While In Ireland Amy and I visited the Drogheda Catholic Church - Here is the carving on the altar of The Last Supper (with Mary Magdelene next to Jesus?!)
Understanding and Owning Christian Theology
Week 11 (Oct 16): The Lord’s Supper – Why It Matters
The Sunday School Class was recorded and can be heard here: The Lord’s Supper – Why It Matters
Baptism = Covenant initiation/washing/union with Christ, once for all; Communion = Covenant continuance; ongoing participation with Christ and His body; weekly and for all the baptized.
Tags: Bible Classes, Church, Communion, James Jordan, Paedo-Communion, Peter Leithart, Reformation Covenant Church, Sunday School, The Lord's Supper
Understanding and Owning Christian Theology
Week 10 (Oct 9): Christian Baptism – Why It Matters
The Sunday School Class was recorded and can be heard here: Christian Baptism – Why It Matters
What is Baptism? Why do we baptize?
Tags: Baptism, Bible Classes, Covenant, Infant Baptism, Paedo-baptism, Paedofaith, RCC, Reformation Covenant Church, Sunday School, The Westminster Confession of Faith
Understanding and Owning Christian Theology
Week 8 (Sept 25): The Sovereignty of God & Responsibility of Man – Why It Matters
The Sunday School Class was recorded and can be heard here: The Sovereignty of God & Responsibility of Man
For most Christians today – the very idea that God is sovereign in anything (salvation, or in the world generally) is not something that would get a “Like” for – more probably a “Dislike.” Do you agree? Why do you think that is? I bring up the question of “liking” the sovereignty of God because I’ve had many people tell me that they don’t – and they don’t want to believe in that kind of God. It is quite understandable that people have struggled with this for 1000’s of years – and it is good for us to feel the weight of it.
Let take a few minutes to reason together from the scriptures.
Tags: Bible Classes, Free Will, Reformation Covenant Church, Salvation, Sovereignty of God, Sunday School
Understanding and Owning Christian Theology
Week 7 (Sept 18): Union with Jesus Christ – Why It Matters
The Sunday School Class was recorded and can be heard here:Union with Jesus Christ – Why It Matters
Today I want to discuss “Union with Christ.”
Tags: Bible Classes, Image of God in man, Reformation Covenant Church, Salvation, Sin, Sunday School, The Fall of Man, Union With Christ
Understanding and Owning Christian Theology
Week 5 (Sept 4): The Fall of Man – Why it matters
The Sunday School Class was recorded and can be heard here: The Fall of Man – Why it matters
RCC Confessional Statement:
5. We believe that in Adam’s fall, we sinned all. We believe that all men are conceived in sin and in rebellion against God, suppressing His truth in unrighteousness. We believe that man is unable and unwilling to repent of his sin and turn to God, apart from the elective work of the Holy Ghost.
Anthropology – The Study of Man. We said last week that man was created in the image of God. What does that mean?
What do you think we mean when we talk about the Fall of Man? Genesis 3
• What was the original sin? Pride – to be as God
• Did the Devil make him/her do it? (Eve was deceived, not Adam) – Not a created flaw. Adam volunteered himself and posterity for service to Satan.
• What is the curse(s)?
o Death: To victory, work to live and rule, submit to fill.
o Was the earth cursed? Adam rebelled against God and nature is in rebellion (by God’s command) against man
o God uses the curses to restrain sin in mankind so that man can continue his work of dominion.
• What was God’s remedy? Salvation (next week) – not religion, per se. Relationship, covenant – union.
• Is Got the author of sin? Job 34:10; Dt. 32:4; James 1:13
The extent of the fall – all of man’s being? Just the will, not the mind? Total Depravity
What is sin? Rebellion – Ethical, broken relationship. Just ignorance? Sin implies a standard – above humanity.
Inherited and actual sin. Rom. 5:12-19; 1Cor. 15:21-22, 49; Rom. 3:23; 6:23
Covenantal view of sin: All men were represented in man; all men willfully sin.
In what sense is sin part of our nature?
If we are by nature sinners, how can we be held accountable?
Homosexuality – made that way?
Is sin a result of our environment? Yes and no.
Is temptation sin?
Rom. 1:18-25 All men know God, but in rebellion suppress the truth of God and worship/submit to creation – Satan.
Man is still in the image of God – and responsible to God. He is a twisted rebel.
Man’s calling – now impossible or just harder?
RCC Confessional Statement:
7. We believe that man was originally given a cultural mandate, and commanded to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. With the fall of man, the mandate was not removed, but made more difficult. So that by regeneration man is able to walk in obedience to this recalling, as empowered by the Holy Ghost.
Sin and wickedness and evil are not a substance – its not something that have in your as something alien. Rather – sin is rebellion
Can sinful people to good? Yes. God uses sinful men to do good in the world – despite men’s sinful intentions.
Can saved people sin? Are all men’s works sinful?
The Westminster Confession of Faith: Chapter VI
Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and the Punishment thereof
I. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and temptations of Satan, sinned, in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory.
II. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion, with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.
III. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.
IV. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.
V. This corruption of nature, during this life, does remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be, through Christ, pardoned, and mortified; yet both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly and properly sin.
VI. Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, does in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal.
Tags: Bible Classes, Image of God in man, Reformation Covenant Church, Sin, Sunday School, The Fall of Man
Understanding and Owning Christian Theology
Week 4 (Aug 28): Creation – Why It Matters
The Sunday School Class was recorded and can be heard here: Creation – Why It Matters
Genesis: The Book of Beginnings – Most of the foundational beliefs are found in Genesis
RCC Confessional Statement: Sovereignty of God
2. We believe that God has declared Himself to be and is the absolute Sovereign over all His creation. We believe that He has decreed whatsoever comes to pass, and that He, in His providence, upholds and sustains all things, and effects His decree.
Ps. 100: God is our Lord (ruler) and takes care of us (we are His & He is ours):
“Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” (Psalm 100:1–3, NKJV)
Christ is the preeminent creator of all things – and controls all things
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” (Colossians 1:15–17, NKJV)
The Christian worldview begins and end with the doctrine of creation. It defines not only where we have come from, but also how creation will progress through history, and the goal of history: All by His will and for Him.
Creation ex nihilo – Out of nothing
Creation and Science: Genesis does not give us science – but it can in no way contradict science.
The Bible and Creation – Why does it matter? Is God good for His word? Adam? Salvation?
RCC Confessional Statement: Creator – Creature distinction
6. We affirm the Creator-creature distinction. We believe that man is absolutely different in essence from God, that he is a creature, though the highest of all God’s creatures, being created in the image of God.
Everything was created by God and depends upon Him entirely. He is wholly different and above (transcendent) all of creation, but He near (eminent) all of creation (not just spatially, but most importantly relationally). There is no chain of being that connects us directly to Him through nature. He is not so transcendent that He is remote (Deism). Nor is He so close to all of creation that He can be associated in His nature with creation (Pantheism). All of these are important in the Christian worldview.
Made in the image of God – Greatest of Creation.
Created man in the image of God – male (king) and female (queen). What do you think it means to be created in the image and likeness of God? It means that Adam and Eve were created to be like God – an image or copy. Not an exact copy, because God is greater than (transcends) all of His creation, including man. But throughout biblical revelation, man is a picture of who God is. What does Genesis 1 tell us about God that men also are like?
As we have seen, God exists in three equal persons. Man was made male and female, equal but different.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism
Q. 10. How did God create man?
A. God created man male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.
God speaks – thus, he is able to think and communicate His thoughts. We too are able to communicate, but we are to think and communicate in obedience to His Word.
God is relational (“Let US make man in OUR image…”)
When God said the creation is “good,” we learn that God has the ability to morally discern between good and bad. We too have the ability to discern between good and evil, and must think and act according to His Word.
God is creative – He created everything out of nothing. We too have a creative ability, but man must take the stuff of creation and creatively use them.
God works. Man too was created to work.
God is the ruler of His creation. God made man to rule over the creation for Him. Adam is to be the king over the animals and birds, and Eve was made His queen to help him fulfill the commandment to fill, subdue and have dominion over the earth. Part of this includes having children who are faithful to God. The word to “subdue” is used in the Old Testament to describe victory in war, subduing your enemies. It is also means subduing someone to slavery (Jer. 34:11, 16; 2 Chron. 28:10). Adam was to work hard to subdue the creation to the will of God and to develop its various possibilities to their fullest. He was to make creation his slave, finding new ways to use what God had made. Guard and Keep = serve as priest.
Male& Female – Equal/Different & Marriage
RCC Confessional Statement: Dominion
7. We believe that man was originally given a cultural mandate, and commanded to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. With the fall of man, the mandate was not removed, but made more difficult. So that by regeneration man is able to walk in obedience to this recalling, as empowered by the Holy Ghost.
Tags: Bible Classes, Creation, Creator-creature distinction, Image of God in man, RCC, Reformation Covenant Church, Sunday School
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