The Tulip Driven Life

GREENVILLE PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SAVED BY CHRIST? Thomas Booher AT 41 Christian Education November 24, 2015                 Hello, I’m Thomas Booher. I’m guessing if you are reading this that you already understand that I want to tell you about my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and how you can be saved by Him, too. You may or may not have heard of Jesus before, but if you live in the United States, especially within the Bible belt, my guess is that you likely have. I believe that Jesus is God, but also became man some 2,000 years ago. In fact, He’s fully God and fully man, and He had to be both in order to die on a cross in such a manner that man’s sins could be paid for and Christ’s Father, who is the God of all things, would no longer be angry with sinners, like you and me, for their sins.     ...

By: Thomas F. Booher As a seminary student hoping to one day (if the Lord wills) pastor a church, I often get asked why I desire to be a minister. For a while I was thinking that my answer might be rather peculiar. In fact, I was afraid some would even consider it prideful or arrogant (and I believe some have). But as I was reading through the book of Matthew the other day, something Jesus said stood out to me. It’s exactly the reason I desire to pastor a church. I’ve been saying, or at least intending to communicate the same thing, but Jesus puts it so simply and beautifully that I can’t think of any better way to put it myself.  For a brief bit of context, I want to quote all of Matthew 9:35-38.  “Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they...

By: Thomas F. Booher Dear Evangelicalism,  I am not sure if you are aware, but people are having a harder and harder time defining you. I suppose I am an evangelical, insofar as I believe that we need to proclaim the gospel to everyone. The first sentence in Wikipedia defines you (us?) as "a world-wide Protestant movement maintaining that the essence of the gospel consists in the doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ's atonement." That definition is a large umbrella housing many different denominations, and gospels. Roman Catholics believe that salvation is by faith in Christ's atonement. A Mormon like Glenn Beck can call himself an evangelical with this definition. Yet Catholics and Mormons both believe that good works are needed for salvation in addition to faith in Christ. So evangelicalism, you are not defined by the true gospel. Absent is the truth that we are saved by faith alone through Christ's atoning work in life, death, and resurrecti...

By: Thomas F. Booher I was compelled to write this piece after reading this  article by none other than Russell Brand. The reason I was compelled is this: he bemoans the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman and blames drug laws for making drug addicts seem immoral  (drug addicts being victims of a disease that could "attack" anyone). Indeed, the subheading of his post claims that Hoffman is another victim of extremely stupid drug laws.  Why are drug laws stupid? To quote Brand, "If drugs are illegal people who use drugs are criminals. We have set our moral compass on this erroneous premise, and we have strayed so far off course that the landscape we now inhabit provides us with no solutions and greatly increases the problem."  Then Brand makes the wild assertion that those who make the drug laws are "deliberately creating the worst imaginable circumstances to maximise the harm caused by substance misuse."  The war on drugs is politically mot...

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, ...

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 Part 1:  read here Part 2:  read here Part 3:  read here Ephesians 1:18 ....that you may know what is the hope of his calling.... Paul’s first encounter with city of Ephesus is recorded in Acts 18. The events that occurred early in the chapter have a direct bearing on that first visit and more prominently with the letter he later wrote to the Ephesians some time between A.D. 61-63 while a prisoner at Rome under house arrest (Acts 28:16-31:Eph 3:1; 4:1; 6:20). Paul had met a Jew named Aquila in Corinth . Both were tentmakers so Paul stayed with him and his wife (Priscilla) and worked. As was Paul’s custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and using the scriptures, he explained in a cogent, clear, and coherent manner the person and work of Christ. It was effective because he persuaded both Jews and Greeks (Acts 18:1-5). However, there was opposition, in particular from Jews who ‘blasphemed.’ The nature o...