The Grace of Repentance (Repackaged Edition) E-Book

Sinclair B. Ferguson

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 60

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Out of the Protestant Reformation came several important doctrines, including a renewed understanding of repentance. Instead of viewing repentance as a one-time confession, the reformers began to teach what the Bible teaches—that it is both radical and perpetual.  In this redesigned, concise volume Sinclair Ferguson examines how the Bible defines repentance and how the doctrine has fared in today's evangelical churches. He finds many sorely lacking in proper theological understanding: "Once again we need to proclaim the full-orbed doctrine of repentance within an evangelical world that has begun to manifest symptoms of the same medieval sickness." This reversion to a kind of medieval theology includes the viewing of repentance as an isolated, emotional event.  Ferguson combats this trend by pointing us toward repentance in the Bible. As we embrace continual confession and turning from sin, we will find our spiritual walk transformed and our fellowship with Christ renewed. This is an important book for every Christian who wants the grace of repentance to regain rightful prominence in evangelical churches. 

Leseprobe

THE GRACE OF REPENTANCE

The Grace of Repentance

Copyright © 2010 by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Published by Crossway Books

                     1300 Crescent Street                      Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship, and life.

Cover design: Studio Gearbox

Cover photo: iStock

First printing 2000

Reprinted with new cover 2011

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2010 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission.

All rights reserved worldwide.

ISBN 13: 978-1-4335-1983-3 ISBN 10: 1-4335-1983-6 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-1986-4 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-1985-7 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-1984-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publlcation Data

Ferguson, Sinclair B.

The grace of repentance / Sinclair B. Ferguson.

        p.     cm. — (Today’s issues)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-58134-165-2 (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Repentance—Biblical teaching. I. Title. II. Today’s issues

(Wheaton, Ill.) BS680.R36 F47            2000

234'.5—dc21                                                                 99-045156

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

CONTENTS

Preface71 The Monk’s Tale 112 Biblical Repentance 153 David: A Case Study 284 A Medieval Threat 385 The Way Back 536 What Shall We Do? 57For Further Reading 63

PREFACE

These are not good days for the evangelical church, and anyone who steps back from what is going on for a moment to try to evaluate our life and times will understand that.

In the last few years a number of important books have been published all trying to understand what is happening, and they are saying much the same thing even though the authors come from fairly different backgrounds and are doing different work. One is by David F. Wells, a theology professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. It is called No Place for Truth. A second is by Michael Scott Horton, vice president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. His book is called Power Religion. The third is by the well-known pastor of Grace Community Church in California, John F. MacArthur. It is called Ashamed of the Gospel. Each of these authors is writing about the evangelical church, not the liberal church, and a person can get an idea of what each is saying from the titles alone.

Yet the subtitles are even more revealing. The subtitle of Wells’s book reads Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? The subtitle of Horton’s book is The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church. The subtitle of John MacArthur’s work proclaims, When the Church Becomes Like the World.

When you put these together, you realize that these careful observers of the current church scene perceive that today evangelicalism is seriously off base because it has abandoned its evangelical truth-heritage. The thesis of David Wells’s book is that the evangelical church is either dead or dying as a significant religious force because it has forgotten what it stands for. Instead of trying to do God’s work in God’s way, it is trying to build a prosperous earthly kingdom with secular tools. Thus, in spite of our apparent success we have been “living in a fool’s paradise,” Wells declared in an address to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1995.

John H. Armstrong, a founding member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, has edited a volume titled The Coming Evangelical Crisis. When he was asked not long afterwards whether he thought the crisis was still coming or is actually here, he admitted that in his judgment the crisis is already upon us.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is addressing this problem through seminars and conferences, radio programs, modern REFORMATION magazine, Reformation Societies, and scholarly writings. The series of booklets on today’s issues is a further effort along these same lines. If you are troubled by the state of today’s church and are helped by these booklets, we invite you to contact the Alliance at 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103. You can also phone us at 215-546-3696 or visit the Alliance at our website: www.AllianceNet.org. We would like to work with you under God “for a modern Reformation.”

James Montgomery Boice

Alliance of Confessing Evangelical

THE MONK’S TALE

It was the year 1517. Europe was a Roman Catholic continent, and Leo X was Pope, a man “as elegant and as indolent as a Persian cat,” as Roland Bainton described him (Here I Stand [Nashville: Abingdon, 1978], p. 56). Leo needed money to complete a great building project already underway, a new St. Peter’s being built to replace its condemned predecessor. Leo needed lots of money! Huge, superabundant resources of money!

The intrigue that unfolded reads like a modern novel. Albert of Brandenburg wanted the archbishopric of Mainz and the primacy of all Germany that would come with it. So he borrowed money from the great German banking house of Fugger, paid the Pope, and in exchange was granted not only the archbishopric but the privilege of granting indulgences in his territory for eight years. Indulgences could release souls from the pains of purgatory for extended periods of time, perhaps forever. The deal was complex, however. Albert needed to clear his loan. But in addition, any further “profits” would be split 50/50 between St. Peter’s and Fugger’s Bank.

The new primate needed an ecclesiastical salesman to raise the money, and such a man was available in the great indulgence vendor Johannes Tetzel. Tetzel had mastered the art of communicating to sons and daughters the pleas of their dead parents to deliver them from the flames in which they languished. When he was promoted for his Doctor’s degree Tetzel had defended the thesis:

As soon as the coin in the coffer springsThe soul from purgatory springs.

That had been the teaching of Pope Sixtus IV, it was Tetzel’s gospel, and by and large that was then the condition of Christianity.