Essay
I Never Doubted You, Lord
David argues that once a believer has decided to follow Jesus, doubt does no good: trust is the honour a child shows a parent, and doubting salvation is different from discerning right teaching.
Salvation
Justification, sanctification, union with Christ and the grace that saves.
Essay
Look to Please Your Father
David argues that guilt cannot fit in a mind set on pleasing God, that fatherhood gives a felt shadow of how the Father loves his children and accepts their efforts, and that believers should run to him like the prodigal.
Reading notes
Notes on Deeper
Notes on Dane Ortlund's Deeper and How Does God Change Us?: growth rooted in God's love, justification outside in and sanctification inside out, defeating sin by looking to Christ, C.S. Lewis on muddy children, and identity in union with Christ.
Reading notes
Notes on The Shadow of Calvary
Notes on Hugh Martin's The Shadow of Calvary: praying for salvation, Christ as intercessor, obedience as a labour of love, dwelling at the cross and praying side by side with Christ, with David's reflections on prayer and on Christ's life given for ours.
Notes on Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics · 4
Bavinck 4: Christ and Salvation
Notes on Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 401-563: the old and new covenants, Christ's full humanity, the benefits given through Christ, salvation by grace rather than works, and grace and the human will, with David's reflection on how Jesus was tempted.
Worth knowing
Theological Terms
A glossary of theological terms: the branches of theology, the five points of Calvinism, covenant theology, the church, the end times, key Reformed concepts from sola fide to concupiscence, and the major theological and philosophical systems.
Poem
Sanctification
A poem tracing a believer's walk from leaving a life of hate, through trials and distress on the path to heaven's gate, to a fearful confession before the Lord, who answers, “Did you not see I wanted you to run?”
Open questions
Open Questions
Questions David has not found satisfying answers to: where Scripture says we will be of higher stature than Adam and Eve before the fall, whether sin is more fluid than its familiar categories, and how unequal circumstances can be fair if man must choose God.
Sayings on salvation
In the collectionChrist gave his life in place of mine yet also lives so that I may live through him. Our saviour must do both for we lack the power to do either.
Sinners should not only come to the cross but dwell there.
The Father ordains salvation
The Son accomplishes salvation
The Spirit applies salvation
From the cross he fled not, that sinners may have hope to flee too.
We grow in Christ no further than we enjoy his embrace of us.
Our identity is not connected to sin. Sin is what keeps us from our true identity in Christ.
If we first lived in heaven then came to earth. We would spend every moment trying to get our true identity in Christ back. As it stands we cling to our identity in sin and this world.
God made you so that he could Love you.
Justification is a moment in time, it works outside in (our Standing with God)
Sanctification is a gradual process, it works inside out (our Walk with God)
Inside out sanctification is fed by outside in justification.
The freedom of outside in justification will foster your inside out Sanctification.
We are not saved by a profession of faith but a procession of faith.
Repentance is turning from Self. Faith is turning to Jesus.
Repentance and Faith are the roads we use to get to healing which is Christ.
We don't need the spirit to be moral
That is we don't need the spirit to be different on the outside
We do need the spirit to be different on the inside.
It is only in union to Christ that you can grow into who God made you to be.