Author: Dave Seip

I am a man saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. I live and work in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. I have been known to play the tuba from time to time. This blog is for the podcast Spurgeon Audio, where we podcast the sermons of the Prince of Preachers, Charles H. Spurgeon, to the glory of God. Along with sermons we have discussions and special guests come visit to discuss a variety of topics.
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What We Believe – Salvation Belongs to the Lord

This is an ongoing series of blog posts based on papers originally written for my church’s elder class. This week’s prompt: “Please describe the nature of our assurance of salvation. Can we lose our salvation?”

“Salvation belongs to the Lord.” 

This statement, or variations of it, is all throughout Scripture. It’s like a diamond that you can hold up and see many facets as you turn it. Salvation belongs to the Lord because to be saved means to belong to God. Salvation belongs to the Lord because it is by His work – the Father’s choosing, the Son’s death and resurrection, and the Spirit’s renewal – that we are saved. And salvation belongs to the Lord because it is entirely His work. There’s a famous quote that’s attributed to various Christians in history, including Philip Melancthon and Jonathan Edwards: “The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary.” This is a simplification of the life of a believer, but it does capture in its essence the truest nature of the life of God’s people from beginning to end: God has saved us. God is saving us. And God is going to save us. His hand holds us fast.

I originally wrote this for our class almost exactly one year ago, and in that time, it wound up with a personal context I couldn’t have possibly anticipated, one which still lingers on my heart as a wound. My friend Jarod, who I had known for years, took his own life, an act that brought a deep and abiding grief to me and many others in my community. Wrestling with this grief while also thinking through this question required a great deal of conversation with those close to me, as well as a lot of prayer. 

Now that I’ve come to this paper, one that was written in such a raw moment, reposting it with just a bit of tweaking seems inappropriate. I also want to take time to consider everything I write here in a pastoral light. While the sadness over Jarod still lingers, I have taken a lot of time to consider what it is that needs to be said. What does it mean for God to be the author of salvation in the face of sin, tragedy, terror and loss? What does it look like for someone to reach his breaking point – can he break the hold of grace? Or perhaps, do we shrug and go “well, I guess he was never saved to begin with?” Neither seem sufficient either to minister the Word rightly, nor to answer humanity’s deep need for God’s bottomless grace.

This brings me to the phrase “perseverance of the saints,” the last point of the famous “five points of Calvinism.” When we say that the saints will persevere, we say that those who are Christ’s will ultimately stand before the Lord in triumph, that no blow the enemy might strike or sin that might lead to backsliding will undo what Christ has done. And this is so because God is the one who saves. It is the very name of our savior – Jesus, Yeshua, “God saves.”

So we have this doctrine, and we have significant Scripture pointing to it. Paul says to the Philippian church in chapter 1 of his epistle, “I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Or Jesus’ own words in John chapter 6, verse 37: “Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out.” And again in verse 44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.” 

But when I got the heart-breaking news about my brother, I was forced face to face in reckoning with many questions. The first and most frustrating one remains “Why?” But along with it comes questions and doubts that linger around the work he had accomplished in his life in serving others in Christ. To see one of our own brothers, one who has served in ministry so faithfully over the years, who has been seen by our and other churches as a faithful servant take his own life is a strong blow dealt to our experience of the faithful love and work of Jesus. The very real pain that is poured out in such a time cannot be ignored, nor can we simply turn away from the enemy’s assault on the faith of brothers and sisters. 

It is one thing to say simply that God saves us. But here we had an example of someone who has demonstrated with so much of his life that he placed his faith in Jesus, but suddenly he displayed a deep and abiding despair, or at least that is what it seemed. In this life we shall never know the true depths of his heart in those final moments. So we have to turn to God’s promises. Jesus said no one will snatch His people out of His hand. But can we jump out?

Christian tradition is certainly divided on this. But if salvation is founded on the work of God, and continued by the work of God, it must certainly be completed by the work of God. Over and over my mind has returned to 2 Timothy 2:13, where Paul seems to be quoting from a hymn or creed of his day: “if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” Believers will struggle and feel weak, but His strength far exceeds any we could ever need. Believers will have crises of faith, but He never will. Believers can find the way clouded, we can fear to take the next step that’s set before us. We can sin. We can fail in myriad ways. But in those times, it is more important than ever to take the character of God into account. 

Does God cast aside His people? No, He does not. Does He found their place as “His own” on their deeds and strength and faith? No. While the means of salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, the rock upon which it all rests is Christ – His love, His work, His life. I think in a tragic way it was fitting that I should have to address this topic in such a time of heartache and sorrow. I believe that in that dark moment, my brother struggled with believing that Jesus was enough—and yet, I trust that God’s grace covered him even in that doubt, as it does for all of us when we face our darkest moments. 

In His Hands

When I wrestle with what this means for his faith, for his eternity, I have to come face to face with the Bible’s prescription over and over that salvation is God’s, from beginning to end. On one hand it feels almost terrifying. I can do nothing to save myself, not even one tiny bit? Even the parts that are worked out through my actions are rooted in the Holy Spirit’s work? The room for doubt grows by the minute. But really, this is something that should be a call to rest, to peace. I can do nothing to save myself, not even one tiny bit. Even the parts that are worked out through my actions are rooted in the Holy Spirit’s work. The words of Paul in Romans 8:31-39 are a balm to my soul: 

What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything? Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us. Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

Because of you
we are being put to death all day long;
we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And so, I pray that the Lord will prepare my heart to endure to the end, even though I am still a broken and sinful human who longs for wholeness in Christ. My brother Jarod acted in a way that made many wonder – did he really believe that Jesus was enough? I believe that for a moment, a critical, horrifying moment, he believed that He wasn’t – and now, He is with Jesus, and learning that he was wrong. May the Lord’s grace strengthen us to endure trials and temptations until the day comes that we all stand before Him.

How have you faced the dark moments of the night? How can we and other believers support you in such moments? Leave a comment below or email us – prayer requests, comments, reflections are all welcome.

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What We Believe – The Grace of God

This is an ongoing series of posts based on short papers written for our church’s elder class and edited (and in some cases, expanded) for this format. Today’s writing prompt: “What is your view of God’s grace?”

God’s grace is a subject that is on my mind daily, every hour as I struggle against sin or feel the weight of failure. The beauty of His grace in my life is has been transformative in the way I’ve grown, and yet it provides so much relief from the weight of the fact that on my own, I am utterly incapable of doing what is pleasing to God. God showers the whole world with His grace even as it revolves daily in rebellion – rain falls on saved and unsaved alike, happiness and joy persist even for the most virulent atheist. His common grace is a sign of who God is – the loving Creator and Father of all of us. Yet the grace that we seek is the grace that is available in Christ. This is the special grace that saves all who receive it, all who stand in Christ in faith. I think about this often, as I pray and work after my desire to grow into the image of Christ.

What is grace?

Grace could be described as the application of God’s love. His love is shown in all creation through grace as I mentioned, by His provision of our needs. God provides for our need for food, in abundance and variety. He “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” He gives both work and rest to humanity.

And more than that, He provides an abundance of beauty in our world, of a form that humans continue to seek to recreate through our own artistic methods. I’m reminded of what I like to call the “Holmes apologetic,” from a Sherlock Holmes story where the detective stops mid-thought to remark on the beauty of flowers, and how a flower’s “smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives these extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.” When we look at nature and consider it, from the incredibly minute detail of particles so small no eye could see them, to vast stellar nurseries discovered deep in our galaxy and beyond, the artistry of God demonstrates His love for his creation.

In theological terms, we see two concepts of grace: what is called “common grace,” which is God’s provision for our existence and for creation itself, and “special (or saving) grace,” which is His provision of salvation in Christ. Common grace is what I described above, in God’s provision for all His creation. Special grace is not given to all, but to His people – to all who believe in the name of Jesus and look to Him for life and hope. For those who do not, God’s common grace will ultimately become a condemnation – they received God’s goodness while refusing to worship Him as God.

As Paul says in Romans 1, the truth of God seen in creation is not new information to humanity. We know this, but we also “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” In our sin and our refusal to honor our Creator, we deny God’s handiwork as being special or of showing His glory. We allow cynical, nihilistic beliefs to draw us into attitudes of self-absorption, rather than humility. But humility is the key that unlocks the gate to the way of Christ, a humility brought about by the conviction of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who hear the gospel and by God’s grace respond. In Romans 3:23 Paul writes that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But Paul answers this problem with the only possible solution: the grace that is given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus. We are all tainted by sin, and there is no way we can “un-sin” by our own means – as Isaiah writes, even our attempts to do good are tainted by our evil desires before God. But the special grace of Christ truly and perfectly covers our sin, and He delights to administer that to us each day, as our great high priest before the Father. 

God’s grace transforms our hearts

Paul continues in that chapter to demonstrate that humility is the necessary consequence of this realization – boasting in ourselves “is excluded” he writes, “by a law of faith.” Our way is not a free ticket to do what we please because God doesn’t care any longer. His grace creates in us a realization that we have received what we do not and could never deserve.  And as that truth works inward like a seed that is sprouting out of the ground, it changes us bit by bit, breaking away hard-hearted and selfish attitudes and bringing idols to light so they may be thrown down. God’s saving grace shows us that truly resting in God for all our needs, from the most basic to the most profound, is precisely the life God intends for us to live in Him, now and in eternity. As Charles Spurgeon said, “The more grace we have, the less we shall think of ourselves, for grace, like light, reveals our impurity.”

I remember how this happened in my own life, and the moment I experienced that deep conviction of my own sin even as I also felt a tremendous sense of joy of knowing that Jesus was, in fact, enough. It was during a sermon many years ago that the Holy Spirit used as a transformative moment beyond description, and I think about that day often, even as I think about the days and years to come walking the path of Christ.

This applied love of grace is not simply an expression of pity, though pity could be said to share in it. When God saw the sorry state of Adam and Eve in the garden, even though He surely was not surprised by any turn of events, might pity not have had its place in His promise that the woman’s offspring would destroy the enemy and his work? When Jesus stood among weeping mourners at the tomb of Lazarus and joined in their tears, pity surely must have been one of the feelings he bore as he demonstrated the great hope of life that was His gift to humanity, when he called Lazarus forth from the tomb. But this great love expresses the perfect love in unity shared by Father, Son, and Spirit. Again returning to Romans, Paul writes in chapter 5 that “God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

Knowing that, we can bring our heavy burdens to Him. We can truly obey the call of Psalm 55:22, to “cast all our burdens on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to be shaken.” We often do feel shaken, it is true, but God knows our needs and provides for them, in His love, by His grace. The more we realize this grace, the more we lower our own self-estimations, and raise our worshipful attitudes in expressing that love we have received to God, and to one another.

Living in His grace

The implications for our day to day lives are nothing short of tremendous. Yet they are also the implications that we often find ourselves blinded to the most by our day to day lives, our personal sin struggles and sufferings, and even our successes. When we build our lives around His grace, we find a rest that supports and extends far beyond all our earthly hopes, because life in Christ itself likewise is far beyond our brief years in this world. 

I want to end with three ideas of ways we can grow in the grace of God in our daily lives:

  • Pursue the things that bring His grace to mind. This can be done in many ways, from taking time to reflect on the beauty of God’s grace in nature and the goodness of His provision for your life in things like a good meal, to meditating on the testimony of Scripture and the teachings of those who have pursued this deeply. 
  • Find ways to express the ways you’ve seen God’s grace move in your life. You don’t have to have a big formal journaling effort, though keeping a personal record of the ways you experience God’s grace is a good idea. When dark times come, being able to remember that God’s presence has not lessened is wise.
  • Don’t try to walk alone. Have people who are close to you, who you trust and who knows you. When hardship comes and clouds fill the horizon of life, have someone who can encourage and pray with you. This should be a person who can listen to confessions of the sins, fears and failures of your life and remind you of your true worth in Christ. My podcast cohost Jake is a person like this for me, someone who I turn to often when I’m needing to talk about life struggles or confess sins.

None of this is dynamic and new, but then that’s not the point. The goal is to build a reminder into our lives of the constant grace of God, and the Holy Spirit has given us so many ways to do so through the Word, through prayer, and through the people around us. Pursue the grace of Christ daily, and the day will come where both suffering and success in this world will be a dim memory compared with the joy of truly being in the presence of Jesus. My prayer for everyone who reads this is that you will strive each day towards that moment for yourself.

How has the grace of God impacted your life? How do you want to see God move further in your life and transform your heart? Leave a comment below or email us, prayer requests are welcome!

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Episode 4 – That’s What Christmas is All About

We’re wrapping up 2024 and celebrating Christmas with a wide ranging conversation. We recorded this a little over a week ago and covered everything from Christmas music preferences both sacred and secular, to why it’s still okay to be against murder while also believing the American health care system is broken, to the struggle of genuine engagement online and more. Tune in and listen!

Leave your comments below or email us with your thoughts and prayer requests.

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What We Believe – The Work of Christ

In this ongoing series I am publishing slightly edited versions of short papers I wrote for my church’s elder pipeline class. The prompt for this paper was, “What did Christ accomplish on the cross?”

We have talked about who Christ is – He is the Son of God, He is a man born at a certain place in a certain time, He is the fulfillment of prophecy and a prophet Himself. But it is that last part that we must look to now, not just who He is, but what He has done, and continues to do. We cannot examine the work of Jesus without looking closely at the central focus of His whole life: the cross, His death there, and His resurrection. This was no mere display of power, nor is it simply a tragedy we mourn as unjust. This was the point at which God inaugurated His kingdom, and began the work that will conclude when Jesus returns: namely, the restoration of creation to true holiness, and true and total intimacy between God and His people.

Firstly, Jesus atoned for the sins of His people. There has been much debate over the concept of penal substitutionary atonement and its centrality to what Christ accomplished on the cross, but the testimony of Scripture is clear. All those who draw near to Christ receive the benefits of His atonement, just as all those who drew near on the Day of Atonement each year received those benefits for their sins. The difference is that Christ’s atonement is a better one, for it does not need to be renewed year after year, but as the author of Hebrews says, it is completed and perfect. 

Continue reading “What We Believe – The Work of Christ”
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Episode 3: Back At It – Papers, Prayers and Passions in Life

After a hectic summer Dave and Jake are back together talking about life, music, new babies, and much more. Our church’s elder class recently wrapped up and we’ve been publishing these piecemeal on the podcast website. We’re also going to begin turning these into podcast episodes, so we spent a little time talking about the purpose of these as well as our hopes for the future of this class. 

Some of the books we talked about in this episode:

Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture – by Christopher Watkin

Art and Faith: A Theology of Making – by Makoto Fujimura

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution – by Carl Trueman

Habits of the Household: Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms – by Justin Whitmel Earley

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What we believe – Who is Jesus?

In this ongoing series I am publishing slightly edited versions of short papers I wrote for my church’s elder pipeline class. The prompt for this paper was, “What is your view of Jesus Christ?”

The question “what is your view of Jesus” could receive so broad an answer that literally, many books exist just to tackle it. I want to address this by answering three specific questions that serve as the foundation upon which Christology is built.

Continue reading “What we believe – Who is Jesus?”
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What We Believe – The Imago Dei

This series is taken from short papers I wrote for my church’s elder class in response to different questions. This week’s question: What does it mean that man is an image-bearer of God?

Genesis 1 contains the account of God creating everything, day by day. Each part of creation has its place and is authored by God’s will, and each part is declared to be good. In verse 26, humanity is created specially and uniquely, “in our image, according to our likeness,” as the passage reads. But we struggle with understanding what it means to be truly made in His image. With the fall of man in chapter three of the same book, we see that humanity takes on a desire to be God. In the subsequent chapters and books and continuing down through human history, people have tried to make gods in the image of humanity, either literally or in the reckoning of what we believe is powerful. 

If we look in a mirror, we see an image of ourselves created for that moment, the product of light reflected off a surface that displays what we look like. But it is not us, and it only exists as long as we choose to stand there. Walk away, and the image vanishes, yet we continue. In her book Five Lies of our Anti-Christian Age, Rosaria Butterfield uses this analogy to explain this unique relationship between God and man, one that is not shared by any other aspect of creation. She says, “God is the object in the biblical creation account, and we are the reflection.” 

Her analogy is rooted in the one Paul uses to express the longing we experience in this life as we look toward a future of truly seeing and knowing God in 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.” And he follows it up with a very telling concluding verse to chapter 13: “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.”  

Love is what flows from God to His creation, and most especially to humanity. Love is what propels Him to mercy when Adam and Eve sin, and to promise a redeemer who will restore what they have broken. Love drives God to display mercy to the Israelites over and over, to be patient beyond any human reckoning, as generation after generation falls into rebellion and idolatry and requires reminding again that there is only one true God. And most of all, love is what drives the Trinitarian work of salvation – love within the Trinity, and love of God for His creation, for His image seen in His people. To acknowledge that we are made in His image is to accept and share in His tremendous love, and to rest in that love and all the promises it carries for provision, protection, and ultimate salvation in this world and the next.

By the same token, to deny that we are made in God’s image is to deny that love, and to deny the very thing that makes us human, more than just animals with higher intelligence and greater emotional capacity. Sin is an attack on that image. The first sin in Genesis 3 was a denial of God as creator and ruler, and an attempt to assert the right to decide right and wrong apart from Him. Murder is a vicious assault on God’s image, and carries the death penalty in Israel’s law because to kill a man is to destroy that image. Idolatry is a sin because it says that a man may know better what God should be, than the One who created us.

When the author of Hebrews describes Jesus in chapter 1, he calls him “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature,” that is to say, while we are made in the image of God, Christ is the image of God. When we trust in Christ, we are looking to He who bears the unscarred, unbroken perfection of God’s image in His humanity, and the perfect power and total authority of God in His divinity.

When we place our trust in Jesus, when we preach the power of His name and the love and mercy of God found in Him, we are calling out to all humanity with a tremendous message. We are saying, “Stop trying to be something you are not, and remember that you are something so much greater in creation – you are made to reflect the perfect, the complete, the holy.” When we preach the gospel we say to our listeners, “Be who God made you to be, because to be His image is to find true life that transcends anything your base desires in this world could hope to find.”

How does knowing that you are made in the image of God affect your view of yourself and others? How can this empower you in your walk with Christ and the way you love your neighbor? Let us know below in the comments!

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What We Believe – Our God is Three in One

This is a continuing series based on short papers I wrote for my church’s elder class to prepare for discussions of different doctrinal questions. This week’s prompt: What is your view of the Trinity?

The doctrine of God’s existence as one being in three persons is one of the most controversial and defining doctrines of the faith. It is sensible that discussion of this topic follows an exploration of the nature of Scripture, because it is through a belief in the character of Scripture as God-breathed and therefore infallible and supreme that we must arrive at the conclusion that the doctrine of the Trinity is true. 

As with so many doctrines, it was defined in the face of error. It is tempting to linger on these errors in a historical sense, and it is important to understand them because so often people tend to repeat them. There are whole offshoot faiths from Christianity that are founded on denials of various aspects of the Trinity – for example, United Pentacostals who hold to a modalistic view of God, or Jehovah’s Witnesses who insist that Jesus is a mere created being. But it’s important to define what we do believe, rather than just what we do not. 

Looking back at the early discussions in the church that hashed out the doctrine and the way it is stated across denominational lines to this day, we see the priorities of these believers as they examined what the Scriptures say for the sake of clarifying teaching and avoiding error. We see them prioritizing the nature of God, and the distinction between God’s being (or substance, to use the Nicene term) and the persons of the Trinity, who Scripture reveals as unique in role and action, yet utterly united in will and fully bearing the nature of being God.

We see the early church’s recognition that for salvation to be effective, Christ must be fully man and fully God. He must be fully man so that He may share in our existence and bear our suffering and sin upon the cross, and He must be fully God so that He may endure in a way no mere sinful human ever could alone. We see the Father as the one who declares the nature of creation and trajectory of history through His perfect plans. He does not do anything alone, but plays His own unique role in sending forth the Son and blessing His work. He calls all those who will be Christ’s. And we see the Holy Spirit as the one who ministers constantly through and in Christ’s church, to glorify Christ and to be the “Giver of Life” as the Council of Constantinople put it, as He makes possible Christ’s words from John 3 that to be saved, we “must be born again.”

God’s Trinitarian nature is beyond our comprehension in many ways, but that itself is evidence of it being a revelation of God and not a production of man’s own mind. The legion of heresies that the church has contended with through the centuries show what happens when humans attempt to apply their own wisdom to God’s nature. From Sabellius teaching that the persons of the Trinity are little more than masks worn by one being of God, to Arius’ claims that “there was a time that the Son was not” and his theological children in groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, to outright polytheists like the Mormons, many times man refuses to be satisfied by trusting to what God says but insists that he has better wisdom. Yet none of them can truly say they believe that Scripture is God’s Word, when they refuse to heed God’s own revelations of Himself. They cannot claim to have true salvation in a Christ who is not who He said He was, in His own words – “I am.” 

To rest in God’s promises we must trust in the words of Deuteronomy 29:29, “The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.” We cannot truly reckon as created, mortal, singular beings with the true nature of existence for an eternal, Trinitarian God, but we can trust that He is truthful and trustworthy. We rely on Him to grasp this, and His work and Word calls us to let our doubts and confusion rest on His promises.

Do you have questions or areas where you struggle to understand? Please ask them below or email me if you prefer, our hope here is to bless the body and engage in dialogue.

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