Tag Archives: Glory Of God

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"Well, dear friends, you know that some men can do to the glory of God what to other men would be sin. And notwithstanding what brother Pentecost has said, I intend to smoke a good cigar to the glory of God before I go to bed to-night.

"If anybody can show me in the Bible the command, 'Thou shalt not smoke,' I am ready to keep it; but I haven't found it yet. I find ten commandments, and it's as much as I can do to keep them; and I've no desire to make them into eleven or twelve.

"The fact is, I have been speaking to you about real sins, not about listening to mere quibbles and scruples. At the same time, I know that what a man believes to be sin becomes a sin to him, and he must give it up. 'Whatsoever is not of faith is sin' [Rom. 14:23], and that is the real point of what my brother Pentecost has been saying.

"Why, a man may think it a sin to have his boots blacked. Well, then, let him give it up, and have them whitewashed. I wish to say that I'm not ashamed of anything whatever that I do, and I don't feel that smoking makes me ashamed, and therefore I mean to smoke to the glory of God."

HT:  Gospel-Driven Church

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I AM A CHRISTIAN:

I affirm the Trinity - One God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I affirm that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

I affirm that Christ, born of a woman, eternally existant, creator of all things, was crucified, buried and risen from the dead.

I affirm that by grace we are saved, through faith.

By grace, we have faith in the saving power Christ.I am "Reformed".

I am "Calvinistic" in sotierology, but not in ecclesiology.

Reformed theology differs from both Roman Catholic theology and Arminian theology (Wesleyan/Nazarene/most of what most Americans think is "mainstream")

There are two fundamental "nutshells" that are recognized as "Reformed". The first are the "Five Solas" and the second is "TULIP". There is a lot more to "Reformed theology" than these two pieces, but these are the very basics.

The Five Solas

(along with links to other posts I have written):

SOLA SCRIPTURA

SOLA GRATIA

SOLA FIDE

SOLA CHRISTUS

SOLI DEO GLORIA

"TULIP":

Total depravity of man

Unconditional election

Limited Atonement

Irresistable grace

Perseverence of the saints

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The "T" matters because all have sinned and there are none that seek the face of the Lord.

If there are none that seek the face of the Lord, how do we find Him? The answer is a hard one - for me it was the most difficult of "TULIP".

If we, in our sin, do not have the ability to seek after God, then it must be God that seeks after us.

That is the "U" - unconditional election. Predestination.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved (Eph 1:3-6 ESV)

Logic tells us that if we are steeping in the "T", we cannot seek God.  We are chosen in Christ.

Chosen.

Our election is not based on the good that we have done - it is unconditional upon our behavior.

It is the very idea of our salvation NOT being rooted in ourselves that points to the glory of God.  Our salvation is not of ourselves, it is by grace; faith is the vehicle that God has chosen.

It is not of works.  We are chosen.