The Tulip Driven Life

By: Thomas F. Booher 2 Corinthians 13:5 is an exhortation for Christians to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith. It says that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you fail the test. This is not because failing the test takes Christ from you, nor does the passage mean that passing this test is how you came into union with Christ in the first place. No, the reality is that passing this test is evidence that Christ is in you, because Christ works in believers both to will and to do His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). This test is a working out of your salvation with fear and trembling (2:12). It is a check on how well you are putting to death the deeds of the flesh by the power of the Spirit. In my experience, and taking the temperature as best I can of American reformed preaching and teaching today, it seems right to say that we are no longer preaching the necessity of sanctification in order to obtain final salvation. Put another way, it seems to me we do not really teach, ...

By: Thomas Fletcher Booher The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16). Those who crucified Jesus were cut to the heart after Peter told them that Jesus was Lord and Christ, which prompted them to ask Peter what they should do, to which he replied, "repent" (Acts 2:37-38). When we were saved, it was because we heard the gospel, and understood that we were sinners, and we felt guilt and shame. We saw the sinfulness of ourselves, and we didn't want the stain of sin any longer, so we received the good news of the gospel with gladness and trusted in Christ for salvation.  My question is one of sanctification. If we are saved by first responding to the gospel with conviction of sin, with feelings of guilt and shame, only to have it all washed away by Christ, shouldn't we return to this again and again in order to grow as believers? Surely the more we feel in our hearts the sins our hands commit and our minds conceive the more we w...