Theological term
Anthropology
4 sermons · All terms
2LCF Chapter 31 - Of the State of Man After Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead
The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 31, addresses individual eschatology under two heads: the state of man at death and the resurrection of the dead at the last day. The chapter grounds its teaching in the biblical constitution of man as body and soul, affirming that at death the body returns to dust while the immortal soul immediately returns to God — the souls of the righteous received into paradise with Christ, made perfect in holiness, and the souls of the wicked cast into hell awaiting the judgment of the great day. Against soul sleep, purgatory, limbo, and Socinian denials of bodily resurrection, the confession insists that all the dead will be raised with the self-same bodies, the just by the Spirit unto honor conformed to Christ's glorious body, and the unjust by the power of Christ unto dishonor.
Ask FGBC #16: What is Free Will?
Free will is affirmed in Reformed Baptist theology, but the crucial question is not whether man has a will, but what that will is capable of choosing given man's location on the continuum of creation, fall, grace, and glory. The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith (chapters 3 and 9) teaches that God endows man with a will free from coercion, yet after the fall that will is bound toward sin and incapable of inclining toward what is spiritually good. Regeneration liberates the will, and so evangelism does not appeal to free will but to God's free grace, trusting him to open deaf ears and hardened hearts.
2 Samuel 12:15-31
David's sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah bring severe temporal consequences even after divine forgiveness is granted: the infant son dies, and the Davidic household faces ongoing judgment. Yet grace appears most strikingly in the very aftermath of these crimes — God loves Solomon, names him Jedidiah, and advances the Davidic Covenant despite David's catastrophic failure. The sermon draws from 2 Samuel 12:15–31 to show that forgiven sinners still bear temporal chastisement, that sovereign grace is not undone by human wickedness, and that faithful worship — not withdrawal — is the proper response of the suffering saint.
An Introduction to Christology
What does it mean to study Christ, and why does it matter above every other theological discipline? This introductory Christology study, anchored in John 20:24–31, argues that the doctrine of Christ is not one branch among many but the integrating center of all Christian theology — the terminus of the Old Testament's canonical trajectory, the non-negotiable content of apostolic proclamation, the sole ground of salvation, and the pattern for the believer's practical life. Hearers are called to fill their minds with precise Christological knowledge so that their hearts may be both warmed in worship and guarded against the errors that have always threatened the church's confession of Christ's full deity, full humanity, and undivided person.