Always In Christ Alone: Baxter On Sanctification / December 26, 2018 by Shane D. Anderson

I am continuing slowly through Richard Baxter’s monumental Directory and am sharing various ideas and quotations I have found particularly encouraging. Immediately preceding this quotation, he has been challenging the person who wants to please God to rid himself of any thought of self-merit or deserved acceptance before God in anything but Jesus Christ. Conversion and the beginnings of new life are only in and by Christ, but so it the way of sanctification and ultimate victory:

Alas! without Christ,

we know not how to live an hour;

nor can have hope or peace in any thing we have or do;

nor look with comfort either upward or downward, to God, or the creature;

nor think without terrors of our sins, of God, or of the life to come.

Resolve, therefore, that as true converts,

you are wholly to live upon Jesus Christ,

and to do all that you do by his Spirit and strength;

and to expect all your acceptance with God upon his account.

Zealous For Good Works: What Are Good Works (part 1)? / October 15, 2017 by Shane D. Anderson

Before we go further in the study of good works, it is important that we define exactly what we are talking about when we are talking about good works. First, let’s be clear what we don’t mean...

Daily Edition: The OPC Republication Report (Updated) / August 19, 2016 by Shane D. Anderson

Past decades have seen an emergence of a Lutheran-Reformed hybrid theology in which the Law/Gospel distinction is expressed more as a dichotomy between works and faith (Lutheran) rather than the distinction between the Old administration of the Covenant of Grace and the New administration (Reformed). Additionally, some have begun teaching that the Mosaic Covenant is a republication of the Covenant of Works made with Adam--not simply that the same Law is present in both covenants, but that "in some sense" Israel is brought into a Covenant of Works in which it should merit the land of promise.

Calvin on Love, Righteousness, and Merit / August 9, 2016 by Shane D. Anderson

Love assuredly is the chief commandment in the Law, and since the Spirit of God trains us to love, it cannot but be a cause of righteousness in us, though that righteousness even in the saints is defective, and therefore of no value as a ground of merit.