Just wanted to give everyone a brief introduction to Monergism.com. The breadth of material on this site is astounding, on almost every conceivable theological topic imaginable. Monergism, in its basic form, is about the Gospel; the Biblical, truthful Gospel. It’s about self-deprecation, God-exaltation; it simply describes the very Biblical truth that in our sinfulness, we cannot and will not understand the things of God, His way of salvation in Jesus Christ, or that we are even in need, apart from Him coming and removing our heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh. Monergism is all about the fact that it is God alone who regenerates us, we don’t participate in the regeneration of our hearts. To say that we in any way cooperate with God concerning our salvation is to not understand human nature from a properly interpretted Biblical point of view. It is true that God does not believe for us, we exercise our own faith and truly believe on Christ of our own volition, but that volition is dead in sin until God creates in us something that was not there. The only reason anyone is saved at all is because of God applying the work of redemption on those He’s chosen, the work of redemption bought by Jesus Christ on the cross, paid for in His blood. Monergism is an admittance to how unbelievably wicked we are, how we will never turn to Christ apart from His regeneration to give us eyes to see and ears to hear, and how infinitely loving and merciful God is to save anyone at all. This concept can be found in many parts of Scripture, but somehow seems to go overlooked by many pastors and teachers these days. It’s comfortable in our humanness to believe things about God that make us feel warm and fuzzy, but it seems that as soon as you give people a taste of what it’s like to not be sovereign, to be a true subordinate on the eternal level, that’s when people seem to throw up all of their offenses against God, that He is free and can do whatever He pleases. It is in my opinion that this concept unlike any other concept really tests where your faith is. In my experience, most people (not all though) that struggle with this are also in some way struggling in their faith to some degree or another. This is not to say that every person who disagrees with this very Biblical concept is floundering in their faith, but it is to say that the people I have personally dealt with on this issue of God’s election, application of the atonement, etc., almost every one of them were struggling with their faith at some level. So basically, the theme of the Scrpitures is one of Monergism, that God does it all, that we are “dead in our sins” prior to faith, the faith that God gives us on His own agenda. This website is one of my favorite sites, I always learn something new, and it challenges me to always be loving Christ with all my heart in my time spent with Him personally, to love Him with all my mind in pursuing the knowledge of Christ through Biblical theological understanding, and to love Him with all my strength by putting hands and feet to my actions, behavior, and in every other way, to gloryify Christ because He is my lovely Savior.
Tag: Sovereignty
This chapter is such an incredible, fearful image of the throne of God. I cannot help but be stunned to think of what this vision must have been like. How frightening! For those of us who have believed in Christ, this is the great and glorious God we serve. He should be feared, but with a reverential fear, not a fear that causes us to shrink back. And the only reason we don’t shrink back from this all-consuming fire of glory is because of the blood of Christ. In Christ, the Son of God, we are totally accepted by God the Father, by faith in Christ.
While God is loving, kind, merciful, gentle and all of those other things, He is also at the same time just, righteous, and full of wrath against sin, unrighteousness and all wickedness, because all of it is a slap in His face on an infinite level, because His worth and value are infinite. He must punish all wrong-doing.
This thing is unbelievably strong. 175+ MPH sustained winds as of right now, with possible strengthening. It has broken records all over the place, one being that it is the lowest pressure ever measured for an Atlantic storm. The pressure is currently at 882 mb, breaking the Hurricane Gilbert record of 888. Hopefully it will die down before it hits Florida, but God is sovereign, reigning from above in controlling this and every event that occurs, big and small, in all creation. He is wise and knows what He’s doing.