This essay seeks to answer three questions: What is a missionary? What is the missionary’s task? Why is holiness essential to the missionary and his task?
The Attributes of God (Pt.2) | 1689 2:1
Rather than making God an impersonal thing with whom it is impossible to have a relationship, we saw that His simplicity means that His character and affection toward us His people will never change. This is the theme of the next cluster of attributes mentioned in the Confession.
Should People Use Cuss Words?
The Bible prohibits unclean language. This includes all language that society understands be obscene or dirty. Obscenities and vulgarities refer to things that are offensively revealing, disgusting, dirty, ugly or crude.
The Attributes of God | 1689 2:1
It seems to me that there are few things of which the Christian church and, indeed, our society, in general, need more than a return to the majestic view of God taught in the Scriptures and confessed in Chapter 2 of the 1689 Baptist Confession.
What Does the Angel of the Lord Mean?
Although there are myriads of angels of the LORD, there is only one called “The Angel of the LORD”. The OT usually refers to Him when it speaks of a single “Malak” or messenger, especially under the designation “angel of the LORD” or “angel of God”. This is the messenger we want to focus our attention on in this study. As we will see, He is not a human nor an angelic messenger. Instead, He is a messenger in a category all His own!
The Perfection of Scripture | 1689 1:6
The first and most basic question answered by the Confession is the question, For what are the Scriptures sufficient? The Confession makes clear that the Scriptures are not sufficient for every conceivable purpose in human life. They are sufficient for “all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life.” The sufficiency of Scripture is vertical in nature. It has to do with our relationship to God. It tells the Christian how to glorify God, what he needs to do to be saved, what He must believe as a matter of Christian doctrine, and how he must live in order to please God. There is nothing that we need about those matters that are not in Scripture. Still, the Scriptures are not a math, biology, or Spanish textbook.
The Authority of Scripture Continued | 1689 1:4-5 & 9-10
Why does Scripture have authority with the Christian? The Confession answers that is not because of the testimony of any man or church, but because it is the Word of God. Last time we saw that this means that the Scripture is self-authenticating. It does not need the authentication of a supposedly infallible church, because it is itself the infallible Word of God. Rome’s claim to authenticate the Scripture to the Christian (and thus claim final authority over the Christian) is wrong because it usurps the authority of the Word of God over the Christian.
The Authority of Scripture | 1689 1:4-5
Why Scripture is Authoritative From one perspective there is nothing novel or surprising about the commitment of the Reformation to the authority of the Bible. Since the recognition of the canon of Scripture in the early church, all Christians had always held that the...
Did Matthew Twist Scripture? Examining Matthew’s Use of the Old Testament
Introduction Every Christmas season a few questions come to the minds of some astute readers when the advent narratives are read—maybe you have had these questions: How is it that Jesus’ flight and return from Egypt recorded in Matthew 2:15 could be portrayed as a...
The Necessity of Scripture
Introduction to Chapter 1 I suppose it may be surprising to some of you that the 1689 begins with a chapter on Scripture. After all, should not a Reformed confession in keeping with the God-centeredness of the Reformed faith begin with God? But a little thought will...
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