Theological term
Imputation
654 sermons · All terms
The Crucifixion of Christ, Part 3
John 19:28–29 records the fifth of the seven sayings of Christ from the cross: 'I thirst.' This exposition examines Christ's sovereign knowledge that all things were accomplished, the fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture — particularly Psalm 69 — in his cry, and the significance of the sour wine offered on hyssop. The sermon argues that Christ's thirst demonstrates both his true humanity and the completion of his redemptive mission, and calls both believers and unbelievers to come boldly to the throne of the sympathetic Savior who drained the cup of divine wrath on behalf of his people.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 2
The incarnation of the Son of God — his taking to himself a true and complete human nature — is the greatest of all gospel mysteries and the life and soul of the church. Working through paragraphs one, two, three, seven, and nine of the Second London Confession chapter eight, this study examines the timing, manner, and extent of the Son's assumption of humanity, arguing that the incarnation was neither a subtraction from deity nor an addition to it, but a terminative assumption by which the eternal Son united human nature to his own divine person in the hypostatic union. The full extent of that assumption — body, reasonable soul, human will, human affections, and the common sinless infirmities of our nature — is not a speculative nicety but a soteriological necessity: what is not assumed is not healed.
The Power and Wisdom of God
How can God justify the ungodly without compromising his justice, and why does the design of salvation leave no room for human boasting? Expounding 1 Corinthians 1:30–31 against the backdrop of Paul's extended contrast between divine and worldly wisdom, this sermon traces the source, content, and goal of every spiritual blessing the believer possesses. Christ is shown to be the believer's righteousness, sanctification, and redemption not as a description of the Christian's progress but as an objective account of what he accomplished as the covenant head of his people. The sermon concludes that because union with Christ is the sole ground of salvation, all glory belongs to God alone — a truth Paul anchors in Jeremiah's call to glory only in the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
The Cry of Dereliction
What does Christ mean when he cries 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' from the cross? This sermon on Matthew 27:45–46 carefully distinguishes what the cry of dereliction does not mean — no ontological division within the Trinity, no dissolution of the hypostatic union, no suffering of all three persons — before arguing that it expresses Christ's true humanity as our surety bearing the punishment of loss: the withdrawal of the Father's smiling favor and consolatory presence as the Son satisfies divine justice for the sins of his people. The sermon draws extensively on Psalm 22 to show that the forsakenness is covenantal and substitutionary, not metaphysical, and closes with a call to believe on the crucified and risen Christ who cried this cry so that his people never will.
The Crucifixion of Christ, Part 2
The crucifixion scene in John 19:23–27 contains two theologically freighted details: the seamless tunic cast for by lot, and Christ's provision for his mother from the cross. The tunic, described in terms that evoke the high-priestly garments of the Old Covenant, calls the reader to see Christ functioning as the perfect, perpetual high priest whose once-for-all sacrifice accomplishes what Leviticus 16 could only foreshadow. The division of his garments fulfills Psalm 22:18 exactly as God predetermined, underscoring that the cross was never plan B. The sermon concludes by pressing four implications of the gospel: substitutionary atonement, justification by faith alone, the reordering of priorities at the foot of the cross, and the binary demand that every hearer either look to Christ in faith or remain under divine wrath.
The Crucifixion of Christ
How did it come to pass that the only holy, harmless, and undefiled man who ever lived was led out to be crucified between two criminals? John 19:16–24 answers on two levels: on the surface, the wickedness of men — Pilate's cowardice, the Sanhedrin's envy, the multitudes' manipulation — and beneath it, the sovereign, predetermined purpose of God who sent His Son to be the Lamb of God, the substitute for sinners. The sermon traces the location at Golgotha as the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15, the charge written by Pilate as an unwitting confession of Christ's kingship, and the conversion of the dying thief as the paradigm case of saving faith — seeing nothing but a bloodied, dying man on a cross and confessing Him as Lord of a kingdom.
The Warning Against Judaizers
Philippians 3:1–3 contains the only sustained polemical section in the epistle, and the apostle Paul deploys it as a warning against Judaizers — those who insisted that faith in Christ must be supplemented by Mosaic ceremonies such as circumcision for acceptance with God. Working through Paul's strategy in verse 1, his three-fold warning in verse 2, and his corrective in verse 3, the sermon demonstrates that the Judaizing error — whether in its first-century form, in Roman Catholicism, or in modern movements such as the New Perspective on Paul and Federal Vision — nullifies the grace of God by refusing to let Christ be a whole Savior. The church's only boast, identity, and worship are grounded in Christ alone, received through faith alone, apart from any confidence in the flesh.
The Decision of Pilate, Part 2
John 19:9–16 records the exchange between Jesus and Pontius Pilate that culminates in the verdict of crucifixion. This sermon works through Pilate's confusion and arrogant assertion of authority, Christ's counter-declaration that all governing power derives from God Most High, and the theological weight of the greater sin belonging to those who delivered Christ up. The death of the Lamb of God at the hour of Passover preparation is no accident — it is the predetermined plan of the Father, the fulfillment of every Passover sacrifice, and the ground of forgiveness for wretched sinners who look to Christ in faith.
2LCF Chapter 6 - Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof
The fall of Adam and Eve was not an unforeseen catastrophe but an event God sovereignly permitted according to his wise and holy counsel to order to his own glory. Working through all five paragraphs of 2LCF Chapter 6, this study traces the anatomy of the fall — from man's original uprightness under the covenant of works, through the willful transgression of the law of their creation, to the imputation of guilt and conveyance of corrupt nature to all of Adam's posterity by ordinary generation. The totality of sin's consequences — total depravity, total inability, spiritual death, and the inheritance of wrath — makes the second and last Adam, Jesus Christ, the only and necessary answer, whose active and passive obedience reverses both the imputation and the inheritance fallen humanity bears in the first Adam.
Redemption, Restoration, and Righteousness
Isaiah 61 presents the anointed Messiah declaring his own mission of redemption, restoration, and righteousness for his people. The sermon works through all eleven verses, arguing that Christ alone — anointed by the Spirit without measure as prophet, priest, and king — fulfils the role foreshadowed by every Old Covenant anointing and reverses the covenantal curses of Deuteronomy 28. His saving work springs up the church, the true Zion, from the ruins of Old Covenant desolation, and clothes her not in her own merit but in the imputed righteousness of the Mediator. The sermon closes with the church's response of rejoicing and a call to the unbeliever to believe on Christ and receive everlasting life.
The Trial Before Pilate, Part 3
John 18:39–40 records Pilate's offer to release Jesus under the Passover custom, and the crowd's choice of Barabbas instead — a transaction that serves as an emblem of substitutionary atonement: the just taking the place of the unjust, the holy bearing what the unholy deserves. Drawing on Matthew 27:15–26 to amplify the scene, the sermon traces the envy of the religious leaders, the warning of Pilate's wife, the manipulation of the multitudes, Pilate's cowardly self-absolution, and the crowd's terrible cry of blood-guilt. The central application is that the believer stands before God not on the ground of personal righteousness but solely on account of Christ's vicarious obedience and death — the glorious exchange in which our sin is laid on him and his righteousness is credited to us.
The Believer in a Sinful Generation
Philippians 2:14–18 grounds the believer's daily conduct in a theology of sanctification and election: the command to do all things without complaining or disputing flows from the purpose of God to make his people blameless and harmless, validating their identity as children of God in a crooked and perverse generation. Drawing on the wilderness generation of Numbers and the Deuteronomy 32 backdrop Paul himself invokes, the sermon traces the catastrophic pattern of grumbling as a failure to submit to divine providence, and contrasts it with the church's calling to shine as lights and hold forth the word of life. The commendation of joy in verses 17–18 is grounded in Paul's readiness for martyrdom and his deep pastoral investment in the Philippians' growth, showing that the minister's eschatological joy is bound up with his people's faithful walk. The concrete application is simple: be blameless in yourself, peaceable toward the church, and a shining light in the world by faithful presence and gospel proclamation rather than withdrawal.
The Trial Before Pilate, Part 2
Standing before Pontius Pilate, Jesus affirms His kingship while making clear that His kingdom does not originate from this world and poses no military threat to Rome — it advances solely through the proclamation of truth. The sermon works through John 18:33–40 under two heads: Pilate's examination of Jesus (vv. 33–38) and Pilate's cowardly compromise (vv. 39–40), drawing in the parallel account in Luke 23 to trace Jesus' transfer to Herod and back. Pilate's threefold declaration of innocence, Herod's contemptuous mockery, and the crowd's demand for Barabbas together underscore the great exchange: the just for the unjust, the holy Lamb standing in the place of guilty, vile, helpless sinners.
The Trial Before Pilate, Part 1
John 18:28–32 records the delivery of Jesus to Pontius Pilate, an event framed by both human wickedness and divine sovereignty. The sermon surveys the prior trial before the Sanhedrin in Matthew 26, exposing the false charges, the deliberate misquotation of Jesus's words about the temple, and the formal charge of blasphemy — then turns to John's account of the hypocrisy, lawlessness, and impotence of the Jewish authorities before Pilate. Against that backdrop of gross injustice, verse 32 grounds the entire episode in divine decree: the very words Jesus had spoken concerning his death were being fulfilled, and the wrath of men was being overruled by the providence of God for the salvation of the elect. The chief application is adoration — the redeemed sinner is called to see how far the Savior went to secure redemption, and the unbeliever is called to come to the one who will not cast out any who come to him in faith.
The Prodigal Son
Luke 15:11–32, the parable of the prodigal son, confronts two kinds of lostness: the deliberate rebellion of a son who demands his inheritance while his father still lives, and the self-righteous resentment of an elder son who cannot rejoice at his brother's return. The sermon traces the younger son's descent, his coming to himself in godly sorrow and repentance, and the father's extravagant, undeserved welcome as a picture of God's readiness to receive returning sinners. The older son's unresolved anger is pressed upon those whose confidence rests in their own moral performance rather than in grace. The sermon closes by pointing to Christ as the true older brother who, unlike his counterpart in the parable, laid down his life to make repentant sinners co-heirs with himself.
The Importance of Spiritual Exercise
Philippians 2:12–13 is not a self-salvation passage but a call to Spirit-enabled perseverance rooted in the sovereign grace of God. The sermon expounds the believer's responsibility to 'work out' a salvation already given — not to attain it, but to live in conscious, fear-driven obedience to the God who both justifies and sanctifies. Against hyper-Calvinist passivity on one side and Arminian self-effort on the other, the text holds together human duty and divine empowerment: God works in believers both to will and to do according to his good pleasure. The practical summons is to pursue sanctification — the whole of it, fear, trembling, cross-contemplation, and dependence on the Spirit — as those destined for glorification.
The Trial Before the Jews
John 18:13–27 presents the trial of Jesus before the Jewish authorities alongside Simon Peter's three denials, and John's deliberate interweaving of the two scenes forces the reader to measure Peter's cowardice against his Master's composed, unflinching faithfulness. Jesus, the true high priest, stands before the illegitimate proceedings of Annas and Caiaphas — proceedings marked by false witnesses, unprovoked violence, and a verdict predetermined by envy — and yet he defends his disciples, demands lawful evidence, and maintains his identity without wavering. Peter, by contrast, cannot acknowledge his Lord to a servant girl, illustrating the fickleness that characterises even redeemed sinners. The sermon closes by calling believers to remember both the rooster's rebuke of unfaithfulness and the grace of a Saviour who restores the very disciples who forsook him.
The Arrest of Jesus
John 18:1–12 presents the arrest of Jesus not as a defeat but as a sovereign, voluntary act of the divine-human Mediator. The passage is expounded under three headings: the betrayal of Jesus by Judas and his coalition of enemies, the glory of Jesus manifested in his command of the situation and his 'I am' declaration that felled the arresting party to the ground, and the arrest proper in which Jesus rebukes Peter's sword and embraces the cup of the Father's wrath. The sermon closes by tracing three layers of antitypical significance — the greater-David typology of 2 Samuel 15, the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22, and the garden of Eden in Genesis 1–3 — to show that the arrest of Christ is the hinge on which God's eternal purpose to save his people from their sins turns.
The Preface to the Ten Commandments
Deuteronomy 5:1–6 opens the Ten Commandments not with a command but with a declaration of divine redemption — 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.' This study works through the summons to covenant obedience, the grace-grounded preface to the Decalogue, and the uniqueness of the moral law as trans-covenantal and abiding. The threefold division of the law — moral, ceremonial, and judicial — is examined through the confession, the prophets, the Gospels, and the epistles, equipping believers to distinguish what abides in the new covenant from what was fulfilled and abrogated in Christ.
Light Prevails Over Darkness
Ephesians 5:13–14 sets before the hearer a decisive confrontation: the light of Christ exposes the darkness of sin, spiritual blindness, and death, and effectually calls sinners to life. The sermon traces the contextual contrast between spiritual darkness and light, the two components by which Christ's light operates (the external word and the internal work of the Spirit), and the gospel call to awake and arise. Justification by faith alone — faith as the sole instrument by which the sinner receives and rests on Christ's imputed righteousness — is the doctrinal center from which applications to the unbeliever, the backslidden, and the walking believer are drawn.
Live Stream - April 27, 2025
Psalm 131 is a three-verse psalm of ascent in which David describes three things he did not do — lift up his heart in pride, raise his eyes in defiance, or occupy himself with matters too great and too marvelous — and one thing he did do: calm and quiet his soul like a weaned child beside its mother, in a silence of trust rather than fear. The sermon expounds all three verses, identifying hope in the Lord — grounded in who Yahweh is and in the promises of the new covenant secured by Jesus Christ, the faithful Son of David — as the active disposition that produces that inner calm. Three closing applications warn that we will lose our hope if we refuse to humble ourselves, if we expect what God has not promised, and if we place our hope in anything or anyone other than God through Jesus Christ.
The Resurrection and Justification
Romans 4:25 binds the death and resurrection of Christ together as twin pillars of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Christ was delivered up because of the offenses of his people — bearing the substitutionary curse that divine justice demanded — and was raised because of their justification, the resurrection serving as the Father's public testimony that satisfaction had been rendered and righteousness secured. The sermon works through four reasons why Paul links the resurrection to justification: the resurrection declared Christ to be the Son of God with power, testified that his sacrifice was accepted, confirmed that satisfaction was rendered, and marked the completion of redemption and the inauguration of Christ's present session. Believers are called to rest their entire confidence for standing before God on this finished work, and the unconverted are urged to confess and believe in the risen Lord Jesus.
The Example of the Savior, Part 3
Philippians 2:8 presents the humility of Christ not as incidental biography but as the doctrinal and ethical foundation for the church's conduct. This sermon examines first the declaration of Christ's humility — that he humbled himself voluntarily, according to his human nature as covenant mediator, in active obedience to every demand of God's law from his mother's womb — and then its demonstration in the extent of that humiliation: even the death of the cross, a death cursed by the law and laden with shame. The active and passive obedience of Christ, taken together, are the sole ground of justification by faith alone, which is why the Lord's Supper is received not as a reward for good conduct but as a proclamation of what the Savior accomplished on behalf of his people.
The High Priestly Prayer, Part 8
John 17:21–23 records Christ's high priestly petition for the unity of all believers across every age — a unity patterned on the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son. The sermon works through the petition ('that they all may be one'), the divine paradigm (the perichoretic union of the Father and Son as the exemplar for creaturely unity), and the missional purpose (a unified church publishes to the world the reality of the Incarnation and the love of the Father). Believers are called to pursue a common faith, a common orientation, and a common goal — the glory of God — knowing that their corporate life is itself a testimony to the mission of the sent Son.
2LCF Chapter 1 - Of the Holy Scriptures (Paragraphs 1-3)
The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith opens with the doctrine of Holy Scripture because all subsequent confessional theology stands or falls on this foundation. This session works through paragraphs 1–3 of Chapter 1, establishing first the necessity of Scripture — grounded in the insufficiency of general revelation for saving knowledge and the cessation of direct prophetic revelation — and then the identity of Scripture, treating the question of canon (which books belong) and the exclusion of the Apocrypha. Three criteria for canonicity are examined: the providential exposure of books, the divine attributes Scripture bears, and apostolic origin broadly understood.
The High Priestly Prayer, Part 7
John 17:20 records Christ's intercession extending beyond the apostles to all who would believe through their word — a prayer that excludes the world and encompasses the elect of every age. The verse yields five doctrinal implications: justification is by faith alone; the apostolic word is the ordained instrument of that faith; Christ assumes gospel advance and missions; sovereign election and predestination undergird the certainty that there will be believers; and the world possesses a solidarity in enmity against God that mirrors, and indicts, the disunity too common among God's people. Practically, the sermon calls the church to gospel-centred ministry, qualified and instructional preaching, the earnest pursuit of unity, and calls the unconverted to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ without delay.
Our Robe of Beauty
Galatians 2:16 presents a five-fold declaration that justification is by faith alone and not by the works of the law — a doctrine that stands at the very heart of the Christian gospel. This sermon works through four categories: a definition of justification as a forensic declaration set in opposition to condemnation, its foundation in the obedience and satisfaction of Christ alone (not infused righteousness, works, the act of faith, or evangelical obedience), the transaction of imputation by which sin is credited to Christ and his righteousness credited to the believer, and faith as the empty instrument that receives rather than earns that righteousness. The pastoral application presses the believer's assurance away from inward evidences toward the finished work of Christ, and calls the unconverted to look to Christ in faith as their only standing before a holy God.
The High Priestly Prayer, Part 3
Jesus intercedes for his apostles in John 17:6–11a, and this sermon examines who those men are, what qualifies them as objects of his high priestly prayer, and why he prays for them rather than for the world. The exposition grounds the disciples' identity in the Father's sovereign, electing gift of them to the Son within the eternal covenant of redemption, their reception of the words the Father gave to the Son, and their growing recognition that the Son is one in being with the Father. The preacher draws out the implication that faithful gospel ministry, like the ministry of Christ himself, must declare only what has been received from God, without accommodation to cultural pressure or the demand for entertainment.
Trinitarian Assurance
Ephesians 1:3–14 presents a Trinitarian doxology in which the Father's election and predestination, the Son's redemption through His blood, and the Spirit's sealing together constitute the full ground of the believer's assurance. The passage resists any reduction of the three persons to isolated roles, insisting on inseparable operations even as Paul shines distinct light on each person's work. The sermon argues that the Christian's assurance must be anchored not in self-examination of fruit-bearing but in the objective, Trinitarian work of God accomplished entirely outside of us in Christ.
The Joy of the Gospel
Ephesians 2:1–10 presents the whole arc of redemption in miniature: total depravity, sovereign grace, and the new life of sanctification. This sermon works through that arc by contrasting the bad news of verses 1–3 — that every human being is spiritually dead, enslaved to fleshly desires, complicit with satanic powers, and deserving of divine wrath — with the good news of verses 4–10, where God's rich mercy, unearned grace, and sovereign bestowal of faith rescue sinners who had nothing to offer Him. The central application is that the regenerate life is marked not by boasting but by the Spirit's fruit, and that the gathered church is itself a foretaste of the eternal communion for which God has prepared His people in Christ.