God talk

  The Relationship of Faith, Trust, Grace and the Christian Life in the World Today;  Part 1 Faith has always been a universal value We have travelled a long way in Herman Bavincks Reformed Ethics.   We are now in the last part of Chapter 7.     The Christian man lives by Faith in Christ, his Lord; Complete trust in the Word of God (in the person of Jesus Christ); found in the word of God (A historical revelation of the person and work of Christ found in Holy Scripture).     So, todays lesson will encompass the following found at the end of chapter 7: “God’s Word has to be meditated upon before it becomes our thought, and therefore also Christ and his merits, accepted by faith, must be processed in struggle and pain and assimilated before they become ours. Thus, the new man, who does not live by bread but by the Word of Christ, grows. And this is a new, complete person, not just in part, because in regeneration the entire man with all his faculties...

Some birds in my garden feeding.   Bavinck earlier looked at preparations to the new Birth (born again).     Last time we looked at man’s problem that he is ‘spiritually dead’.   Today though we are focusing on the ‘struggle to rebirth’.   This is how Bavinck starts this section on page 258: ( “However, after one receives these preparations, the process can go in two directions. After all, with such a preparation there will be a struggle between the convicting Spirit in one’s conscience and the flesh. The Spirit knocks on the door of one’s heart and calls to conversion, to distance oneself from the world and its allurements. Even imperfect desires to be converted arise within the person. They would want to be converted, but the flesh and the world are opposed; they would have to surrender so much pleasure, so much sweetness, and sacrifice advantage. The flesh advises keeping the door of the heart closed. In this way, a struggle ensues, anxiety, doubt....