Theological term
Imputation
654 sermons · All terms
The Apostolic Magnitude of Justification
Paul's confrontation of Peter at Antioch in Galatians 2:11–16 is not merely a biographical episode but a defence of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Peter's hypocritical withdrawal from table fellowship with Gentile believers, driven by fear of the circumcision party, was not an open denial of the gospel but a compromise of it — and Paul's rebuke exposes how even the appearance of impropriety can bring the truth of the gospel into disrepute. The sermon then turns to the apostolic doctrine set forth in verses 15–16, tracing the five-fold reiterative negation and affirmation of justification by faith and not by the works of the law, grounding Christian peace in the imputation of Christ's active and passive obedience. Hearers are exhorted to carry the doctrine of justification beyond the service itself, resting their peace not on any measure of personal performance but on the sole and complete work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The High Priestly Prayer, Part 2
John 17:4–5 records Christ's proleptic and covenantal claim to have glorified the Father and finished the work given him — a claim that opens into the full theology of active obedience and its indispensable place in justification by faith alone. The sermon demonstrates that Jesus was not merely an ethical example but the obedient substitute whose 33 years of perfect law-keeping is imputed to the elect alongside the forgiveness secured by his blood. Verse 5 is examined against the kenosis error: Christ does not pray to recover a lost glory but to be manifested as the glorified God-man and mediator who has accomplished the covenant of redemption. Believers are exhorted to pursue the knowledge of God and Christ as the essence of eternal life; unbelievers are called to look to the only Savior in whom alone there is both forgiveness and a righteousness that avails before God.
The High Priestly Prayer, Part 1
John 17:1–5 records the opening of Christ's high priestly prayer, in which the Lord Jesus — praying according to His humanity as the Mediator of the New Covenant — petitions the Father for glory, because glory given to the Son redounds to the glory of the Father. The sermon works through the occasion of the prayer, the derived and delegated authority granted to Christ over all flesh, and the particular redemptive purpose for which that authority was given: that He should grant eternal life to all whom the Father has given Him. Particular redemption is grounded in the text itself, and the sermon closes by pressing the definition of eternal life in verse 3 — the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ — as a summons to pursue theology, Scripture reading, and corporate worship with renewed seriousness.
Ask FGBC - Dec 2024 Podcast with Pastors Butler and Porter, Batch 4
A panel of two pastors works through a batch of listener-submitted questions spanning baptism and the Lord's Supper, the eternity of hell, church membership, faith and fear, the unpardonable sin, images of Christ, dry preaching, and extra-biblical theological vocabulary. Across each topic the answers are grounded in Scripture and the 1689 London Baptist Confession, with particular attention to second-commandment concerns, the nature of saving faith, and the perseverance of the saints. Listeners are urged to anchor their assurance not in the strength of their own grip on Christ but in the immutable decree of election and the intercession of the Triune God.
The Sixth Commandment
The Sixth Commandment — 'You shall not murder' (Exodus 20:13) — addresses far more than the physical act of killing; it presupposes the dignity of every human being as an image-bearer of God and condemns unrighteous hatred of the heart. This sermon expounds the Hebrew word for murder, distinguishing it from lawful killing in capital punishment, just war, and self-defense, before pressing the command's indictment of abortion and euthanasia as violations of the sanctity of life. Jesus's teaching in Matthew 5 extends the commandment's reach to unwarranted anger and character assassination, and the three uses of the law — civil, pedagogical, and normative — frame both the church's public witness and the believer's ongoing sanctification. The sermon closes by insisting that the most faithful response to a death culture is to preach both the law and the cross of Christ.
The Oracles of Balaam, Part 1
Numbers 23 records the first two oracles of Balaam, in which God sovereignly overturns Balak's hired curse and compels a pagan seer to pronounce blessing upon Israel instead. The first oracle establishes the singularity of the covenant people — a nation dwelling apart, not reckoned among the nations — and the impossibility of cursing those whom God has not cursed. The second oracle grounds that protection in the immutability of God: because God is not a man that he should lie or repent of his word, no sorcery or divination can prevail against Jacob. The passage ultimately anticipates Romans 8:31 — if God is for his people, no Balak, no Balaam, and no adversary can stand against them.
The Riches of God's Grace
Ephesians 1:7 declares that believers possess redemption through Christ's blood and the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of God's grace. This sermon works through the triune shape of salvation in Ephesians 1:3–14, arguing that the redeemed are not a class of morally capable people who needed modest assistance, but guilty sinners who required blood atonement, divine election, and the sealing of the Holy Spirit. The cross is shown to satisfy divine justice as well as display divine love — God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, as Paul argues in Romans 3:21–26. The sermon closes with a direct application to baptism, presenting the ordinance as an outward declaration of the inward forgiveness and righteousness received through union with Christ.
The Suffering and Glory of Christ
Psalm 22 presents the suffering and glory of Christ with a precision and detail that exceeds even the Passion narratives of the four Gospels. The psalm's first half expounds the dereliction Christ endured on the cross — not as a breach of the Trinity or a dissolution of the hypostatic union, but as the penal withdrawal of the Father's sensible favor while the Son bore the curse due to his people's lawbreaking. The second half moves from that suffering to the exaltation of the Redeemer, the adoption of his brethren, the extension of his kingdom to all nations, and the generational advance of his church — all grounded in the finished work of the cross. The sermon calls believers to make much of the Psalms in both private devotion and corporate worship, hearing in them the very voice of Christ.
2LCF Chapter 29 - Of Baptism, Part 2
Credobaptism rests on five mutually reinforcing theological arguments: covenant theology, federal headship, the doctrine of salvation, the clarity of New Testament revelation, and the regulative principle of worship. This session (Part 2 of a study on 2LCF Chapter 29) works through the final three arguments, demonstrating from Romans 6, Acts 2, Acts 8–9, Galatians 3, and 1 Corinthians 10 that baptism signifies union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, and therefore belongs only to those who actually possess that union. The session closes by showing that infant sprinkling not only lacks any express divine command but positively contradicts the explicit command to baptize believers only — an inconsistency that even notable paedo-baptist writers (Owen, Calvin, Matthew Henry) expose in their own defenses of the regulative principle of worship.
The Future Prospect of the Apostle, Part 2
Philippians 1:21–26 presents Paul's conviction and anticipation as an apostle facing imprisonment and the real prospect of execution. The sermon works through Paul's declaration 'for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain,' showing that his union with Christ in life and his glory with Christ in death make it impossible for any earthly power to harm or stop him. The intermediate state — the soul's immediate presence with Christ at death — is set against the benefit of continued gospel ministry, and Paul's others-minded anticipation of release grounds his confidence that the Philippians' progress in faith and joy will abound. The sermon closes by pressing the question whether each hearer can say with honest self-examination that Christ is their all in life and death.
The Covenant Ceremony With Abraham
Genesis 15 records the covenant ceremony by which God confirmed his promises of seed and land to Abram — not with a bilateral oath, but with a unilateral, self-maledictory act in which God alone passed between the divided animals. The sermon traces Abraham's justification by faith alone in verse 6, examines the ancient covenant-ratification ritual as a type of Christ bearing the covenant curse, and shows that the smoking oven and burning torch passing through the pieces preaches the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The application presses believers to rest their assurance not in their own covenant faithfulness but in the faithfulness of the God who swore by himself and sealed that oath in the blood of his Son.
The Salvation of Sinners on Pentecost
Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:22–42) declares the life, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus Christ as the exclusive ground of salvation, and calls sinners to repentance and faith. The sermon examines what genuine repentance means — a change of mind inseparable from faith, not a prior moral reformation — and argues that baptism is the sign of what God has already accomplished internally, not the instrument of forgiveness. Acts 2:39 is addressed directly against paedobaptist appeals, with the promise of the Spirit shown to belong to all who are effectually called, not to the physical infants of believers. The sermon closes with an exhortation to follow the Pentecost pattern: preach the gospel, baptize disciples, and teach them in the church.
Ask FGBC #24: Why is it important for a Christian to continually confess his sins?
Why must a Christian continue to confess sins after justification? This question-and-answer session draws on 1 John 1:9, 1 John 2:1, and several Psalms to distinguish between the believer's unchanging forensic standing before God and the ongoing maintenance of relational fellowship with the Father. Justification secures the status; confession restores the communion that sin fractures. The priestly intercession of Christ at the Father's right hand is the ground of that ongoing access, and all confession is ultimately designed to locate glory upon the Savior.
The Priority of the Gospel for the Apostle
Paul's imprisonment in Rome, far from silencing the gospel, became the occasion for its advance — to the Praetorian Guard, and through the emboldened preaching of the wider brotherhood. Philippians 1:12–18 presents a progress report that reveals Paul's singular priority: the proclamation of Christ, regardless of the motives of those who preach him or the circumstances that surround the preacher. The sermon works through the paradox of fruitful suffering, the anatomy of bad and good ministerial motivation, and the theology of providence that sustains both. The congregation is called to the same pattern — faithfulness and perseverance to the end, interpreting all circumstances through the lens of God's sovereign purpose for the gospel.
2LCF Chapter 27 – Of the Communion of Saints
The communion of saints, as confessed in 2LCF Chapter 27, is grounded in the believer's union with Christ by the Spirit and through faith — a union that conveys participation in His graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory without any divinization of the creature or diminishment of Christ's divinity. From that vertical union flows a horizontal obligation: holy fellowship in corporate worship, mutual edification through rightly ordered spiritual gifts, and material relief distributed according to ability and necessity. A necessary qualification guards the confession against both spiritual individualism and collectivist error: the communion of saints neither licenses neglect of public worship nor grants any person a right to another's private property, placing both socialism and communism in direct conflict with the Eighth and Tenth Commandments.
The Gospel's Irreplaceable Value
Galatians 1:6–10 confronts every generation with the irreplaceable value of the gospel by exposing three responses to its perversion: astonishment, abhorrence, and anathema. The Judaizers who troubled the Galatian churches were not offering a different gospel but no gospel at all — a metastrophe that renders God less holy than he is, man less sinful than he is, and Christ inglorious and his work useless. Justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, or there is no justification before the God of heaven and earth. The sermon closes with a call to Pauline vigilance in protecting gospel purity and to seek God's approval rather than man's.
The Believer's Commitment to the Lord
Proverbs 3:5–6 issues three demands upon the believer: an entire commitment of wholehearted trust in the Lord, an exclusive commitment that repudiates reliance on one's own darkened understanding, and an exhaustive commitment that acknowledges God in every circumstance and station of life. The sermon traces the doctrine of total depravity as the necessary background for the prohibition against self-reliance, exposing three characteristic expressions of that self-reliance — autonomy, rejection of godly parental counsel, and reception of ungodly influences — before concluding with the promise that God will direct the paths of those who acknowledge Him. The practical summons is to employ the ordinary means of grace — Scripture, prayer, corporate worship, and family instruction — as the concrete shape of a life committed to trusting the sovereign God.
The Love of Christ and Love to One Another
John 15:9–11 presents the love of Christ for his disciples as the pattern, precept, and purpose of the Christian life. The Father's love for the Son — infinite, eternal, and unchangeable — is the very measure of Christ's love for his people, a love that is not conditional upon the disciples' obedience but is rather the ground from which obedience springs. Keeping Christ's commandments is not the cause of the disciple's acceptance before God but the consequence of justification freely received: the blood and righteousness of Christ alone secure standing with the Father. The sermon closes with an urgent call to unbelievers to cease searching for joy in creatures and to come to Christ, in whom fullness of joy is found both now and in glory.
The Anatomy of a Letter's Main Content
Hebrews 10:19–25 grounds three congregational exhortations in the finished work of Christ as the new covenant's great high priest. The once-for-all sacrifice of Christ gives believers boldness to enter the holiest, the faithfulness of the God who promises gives ground for an unwavering confession, and the special presence of Christ among his gathered people makes the assembling of the saints the highest privilege available in this world. The sermon calls believers to reflect constantly on the person and work of Christ, to hold fast the confession of their hope without wavering, and to consider one another by refusing to forsake the assembly.
The Apostle Paul, Part 4: His Doctrinal Legacy
The doctrinal legacy of the Apostle Paul is surveyed across seven theological themes: the comprehensive nature of sin and depravity, the incarnation of the divine Son of God, the sovereignty of the triune God in salvation, amazing grace, justification by faith alone, sanctification in union with Christ, and a simple and glorious eschatology. Paul's writings are shown to move consistently from the gravity of man's ruin to the glory of God's redeeming grace in Christ. The sermon closes with a direct call to believers to be built up in the knowledge of the gospel, and to those outside of Christ to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
The Believer's Race, Part 2
Hebrews 12:2 presents Jesus as the supreme object of faith for the believer running the Christian race. This sermon examines five dimensions of Christ to which the runner is directed: His person, His work as author and finisher of the faith, His mission under the covenant of redemption, His suffering and shame on the cross, and His exaltation to the right hand of God. The central pastoral application is that the believer neither enters nor sustains the race by personal effort, but by faith in Christ alone — and that the pattern of the cross preceding the crown should brace believers for mounting opposition to their identification with Jesus.
The Wedding Of Lucas Hall & Ellis Suhertan
Marriage is ordained by God for mutual companionship, chaste living, and child rearing, but its deepest meaning is as a gospel mystery: a sign of Christ's sacrificial love for his unlovely bride, the church. Expounding Ephesians 5:22–33, the sermon sets forth two headings — the sacrifice of the Groom, who gave himself to cleanse and sanctify an undeserving people, and the Splendor of the Bride, who is made holy and without blemish through faith in Christ alone. Earthly weddings are a foretaste of the marriage supper of the Lamb, when the church will be presented perfect before her Bridegroom. Lucas and Ellis are charged to image this covenant reality: the husband to die for his wife as Christ died for the church, and the wife to submit to her husband as the church submits to Christ.
The Righteousness of David
David's declaration in 2 Samuel 22:21 — 'The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness' — presents an apparent contradiction for anyone who knows his history of adultery, murder, and failure of justice in his own household. This sermon works through that tension by examining the theology underlying David's claim: his righteousness is not a personal moral achievement but the imputed righteousness of Christ received by faith alone, the same doctrine Paul draws from David's own Psalm 32 when arguing for justification in Romans 4. The sermon concludes with a call to imitate David not merely in doctrine but in appetite — in his fierce love for public worship, the means of grace, and the presence of God.
2LCF Chapter 16 - Of Good Works
Good works are only such as God has commanded in His holy word, proceeding from a heart purified by faith through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit — never the ground of justification, but the necessary fruit of it. This study of 2LCF Chapter 16 examines the definition, foundation, imperfection, non-meritorious nature, and acceptability of good works, set against Roman Catholic supererogation and any scheme that makes works a cause or increase of justification. Good works are accepted by God solely through union with Christ the mediator, and their purpose is the manifesting of thankfulness, the strengthening of assurance, the edifying of brethren, and the adorning of the gospel.
The Departure of Christ, Part 2
John 14:29–31 grounds the disciples' faith in Christ's predictive prophecy, his victory over the devil, and his loving obedience to the Father. Jesus announces his departure in advance so that when it comes to pass the disciples will believe — both that he is the object of saving faith and that he is the second person of the triune God. The cross simultaneously displays the Father's love for the world and the Son's love for the Father, and the resurrection and ascension secure every blessing the departing Christ promises his people. The sermon closes with a call to find stability not in practical strategies but in the knowledge of the triune God and the peace Christ himself gives by the Spirit.
The Ground of Christian Love
What is the ground and shape of the command to 'love one another fervently with a pure heart'? Expounding 1 Peter 1:22–25, this sermon works through three movements: the exhortation to fervent, sincere Christian love; the foundation of that love in the new birth wrought through the incorruptible Word; and the motivation for that love in the stark contrast between the transient glory of man and the enduring Word of the Lord. The sermon draws on 1 Corinthians 13 and Romans 13 to define love's character and content, and closes with the assurance that the divine promise sealed in the gospel is itself imperishable — and therefore the sufficient ground for fervency in loving the brethren.
2LCF Chapter 15 - Of Repentance Unto Life and Salvation
The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 15, treats repentance not as a human achievement that merits divine favor but as a sovereign gift granted by God in effectual calling, rooted in the covenant of grace, and ratified by the active and passive obedience of Jesus Christ. The chapter distinguishes saving repentance — an evangelical, Spirit-wrought change of mind toward sin — from both mere Judas-like sorrow and the moralistic performance of good works in place of bad. Five structural concerns of the chapter are examined in sequence: the place, necessity, outflow, duration and duty, and result of repentance, culminating in the assurance that no sin is so great as to bring damnation upon those who truly repent. Hearers are called to daily, particular repentance for known sins, to pray for strength and supplies of the Spirit, and to embrace the ministry of reconciliation as the abiding means by which God renews sinners and saints alike.
The Blessing of Communion with God
John 14:19–24 sets before the disciples the blessing of communion with the triune God as the ground of their mission and perseverance. Jesus distinguishes what the world cannot see — the significance of his life, death, and resurrection — from what believers perceive by faith: imputed righteousness, substitutionary atonement, and life grounded in his own. The sermon traces two movements: the believer's communion with Christ (vv. 19–21), including the blessing of eternal life and the blessing of obedience-born love, and the triune God's communion with the believer (vv. 22–24), where the plural pronoun 'we will come and make our home' discloses Father, Son, and Spirit indwelling the justified. The chief application is that sanctification — love to Christ expressed in keeping his commandments — is the natural reflex of justification, not its condition.
2LCF Chapter 13 - Of Sanctification
Second London Confession of Faith Chapter 13 examines sanctification as an inseparable fruit of justification, rooted entirely in the sovereign grace of God rather than human merit or striving. The confession teaches that sanctification is real and personal moral transformation wrought by the Holy Spirit through the Word, yet remains imperfect in this life — a continual war between flesh and Spirit in which remaining corruption may at times prevail. The critical distinction between justification (Christ's forensic work for us) and sanctification (the Spirit's transforming work in us) guards against both Roman Catholic conflation and Protestant antinomianism, keeping Christ's righteousness alone as the ground of acceptance before God.
The Departure of Paul
Paul's final written words in 2 Timothy 4:6–8 disclose the mind of a man at the eleventh hour of his life: conscious of imminent martyrdom, yet unshaken in confidence. The sermon works through three movements — the apostle's present situation as a drink offering poured out (v. 6), his past perseverance in fight, race, and faith (v. 7), and his future hope in the crown of righteousness (v. 8). Central to the exposition is the insistence that the crown of righteousness is not a reward for performance but a confirmation of justification by faith alone, the imputed righteousness of Christ conveyed freely by the righteous judge. The application presses every believer to live now in such a way that the eleventh hour may be faced with the same God-graced confidence Paul displays here.