As we approach the 490th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, we need to remember that the heart of the matter was this question: 'How can a man be made right with a holy and just God?" This is a question that we need to be asking ourselves, our families, and those with whom we come into contact. The doctrine of justification by faith alone is as important, and misunderstood, as it was before the dawn of the Protestant Reformation. May the Lord again send Reformation to His Bride.Habakkuk 2:4 "Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.
Romans 1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith."
"The precious and momentous doctrine of justification by faith alone, when biblically preached and rightly balanced, is not a denominational or sectarian peculiarity. It is not a mere species of Christianity. It is the heart of the evangel, the kernel of the glorious gospel of the blessed triune God, and the key to the kingdom of heaven.
"Justification by faith," John Murray writes, " is the jubilee trumpet of the gospel because it proclaims the gospel to the poor and destitute whose only door of hope is to roll themselves in total helplessness upon the grace and power and righteousness of the Redeemer of the lost." In our decadent and desperate day there is a crying need to reestablish and defend, with prayer and hope, in the power of the Spirit, the scriptural proclamation of this doctrine. The relevance and urgency of this doctrine relate to the identity of the church, the essence of Christian theology, the proclamation of the gospel, as well as to the scriptural-experiential foundations of the Christian faith for every one of us. Not only is justification by faith still, in Luther's words, "the article by which the church stands or falls" (articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae), but by this doctrine each of us shall personally stand of fall before God. Justification by faith alone must be confessed and experienced by you and me; it is a matter of eternal life or eternal death."
-Dr. Joel Beeke.
5 comments:
Beeke is amazing in that he's able to sell books where he does little more than quote other people. No wonder he churns out 10 a year.
It's greatly comforting to me knowing that my salvation isn't based on my works - if it was, I wouldn't stand a chance. I'm not entirely sure I agree with Murray about the necessity of declaring justification by faith alone, though, as it seems to me to be an additional work. But I appreciate what he's getting at, anyway.
Beeke's books are great. I've benefited a lot from the handful I've read.
It is impossible to judge an entire man's writing ministry based on a one paragraph quote.
It is amazing that Mr. Eshelman can write a post that we should take seriously and someone (steveandjanna) would rather be smarmy and criticize a man who is probably at least a hundred times better a man than he is.
Ahh the Beeke worship continues, PRS has done itself proud. A mere man, quoting other mere men. What's the point in even crediting Beeke with the passage, it was all a quotation of someone else.
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