pilgrim people

Whether or not prayer is a means of grace is matter that is sometimes debated in Reformed circles, often along so-called "Continental" and "British" lines. On the one hand, there is the Heidelberg Catechism (HC) with its clear statement about prayer being the "chief part of thankfulness which God requires of us" in Q.116. The HC defines prayer as part of our gratitude to God, not a means of sanctifying grace for our faith. For earlier in the Catechism, in Q.65, it specifically asks about the means of grace: "Since, then, we are made partakers of Christ and all His benefits by faith only, where does this faith come from?" A: "The Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts by the preaching of the Holy Gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments."

There is nothing about prayer in Q.65. The HC deliberately locates prayer in the "gratitude" section of the Catechism (QQ.86-129), which follows the "guilt" (QQ.3-11) and "grace" (QQ.12-85) sections. Now, this should in no way give us the impression that the HC takes prayer lightly or regards it as unimportant for the Christian.

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Can the precise language of our confessions be improved? John Owen thought so. Evidence of this can be found in the Savoy Declaration of 1658, a confession of which he and his colleague Thomas Goodwin were the principal architects. The Savoy Declaration was essentially a modified version of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), written for the Congregationalist churches and their form of ecclesiology. While several things in the Savoy Declaration may alarm Presbyterians and Continental Reformed believers, two areas stand out as sterling examples of the way good confessional language can be made better (that is, if you believe it is an improvement to add explicit language about the Covenant of Redemption and the imputed active obedience of Christ in justification).

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Ligonier posted this on their blog yesterday. It is worth watching.

Whatever happened to the article in the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in the resurrection of the body"? Listening to some evangelicals talk, one can almost get the idea that Christian eschatology is Platonist, that is, when you die, your soul escapes the prison house of the body and flies away to heaven to live in an ethreal existence happily ever after.

But the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) teaches otherwise. God does not save us from being human, he saves us from being sinners and the eternal penalty which that status brings. Redemption is not redemption from creation. In fact, our redemption will not be completely applied to us until our physical bodies are raised from the dead and gloriously transformed to enjoy the glory of the age to come.

But here's the real kicker: a transformed body was the goal for which we were created.

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In 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul says that if Christ has not been raised, then those who call themselves Christians have a faith that is vain and futile. Mataios is the word he uses, which means, “idle, empty, useless.” It is pointless to be a Christian if Christ was not really raised from the dead. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins…If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor 15.17, 19)

Oddly, that is not the way in which many people view Christianity. Many people today would disagree with Paul, such as the pragmatist, the mystic, and the pietist.

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