The Tulip Driven Life

Calvinists can be Antinomian. In my opinion, the YRR (Young Restless Reformed) crowd can be especially prone to this. Many have entered the reformed faith coming out of a "commit your life to Christ in order to be saved" background, where you are always questioning whether your commitment to Christ is strong enough to actually be saved. What I do not want to do is cast doubt in those who have weak assurance of their faith. What I do want to do is to steer them in the direction of a stronger, more robust assurance without them having to think like a cheap gracer. For starters, let's remember that salvation is in one sense a past event, in another an ongoing event, and in another a future event. In Christ, we are a new creation. United by faith to Him, God sees us as holy and righteous with the robes of Jesus. Jesus Himself tells us that nothing can take us from His or His Father's hands. If one is truly united to Christ by faith, and no one can change that, it follo...

By: Thomas Clayton Booher 1 Peter 3:9 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called. In part 7 (1 Peter 2:9) of this series, some introductory remarks were made as to who the recipients of Peter’s letter were. Suffice it to say that they were probably as much Gentile as they were Jew. At the end of the preceding chapter (3:13ff), Peter begins to write about submission to authority. This included the requirement to subject one’s self to institutions (governmental agencies and leaders) that have no root in a biblical world-view even to the point of openly honoring the pagan emperor. This would likely have been easier for Gentile Christians than for Jewish. The Gentile would have grown up living self-consciously as a citizen of the Roman Empire . The Emperor in Rome would have been his emperor, much like one born and raised in the United States honors the President as his President. A Jew may have recogniz...