Author: Tony Reinke

Calvary and the Real World

Tony Reinke Cross of Christ, Suffering

“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross… In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his.”

—John Stott, The Cross of Christ (IVP, 1986), pp. 335—336. As quoted in Randy Alcorn, If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Multnomah, 2009), p. 217.

Who installed that pentatonic scale in me?

Tony Reinke Music

“…common grace precedes all that is good and true that we still see in fallen man. The light still shines in the darkness. The Spirit of God lives and works in everything that has been created. Therefore there still remain in man certain traces of the image of God. There is still intellect and reason; all kinds of natural gifts are still present in him. Man still has a feeling and an impression of divinity, a seed of religion. Reason is a priceless gift. Philosophy is an admirable gift from God. Music is also a gift of God. Arts and sciences are good, profitable, and of high value. … Through the doctrine of common grace the Reformed have, on the one hand, maintained the specific and absolute character of the Christian religion, but on the other hand they have been second to none in their appreciation for whatever of the good and beautiful is still being given by God to sinful human beings.”

—Herman Bavinck, De Algemeene Genade (Eerdmans, 1922), p. 17. (bold=mine)

Watch and listen as a crowd expresses the pentatonic scale with natural unison and ask yourself: Who embedded that scale into each of us?

HT:DW

Shai Linne

Tony Reinke spurgeon

Shai Linne is a gifted reformed rapper. I’ve mentioned him in the past and I really enjoy his albums and especially his cross-centered lyrics. Recently he was in town for the WorshipGod09 conference. Here is a YouTube clip of him rapping “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” the biblical storyline in 4-minutes. You can download the song here.

Bavinck: Faith, Works, and Assurance

Tony Reinke Assurance, Herman Bavinck, Roman Catholic

Some helpful thoughts taken from chapter 22 of Herman Bavinck’s Our Reasonable Faith (Eerdmans, 1956). Italics mine:

Page 474: “In justification we are declared free of guilt and punishment on the basis of a righteousness which is outside of us in Christ Jesus, and which through God’s grace is reckoned to us and on our own part is received in faith. In sanctification, however, the holiness of Christ is most certainly poured out in us through the Holy Spirit. When Roman Catholicism therefore speaks of a grace which is poured into us, we have no objection to that in itself; we object only to the fact that this grace is regarded as a part of the righteousness on the basis of which we are declared free before God. For, if that were so, then justification and sanctification, the deliverance from guilt and the removal of the pollution, would be confused with each other; and then Christ would be robbed of the perfection of His achieved righteousness and the believing soul of its comfort and assurance.”

Page 510—511: “The assurance of salvation is not something which is added to the life of faith from without, but something, rather, which blossoms up out of that life of faith itself. Hence, the assurance differs according to the measure of the faith… But all this does not take away from the fact that the saving faith, such as Scripture describes it and the Reformation restored it, is not in its inner nature certainty, and that this certainty becomes stronger in proportion to the extent that the faith becomes stronger. Such faith is not opposed to knowledge, but it is opposed to all doubt whatsoever. Doubt does not come up out of the new man but out of the old; it does not come up out of the Spirit but out of the flesh. The faith says yea and amen to all the promises of God, embraces those promises, and leans upon them. As it does this, and in proportion to the extent that it does so, the refugee confidence of the faith becomes sure confidence, and it gives the believer the freedom to apply all of those promises of God to himself and to appropriate them; the growing confidence becomes a sure confidence that not to others only but to me also the forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness and salvation have been given of God, out of pure grace, and solely for the merits of Christ.”

Pages 512—513: “But we must carefully note that in seeking for assurance we cannot begin with these good works, that the faith can never firmly lean or rest upon them, and that still less can they be performed by us with a view to our achieving the assurance of salvation by means of them. For all good works are imperfect, and they are more or less perfect in proportion to the extent that they issue from a stronger or weaker faith. But to the extent that they do issue from a true faith, they can serve as aids to our assurance. Just as faith proves and illustrates itself in good works, so the faith is also confirmed and strengthened by them.”

Faith and Assurance

Tony Reinke Assurance, Jonathan Edwards

I am an advocate of Jonathan Edwards and his works. I named this blog, and my firstborn son, in his honor. But Edwards had warts. And this includes his teaching on personal assurance of salvation that was based upon a “reflexive act of faith.” Edwards, it seems, encouraged people to believe in God irrespective of the personal benefits received from Him. In so doing this, Edwards effectively severs the link between initial saving faith and personal assurance. This separation has serious consequences for the Christian life.

In my humble opinion, I think Edwards confused the relationship between faith and assurance set forth by John Calvin and the Reformers. And my suspicion that something was different with Edwards was confirmed while discussing the topic with my friend Nathan Sasser some time ago.SASSER--Reformation+Puritan.Faith

In his ‘free time’ Nathan has written a 40-page paper “The Reformation vs. the Puritans on Faith and Assurance” a brief survey of this topic in the teachings of Edwards, Calvin, John Owen, and the Marrow Brethren. His paper has helped me better appreciate the role of faith in assurance, and topics of faith, works, assurance, and struggles with uncertainty. His paper has deepened my respect for Calvin and has nourished my soul.

If you have not studied the relationship between faith and assurance, you need to, and Nathan’s historical survey is a great place to begin.

Why should you care (page 3):

…It makes a great difference for the Christian life whether we are pursuing sanctification in order to get and retain assurance, or because we have it already. It makes a great deal of difference whether assurance is based on Scripture promises alone, or ultimately on self-examination. It makes a great deal of difference for evangelism whether we offer damned sinners the assurance of eternal life, or the possibility of acquiring assurance of eternal life.

His purpose in writing (page 1):

The purpose of this essay is to show that there are profound differences between the doctrine of faith and assurance in the Reformation era and the doctrines of faith and assurance which held sway in later Puritan thinking. While I will make some reference to Luther, Lutheranism, and various Reformed confessions and catechisms, I mainly compare John Calvin, John Owen, the Marrow Brethren, and Jonathan Edwards. Calvin makes assurance of the essence of faith; the early Owen does also, but the later Owen argues against the early Reformed view; the Marrow Brethren recover and defend Calvin’s theology from the sorts of arguments that the later Owen brings against it; Edwards seems completely unaware of the early Reformed view. When Edwards discusses the view that assurance is of the essence of faith, he not only argues against it in similar fashion to the later Owen, but he also argues that it is the doctrine of hypocritical pretenders to Christian faith. I do not pretend to give a defense of which view is biblical and therefore correct; this essay will include no exegesis. However, I will argue that Owen’s arguments against the early Reformed doctrine fail. The counterarguments of the Marrow Brethren are successful. Furthermore, my section on Calvin is meant to show that his doctrine of assurance ramifies his entire view of the Christian life. To reject it, as the Puritans did, entails a rejection of vast swaths of Calvin’s work.

His bio:

Nathan Sasser holds an M.Div from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Philosophy at the University of South Carolina. He is married to the brilliant and beautiful Patricia Sasser; both are long-time members of churches in Sovereign Grace Ministries.

You can download and read the entire paper as a single PDF document.