you glory in yourselves, rather than glory in the Lord?  Why will you trust to your own fancied righteousness, since nothing but pride could tempt you to glory in it?  Your ignorance of Christ’s righteousness hinders your seeing how infinitely perfect it is, and your own self-sufficiency will not let you submit to be saved by it, and therefore you go about to establish your own righteousness”

- William Romaine, “Twelve Discourses on the Law and the Gospel”, p.119

Understanding the Holiness of God

“If we rightly understand the infiniteness of God’s Holiness, we cannot conceive that anything imperfect can justify us before so exact and strict tribunal, where sits the Omniscience of God to see, the Holiness of God to hate, and the Justice of God to punish every defect and deviation from His law”

-  Stephen Charnock 

The Very Soul of Prayer

“My son, give Me your heart.” Proverbs 23:26In all your closet-duties God looks first and most to
your hearts. It is not a piece, it is not a corner of the
heart, which will satisfy the Maker of the heart. The
very soul of prayer lies in the pouring out of the soul
before God. The heart is a treasure, a bed of spices,
a royal throne wherein He delights. God looks not at:
 the elegance of your prayers, to see how refined they are; nor at
 the geometry of your prayers, to see how long they are; nor at
 the arithmetic of your prayers, to see how many they are; nor at
 the music of your prayers; nor at
 the sweetness of your voice; nor at
 the logic of your prayers;
but at the sincerity of your prayers, how hearty they are.The reason why so many are so unsuccessful in their
closet-duties and services, is because there is no more
of their hearts in them. No man can make sure work or
happy work in prayer but he who makes heart work on
it. When a man’s heart is in his prayers, then great and
sweet will be his returns from heaven.

There is no prayer acknowledged, approved, accepted,
recorded, or rewarded by God—but that wherein the
heart is sincere.

Prayer without the heart is but as sounding brass or
a tinkling cymbal. Prayer is only lovely and weighty,
as the heart is in it, and no otherwise. It is . . .
  not the lifting up of the voice,
  nor the wringing of the hands,
  nor the beating of the breasts,
  nor an affected tone,
  nor studied motions,
  nor seraphical expressions;
but the stirrings of the heart, which God looks at in prayer.
God hears no more than the heart speaks. If the heart be
dumb, God will certainly be deaf. No prayer is accepted by
God—but that which is the travail of the heart - Thomas Brooks

The Constant Cry of the Rod

One lesson that you are to learn by the rod of affliction,
is to get more weaned and more mortified affections to
all worldly comforts, contentments, and enjoyments.A man never comes to experience so much of . . .
  the emptiness,
  the nothingness,
  the uselessness,
  the vanity,
  the mutability,
  the impotency,
  the insufficiency,
  the uncertainty
of all worldly comforts and enjoyments—as when he falls
under the rod of affliction. The constant cry of the rod
is, “Be dead to the profits, pleasures, honors, and applauses
of the world! Be dead to everything below a living Jesus!” - Thomas Brooks

On Justification

l. Faith without works is sufficient for salvation, and alone justifies. 2. Justifying faith is a sure trust, by which one believes that his sins are remitted for Christ’s sake; and they that are justified are to believe certainly that their sins are remitted. 3. By faith only we are able to appear before God, who neither regards nor has need of our works; faith only purifying us. 4. No previous disposition is necessary to justification; neither does faith justify because it disposes us, but because it is a means or instrument by which the promise and grace of God are laid hold on and received. 5. All the works of men, even the most sanctified, are sin. 6. Though the just ought to believe that his works are sins, yet he ought to be assured that they are not imputed. 7. Our righteousness is nothing but the imputation of the righteousness of Christ; and the just have need of a continual justification and imputation of the righteousness of Christ. 8. All the justified are received into equal grace and glory; and all Christians are equally great with the Mother of God, and as much saints as she.                    -Martin Luther

When God Thwarts, Afflicts and Mortifies Us

Men are so ignorant of their own hearts that they are incapable
of determining what is best for them. Even regenerate men are
but partially sanctified and enlightened. But God searches the
heart. He understands our whole case. He knows what is most
for our good. He sees our strong corruptions and sad deficiencies.
When, in mercy to His child, He comes to heal his spiritual maladies,
He does not take counsel with human reasoning or desires. It is right,
it is best that He should act according to the wisdom which is infallible.
He employs the requisite remedies. Often they are distasteful to flesh
and blood. Sometimes they are frightful to contemplate, and terrible
to endure.Then man, in his ignorance, too often says, “If God loved me—He
would not give me so bitter a cup to drink!” But this is man’s folly.
Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Shall human weakness
control divine power? Shall finite knowledge prescribe to omniscience?
It is the height of wickedness for a worm of the dust—to revise the
decisions, or pre-judge the justice of the Almighty. We would expect
that God would deal with us in an incomprehensible way—if we did but
remember how base, sordid, and narrow are our views and plans; and
how holy, glorious, and eternal are His purposes and designs.We are quite prone to magnify both the good and evil things of time
—to the disparagement of those of eternity. But when God thwarts,
afflicts, and mortifies us—He makes us look at the things which are
unseen and eternal. If He racks this body with pain—it is that we may
think of our house, not made with hands, eternal, and in the heavens.
The shaking of this clay tabernacle forces upon us the recollection that
this present world is not our rest—and that we ought to be seeking a
heavenly country. If the godliest man on earth had his own way without
divine guidance—he would soon be in full march towards destruction!

How kind is God in wisely and mercifully deciding so many things
for us! God very mercifully marks out our course for us. God is
governor. We are servants. To us belong obedience, submission,
acquiescence. It is not ours . . .
to guide,
to decide what is best,
to rule the world,
to shape the course of events.

” WILLIAM S. PLUMER 1802-1880

Our Everlasting Happiness

“Believers are not only righteous in Him, but Righteousness, and that the Righteousness of God too, against which law and justice cannot make any exception;  Therefore of this Righteousness, though not of their own, may they boast all the day long.  The merits of it are their justification, the fruits of it are their sanctification, and when they come to heaven, this Righteousness will be their everlasting robe of glory, and to sing His praises, who clothed them with it, will be their enjoyment and happiness for ever and ever.”

-  William Romaine,  from “Twelve Discourses on the Law and Gospel”  p.115

About me.

Hi!  This is all ABOUT ME.   It’s just a little biographical information, not my memoirs (like anyone would read that!)

Let’s see, where to begin… I was born 50 years ago this August in St. Paul, MN….. Okay, enough with the long story, I’ll cut to the chase as they say in the movie business. 

I’m a reformed Christian, no, not deformed, REFORMED.  That means I’m a bible believing Protestant and trace my spiritual heritage back to the 16th century Protestant Reformation when the Reformers recovered the Gospel of Justification by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone.  I’m an active elder in an RCUS (Reformed Church in the US) church.  I’m married to a wonderful woman and my best friend and we have three wonderful sons, 17,  19, and 21 years old.  I love to read/study reformed theology. I love music of various kinds.  And I throw knives, tomahawks and axes for a hobby. 

Well, enough ABOUT ME…….

Please feel free to leave comments!

Proper Pleading

“No more, my God, I boast no more of all the duties I have done: I quit the hopes I held before, to trust the merits of Thy Son. The best obedience of my hands dares not appear before Thy throne; But faith can answer Thy demands by pleading what my Lord has done”

-  Unknown Hymn

The Effects of Meditating on the Future Glory

“The exceeding weight of glory makes all worldly prosperity as dung, and all worldly adversity as feathers”

-  John Donne

The Fruit of Faith

“For what is more consonant with faith that to recognize that we are naked of all virtue, in order to be clothed by God?  That we are empty of all good to be filled by Him?   That we are slaves of sin, to be freed by Him? Blind, to be illumined by Him?   Lame, to be made straight by Him?  Weak, to be sustained by Him?  To take away from us all occasion for glorying, that He alone may stand forth gloriously and we glory in Him?

-  John Calvin  (From the preface to his Institutes of the Christian Religion)

The Source of Assurance

The believer, when unbelief prevails against him, is almost ready to cast away his confidence: but instead of thinking this to be his duty, he thinks it both a sin and a shame to him. Sometimes he is so foolish as to make his pleasant frames and evidences grounds of his confidence and comfort, instead of the righteousness of Jesus Christ; but when Christ, who is always jealous of His own honor, casts a vail over those evidences, and suffers him to discern nothing within him but confusion and corruption, he learns by degrees to act more wisely. Instead of making his experiences a ground of trust, he learns to consider them only as encouragements to him to rely with more assured confidence on Christ as Jehovah his Righteousness…If believers were to rely on God’s faithfulness in the promise rather than on their own feelings, and on that ground to believe the gift of the Savior’s righteousness with application to themselves, they should not be such strangers to the joy of faith as many of them seem to be.”

-  John Colquhoun,  from “The Lord Our Righteousness”

Hello world!

OH, NO!  Not another blog!!  Hopefully this blog will be different.  I don’t think I have anything really important to say, however, I believe there are those who do.  Unfortunately, they are all dead.  So, I hope to give voice to those who have gone on to their eternal reward by posting gleanings from their writings.  Just quotes.  Nothing extensive, so the copyright police don’t have to worry about anything.  Hopefully it will be enough to whet your appetite for a full course meal in whomever I’m quoting.  So, get ready for some tantalizing tidbits of theological truth (say that really fast!)….