Christ and Justice

Quote from Wittenberg Reformed Theological Seminary

It is an injustice to Calvary that the true pain of the Cross is often overlooked by a more romantic, but less powerful theme. It is often thought and even preached that the Father looked down from heaven and witnessed the suffering that was heaped upon His Son by the hands of men, and that He counted such affliction as payment for our sins. This is heresy of the worst kind. Christ satisfied divine justice not merely by enduring the affliction of men, but by enduring and dying under the wrath of God. It takes more than crosses, nails, crowns of thorns, and lances, to pay for sin. The believer is saved, not merely because of what men did to Christ on the Cross, but because of what God did to Him - He crushed Him under the full force of His wrath against us. Rarely is this truth made clear enough in the abundance of all our Gospel

preaching! - Paul D. Washer

A good source

I found another source for very good articles on Reformed Theology. The quote below is from one of Rev. Samson's posts:

Romans 12:2 teaches us that our mandate as Christians is not to allow the world to squeeze us into its mould, but to be different - transformed, even metamorphosized, by renewing our minds to the will of God. To avoid the world's mould, we must first recognize what it is, and see the pitfalls ahead of us. If we do not, we might find ourselves caught up in the thinking of the culture around us without even realizing it. We must understand what the world thinks, how it thinks and how it wants us to think. Then we need to take deliberate steps to walk not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; but delight in the law of the LORD, meditating on it day and night.

 I often run into Christians who believe there is no need to really understand how the world around us thinks. I suppose if we all believed that there wouldn't be any reason to claim to be Christian.

The shallowness of the thinking of so many Christians is astonishing. Rev. Samson is exactly right in saying we need to take deliberate steps to avoid thinking as the secular-world around us thinks. We have to spend time "renewing our minds" as God through the Apostle Paul instructed us. If we don't we won't know when our thinking is the world's and not "the mind of Christ's"

10 Reasons

Doug Wilson is delighted Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. He has posted 10 reasons for his elation.

Here is reason number 8:

Because there is no apparent reason for the prize, this must mean that the committee is inviting all of us to assign our own meanings to it -- and so I would submit that Obama got it for continuing the Bush policies of rendition, roving wiretaps, indefinite detention of accused terrorists, urging continuation of the Patriot Act, and so forth.

You can read the other 9 reasons here.

Spurgeon said:

Freedom cannot belong to will any more than ponderability can be­long to electricity. They are altogether different things. Free agency we may believe in, but free-will is simply ridiculous. The will is well known by all to be directed by the understanding, to be moved by motives, to be guided by other parts of the soul, and to be a secondary thing. Philosophy and religion both discard at once the very thought of free-will; and I will go as far as Martin Luther, in that strong assertion of his, where he says, “If any man doth ascribe aught of salvation, even the very least, to the free-will of man, he knoweth nothing of grace, and he hath not learnt Jesus Christ aright.” 

Couldn't have said it better myself. 

The Christian in the world

Jaques Ellul wrote:

"The Bible tells us that the Christian is in the world, and that there he must remain. The Christian has not been created in order to separate himself from, or live aloof from the world. ...if the Christian is necessarily in the world, he is not of it. This means that his thought, his life, and his heart are not controlled by the world, and do not depend upon the world, for they belong to another Master. Thus, since he belongs to another Master, the Christian has been sent into this world by this Master, and his communion with his Master remains unbroken, in spite of the 'world' in which he has to live.
"...the Christian finds that he is not confronted by the material forces of the world but by its spiritual reality. Because he is in communion with Jesus Christ he has to fight not against flesh and blood but against 'the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness.' At the same time this communion assures him that he does not belong to the world, that he is free from the fatality of the world which is moving towards death, and, as a result of this liberation by grace, he can fight against the spiritual realities of the world."

More can be found here.