The Lord Christ had called his apostles to the great work of building his church, and the propagation of his gospel in the world. Of themselves, they were plainly and openly defective in all qualifications and abilities that might contribute anything to it. But whatever is wanting in themselves… he promises to supply it… by sending the Holy Spirit to them, on whose presence and assistance alone depended the whole success of their ministry in the world.
…And this is the hinge whereon the whole weight of it turn and depends to this day. Take it away… and there will be an absolute end f the Church of Christ in this world—no dispensation of the Spirit, no church.
—John Owen

One thing that is quite clear, about the majority of Christians today, (self included) is that we do not have knowledge and indepth understanding that the puritans had nor before them the  Reformers.  The Bible was at the heart of the reformation, to making it accessible to the common man, and it not being shut up in darkness and obscurity and only having what the Pope said to understand and be able to interpret it for the common people. Our forefathers, paid for the freedom and easy accessibility we have today to the pages of God’s Word, with their blood and very lives often times. And what do we today do with this inestimable treasure? we do not prize it, as they did, at least over all, that is to be sure.. They had the Word in their hearts, as Scripture tells us to have it.  They were Biblicists in the real sense of the word, (and believe it or not I have even heard them called that in a way of trying to put them down!) Oh for more  such Biblicists among us today.  Knowledge or rather ignorance of the Bible, its teachings, God’s will, God Himself and Christ, are, in my opinion one of the major causes for the church to be in its current state of declination.  Even among  parts of the so-called Reformed church.  To know Him is to love him, that much is true. The more we know HIM, the more we will love HIM, and the more we will be the shining lights that we should be.  Rather than groping our way along, still in darkness and not being able to discern if we turn to the right or the left, so limping blindly on regardless and hoping for the best.  That we, of the Reformed faith, are no less culpable of this than any other branch of Christianity, is an abomination, when the Bible and its freedom and accessibility and availability to the common man,  was at the heart of the Reformation, and that they started off not having that glorious liberty we have today. And yet, we turn liberty to licentiousness, by refusing or rejecting the godly liberty of a Bible for every man, woman and child; to the ungodly liberties we find in the pleasures of the world.

Today we have Bible memorization programmes, and the technology to help them stick, such as this one by John Piper’s  ministry So, what excuse do we have. And also, God makes it quite clear, that ignorance is not an excuse for sin. And I myself have long believed, that ignorance is often a choice.

A New England Antinomian  was heard to utter:

I had rather hear such a one that speaks from mere notion of the Spirit, without any study at all, than any of your learned scholars, although he maybe fuller of Scripture.

Which would also seem to confirm my theory that often, ignorance is a choice.

According to a biography on John Bruen, Robert Pasfield who was an illiterate servant of Bruen’s was:

“a man utterly unlearned, being unable to read a sentence or write a sylablle. Yet he was so well acquainted with the history of the Bible, and the sum and substance of every book and chapter, that hardly could any ask him where such a sayinkg or sentence were, but he would with very little ado tell them in what book, and what chapter they might find it.”

We all have to start somewhere. You can’t expect a two year old Christian to have the vast stores of understanding and knowledge  that a 15 year old on will have. But if after, considerable time has passed, and  medical reasons notwithstanding, that could cause it,   the person remains ignorant as many a new born babe, then, I think that person should do some soul searching to ask why it is so.

Lord perseve us from ignorance, and from choosing the worldly pelasures to the dteriment of spiritual concerns. Give us grace to perservere, even when we don’t see  progress, but trust that your grace is sufficient, in this matter, as much as it is, in any other. In Jesus, Name. Amen.

This seems like it maybe an appropriate post to start off my series of “Reformed or Deformed” which at the moment I am trying to organize in my mind to set down on paper in an organized way.

The same Spirit that guided the holy apostles and prophets to write it, must guide the people of God to know the meaning of it; and as he first delivered it, so must he help men to understand it.
—Thomas Goodwin

The Spirit represents the person of Jesus Christ. He works and effects whatever the Lord Christ had taken upon himself to work and effect towards his disciples…All their work and duty being  suspended on the accomplishment of that promise since he is God, they might suppose that he would come with some absolute new dispensation of truth, so that what they had learned and received from Christ should pass away and be of no use to them. To prevent any such apprehension he lets them know that the work he had to do was only to carry on and build on the foundation which was laid in his person or doctrine. This was the Holy Spirit to do. And this he did.
—John Owen, “Discourse on the Holy Spirit”

The spiritual beauty and comeliness of the soul consists in its conformity to God… Grace gives beauty… The beauty originally consisted in the image of God in us, which contained the whole order, harmony, and symmetry of our natures, in all their faculties and actions, with respect to God and our utmost end… Sin has a deformity in it, brings spots,  stains, and wrinkles on the soul… Holiness and conformity to  God is the honour of our souls. It is that alone which makes them truly noble…This we have only by holiness, or that image of God wherein we are created. Whatever is contrary to this is base, vile, and unworthy.
—John Owen, “Discourse on the Holy Spirit”

Without union with Christ, no man can have either his righteousness or his indwelling Spirit. Nor can they be separable… it is an unsupposable thing, that one should be God’s temple enlivened and animated by his own Spirit, and yet be under remaining guilt and liable every moment to his consuming wrath. Or, that he could be any whit the better to have all his former guilt taken off and still be “dead in trespasses and sins.”
–John Howe “The Living Temple”

How does Christ give his Spirit to us? The Spirit, so necessary for us, is given by the ministry of the Gospel, which is the ministry of the Spirit (Gal. 3:2) When the love of God in Christ, and the benefits by Christ are laid open in the preaching of the gospel to us, God gives his Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Now God in Christ would save us by a triumphant and abundant love and mercy, and the Spirit of God never goes but where there is a magnifying of the love and mercy of God in Christ. Therefore, the ministry of the Gospel, which alone discovers the amity and love of God to mankind, being now reconciled in Christ, is accompanied with the Spirit… Christ is the first gift, and the Spirit is the second.
—Richard Sibbes “A Description of Christ”

A spiritual darkness and death came by sin on all mankind… In thi state of things, the Holy Spirit undertook to create  a new world… wherein righteousness should dwell.  And this, in the first place, was by his effectual communication of a new principle of spiritual life to the souls of God’s elect… This he does in their regeneration… All our faith and obedience to God, and all our acceptance with him, depend on regeneration or being born again.
—John Owen, “Discourse on the Holy Spirit”

No man ever circumcised his own heart. No man can say he began to do it by the power of his own will, and then God only helped him by his grace. As the act of outward circumcision on the body of a child was the act of another, and not of the child who was  only passive therein [but the effect was on the body of the child only], so it is in the spiritual circumcision—it is the act of God, in which our hearts are the subject. It is the blindness, obstinacy, and stubbornness in sin that is in us by nature, with the prejudices which possess our minds and affections, which hinder us from conversion to God. But by the circumcision, they are taken away.
—John Owen, “Discourse on the Holy Spirit”.

These therefore must have the cream of the gospel… The Lord Jesus takes more care, as appears by three parables,  for the lost sheep, the lost goat, and the prodigal son, than for the other sheep, the other pence,  or for the son that said he had never transgressed (Luke 15)… The mind of Christ was set on the salvation of the biggest sinners in his lifetime.
The apostles, after the ascension of Christ, preached to the very worst of these Jerusalem sinners, even to those that were the murderers of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:23). Peter said if they were sorry for what they had done, and would be baptized for the remission of their sins in his name, they should receieve the gift of the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:37, 38)
—John Bunyan, “The Jerusalem Sinner Saved.”

The fountain of this life being in God and the fullness of its being laid up in Christ for us, he communicates the power and principle of it to us by the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost is the author and cause of the work of regeneration… Nothing is more in words acknowledged than that all the elect of God are sanctified by the Holy Ghost. And this regeneration is the head, fountain or beginning of our sanctification, virtually comprising the whole in itself.
—John Owen “Discourse on the Holy Spirit”

That admirable goodness of God, which shows itself in raising up temples in this vile world by the Spirit of Emmanuel, claims our subordinate co-operation as under-builders of this structure (Phil. 2:12, 13)
The whole work of faith–that entire work necessary to be wrought upon the soul of man in order to his future felicity, and that by God’s own power–is called the fulfilling or satisfying, the good pleasure of his goodness (II Thess. 1:11). Oh the plentitude of satisfaction which our blessed Lord takes in the fulfilling  of the good pleasure of his goodness, when the methods are complied with, according whereto he puts forth his power for effecting such a work!
—John Howe “the Living Temple.”

Consider what punishment a sinner was, by the violated law of works and nature, liable to in this world or in the world to come. And what of this [punishment] is remitted in virtue of the Redeemer’s sacrifice and covenant. He was liable to whatsoever miseries in this life God should please to inflict, to temporal death, and to a state of misery hereafter. [But] Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, that blessing might come upon us… that we might receive the promise of the Spirit (Gal. 3:13, 14).
“Repent, be baptized, for the remission of sins, and receive the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). The great promise of the gospel covenant is that of the gift of the Holy Ghost. It does not promise you wealth, or ease or riches, or honours. But it promises you that God will no longer be a stranger to you, refuse your converse, withhold the Spirit from you. Your souls shall no longer lie waste and desolate… By the remission of sin the bar is removed, and nothing can hinder the Holy Ghost from entering to take possession of your souls, as his own temple and dwelling place.
—John Howe, “The Living Temple”

It was the Holy Spirit who glorified the human nature of Christ, and made it in every way fit for its eternal residence at the right hand of God, and a pattern for the glorification of of the bodies of them that believe on him… He is the exemplar and pattern of that glory which in our mortal bodies we shall receive by the same Spirit.
–John Owen, “Discourse on the Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit is given to this purpose of restoring the temple of God with men …under a two-fold notion: as a builder and an inhabitant.
Till this blessed Spirit be given the temple of God is everywhere in ruin. Therefore, he cannot dwell till he build, and he builds that he may dwell (1 Cor 3:9, 16)…This temple, being a living thing, the very building and formation of it is …generating. And because it is to be again raised up out of a former ruinous state wherein it lay dead and buried in its own ruins, this new production is regeneration…This new birth must be by the Spirit.(Eph 2:19-22)
—John Howe “The Living Temple”

The great work of the Holy Ghost in the dispensation and ministration of the gospel… gives to the ministry of the gospel both its glory and its efficacy. Take away the Spirit from the gospel and you render it a dead letter, and leave the New Testament of no more use to Christians than the Old Testament is to the Jews…
There is not any spiritual or saving good from first to last communicated to us, or that we are from and by the grace of God made partakers of, but it is revealed to use and bestowed on us by the Holy Ghost… There is not anything done in us or by us that is holy and acceptable to God, but it is an affect of the Holy Spirit… Without him we can do nothing.
—John Owen, “Discourse on the Holy Spirit”