Category: John Stott

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Which Came First the Church or the N.T.?

Answer: the Holy Spirit.

If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.

1 Tim. 3:15 (ESV)

The dependence of the church on the Word is not a doctrine readily acceptable to all. In former days of Roman Catholic polemic, for example, its champions would insist that ‘the church wrote the Bible’ and therefore has authority over it. Still today one sometimes hears this rather simplistic argument. Now it is true, of course, that both Testaments were written within the context of the believing community, and that the substance of the New Testament in God’s providence … was to some extent determined by the needs of the local Christian congregations.In consequence, the Bible can neither be detached from the milieu in which it originated, nor be understood in isolation from it.

Nevertheless, as Protestants have always emphasized, it is misleading to the point of inaccuracy to say that ‘the church wrote the Bible’; the truth is almost the opposite, namely that’God’s Word created the church’. For the people of God may be said to have come into existence when his Word came to Abraham, calling him and making a covenant with him. Similarly, it was through the apostolic preaching of God’s Word in the power of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost that the people of God became the Spirit-filled body of Christ.

John Stott, Authentic Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 303.

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The Cross of Christ: Past and Present

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Evangelical Essentials (Part Two)

The Cross is the great act of Jesus in dying for our sins, being buried in the tomb and rising from the dead, baptizing with the Holy Spirit, and ascending to the Father. All grace flows from the Cross as its source and all grace leads back to the Cross as its crown and triumph. The Cross of Christ is our victory, our repentance, our hope, and our call. The Cross was not a defeat, but the astonishing victory of God over the world, the flesh, sin, death, and the devil.

We are not to regard the Cross as defeat and the resurrection as victory. rather, the Cross was the victory won, and the resurrection the victory endorsed, proclaimed, and demonstrated.

[John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 235.]

A number of metaphors are used in scripture to describe the finished work of Christ on the Cross: victory over the oppression and enslavement of sin (1 Cor. 15:57), justification that satisfies the penalty of sin (Rom. 4:25), adoption which grants us the legal status of a son of God and an heir of the kingdom (Rom. 8:17, 23), reconciliation which restores our broken relationship with God (2 Cor. 5:19), forgiveness of our offenses as a result of his pain and suffering on Calvary, redemption and ransom paid to free us from the captivity of sin (1 Cor. 6:19), healing from brokenness created by our sin (Isa. 53:5), representative bringing us all the privileges of the new covenant (Rom. 5:17), participation in all the benefits of his death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 6:1-4), and substitution for he took upon himself our punishment, guilt, and shame (Rom. 4:25). “How marvelous the power of the cross; how great beyond all telling the glory of the passion: here is the judgment-seat of the Lord, the condemnation of the world, the supremacy of Christ crucified (Leo the Great).”

[St. Leo the Great, Sermon LIX (On the Passion, VIII. on Wednesday in Holy Week.)]

The work of the Cross is not just about our immediate justification, but also the triumph of the Cross is our calling, our sanctification, and our glorification (1 Cor. 1:30, Rom. 8:29-30). As Jerry Bridges notes:

So I learned that Christians need to hear the gospel all of their lives because it is the gospel that continues to remind us that our day-to-day acceptance with the Father is not based on what we do for God but upon what Christ did for us in his sinless life and sin-bearing death. I began to see that we stand before God today as righteous as we ever will be, even in heaven, because he has clothed us with the righteousness of his Son. Therefore, I don’t have to perform to be accepted by God. Now I am free to obey him and serve him because I am already accepted in Christ (see Rom. 8:1). My driving motivation now is not guilt but gratitude.

[Jerry Bridges, “Gospel-Driven Sanctification” Modern Reformation Magazine (May/June, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2003), 13-16.]

Everything that the Son of God did and taught for the reconciliation of the world, we know not only as an historical account of things now past, but we also experience them in the power of the works that are present.

[Leo the Great, Sermon LXIII:VI: 3 (On the Passion, XII. preached on Wednesday of Holy Week)]

For the Evangelical, the Cross is not just an event in the historical past or an event in their personal past, but the Cross is a daily comfort that brings grace in failure, freedom from performance pressure, intimacy with God, and power for serving their Lord.

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Noise vs. Silence

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The Still Small Voice

Be still, and know that I am God.

Ps 46:10 (ESV)

Why does silence and quiet make us so afraid? Why do we drown out the stillness with all our electronic gadgets? Why do we feel so awkward during a still moment during a Sunday morning service of worship? Could it be that we are afraid that God might actually speak? Are we nervous about what he might say to us? What issues he might correct in our hearts? What commands he might give? Are we concerned that he might embarrass us with an outpouring of his love?

Silence has long been a characteristic of the Church’s worship. Leaving room in a service of worship for God to speak personally and corporately should be the goal of every worship leader. The pregnant pause in a worship service could be the very moment the Holy Spirit comes in power.

Some of our services are far too formal, respectable and dull. At the same time, in some modern meetings the almost total loss of the dimension of reverence disturbs me. It seems to be assumed by some that the chief evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit is noise. Have we forgotten that a dove is as much an emblem of the Holy Spirit as are wind and fire? When he visits his people in power, he sometimes brings quietness, silence, reverence and awe. His still small voice is heard. Men bow down in wonder before the majesty of the living God and worship. ‘The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him’ (Hab. 2:20).

John Stott, Balanced Christianity (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975), 39.

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Isn’t the Christian Life Suppose to Be Easy?

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No Pain, No Gain

And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

(Rom. 8:16-17 NLT)

Why should we expect our Christian life and service to be easy? The Bible never gives us any such expectation. Rather the reverse: the Bible says again and again, no cross, no crown; no rules, no wreath; no pains, no gains. It is this principle which took Christ through lowly birth and suffering death, to his resurrection and his reign in heaven. It is this principle that brought Paul his chains, and his prison cell, in order that the elect might obtain salvation in Jesus Christ. It is this principle which makes the soldier willing to endure hardship, the athlete discipline, the farmer toil. Do not expect Christian service to be easy.

John Stott, “God’s Man: Studies in 2 Timothy” in The Keswick Week 1969, ed. H. F. Stevenson (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1969), 83.

HT: Langham Partnership International

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Childlike Dependence

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Humility Is Dependence

Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matt 18:4 RSV).

Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. In his public teaching ministry, Jesus commended humility as the pre-eminent characteristic of the citizens of God’s kingdom, and went on to describe it as the humility of a child …

Many people are puzzled by this teaching, since children are seldom humble in either character or conduct. Jesus must therefore have been alluding to their humility of status, not behavior. Children are rightly called ‘dependants’. They depend on their parents for everything. For what they know they depend on what they have been taught, and for what they have they depend on what they have been given. These two areas are, in fact, the very ones Jesus specifies when he develops the model of a child’s humility.

John Stott, “Pride, Humility and God” in Alive to God, ed. J. I. Packer and L. Wilkinson (Downers Grove: IVP, 1992), 118.

HT: Langham Partnership International

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Converted by Grace

Repentance from Sin and Faith in God

Conversion is a turning way from sin in heart-felt repentance and responding in faith by trusting Christ alone for salvation. My change of heart produces belief in truths of Christianity, a genuine belonging to the community of God, and a commitment to righteous behavior. My conversion is the result of God’s gracious grace. This grace is God’s undeserved, loving commitment to rescue me from his wrath and judgment. In Christ, he delivers me from sin and transports me into his loving kingdom of forgiveness.

If we ask what caused Saul’s conversion, only one answer is possible. What stands out from the narrative is the sovereign grace of God through Jesus Christ.  Saul did not ‘decide for Christ’, as we might say.  On the contrary, he was persecuting Christ.  It was rather Christ who decided for him and intervened in his life.  The evidence for this is indisputable … But sovereign grace is gradual grace and gentle grace.  Gradually, and without violence, Jesus pricked Saul’s mind and conscience with his goads.  Then he revealed himself to him by the light and the voice, not in order to overwhelm him, but in such a way as to enable him to make a free response.

Divine grace does not trample on human personality.  Rather the reverse, for it enables human beings to be truly human.  It is sin which imprisons; it is grace which liberates.  The grace of God so frees us from the bondage of our pride, prejudice and self-centeredness, as to enable us to repent and believe.  One can but magnify the grace of God that he should have mercy on such a rabid bigot as Saul of Tarsus, and indeed on such proud, rebellious and wayward creatures as ourselves.

[John Stott, The Message of Acts, The Bible Speaks Today series (Leicester, England: InterVarsity, 1990), 168, 173.]