Theological term
Revelatory Condescension
4 sermons · All terms
2LCF Chapter 7 - Of God's Covenant
The doctrine of God's covenant is not merely one column in the architecture of systematic theology — it is the architecture itself, the organizing and unifying principle of the entire Bible. This session works through 2LCF Chapter 7, examining the ground of covenant necessity in the creator-creature distinction, the nature of God's voluntary and revelatory condescension, the occasion and provisions of the covenant of grace, and the progressive revelation of that covenant from the protevangelium to its formal ratification in the New Testament. The distinctively Baptist formulation — using 'revelation' rather than 'administration' — reflects the conviction that the covenant of grace was not formally and properly a covenant until Christ ratified it in his blood, a distinction with direct bearing on the doctrine of baptism and the composition of the church.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity, Part 1
Eternal life consists in knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (John 17:3), which means the knowledge of God is not optional for Christians but is the very substance of their salvation. This session opens a multi-week confession study of 2LCF Chapter 2 (Of God and of the Holy Trinity) by establishing what theology proper is — the study of the being, attributes, and works of the triune God — and why it is primary: it is grounded in God's creative purpose, commanded in Scripture, promised in the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34), and urgently needed in the face of false religion and bad theology. Six preliminary interpretive helps are then introduced to prepare the mind for rigorous and reverent engagement with the doctrine of God, including the necessity of recognising the ontological chasm between Creator and creature, God's revelatory condescension, and the joint propriety of affirmations and denials.
Divine Impassibility (2LCF 2.1)
Divine impassibility — the classical Christian teaching that God does not undergo inner emotional changes of state, whether from without by his creatures or from within by himself — is the subject of this exposition of 2nd London Baptist Confession chapter 2, paragraph 1. The confession's phrase 'without passions' is shown to be an entailment of divine immutability, simplicity, and aseity: a God who could be moved, excited, or disturbed would be neither most absolute nor self-sufficient. Biblical texts establishing divine immutability ground the argument, while the phenomenon of anthropopathism in Scripture (God 'grieved in his heart,' God 'crying out like a woman in labor') is explained through the category of revelatory condescension — God lisping, as it were, to finite creatures — not as evidence of genuine emotional change in the divine being. The doctrine is shown to yield concrete pastoral fruit: it protects the uniqueness of the incarnation, grounds the believer's comfort in a God who is most loving without ebb or flow, and fuels doxology.
Of God and the Holy Trinity (2LCF 2.1-3)
What does it mean to confess that the Lord our God is but one only living and true God, infinite in being and perfection? This session opens a multi-week study of 2nd London Baptist Confession chapter 2, introducing the doctrine of God (theology proper) with attention to divine singularity (Christian monotheism against polytheism, monolatry, and tritheism) and the three divine omniperfections, treating omnipotence in particular depth. Five interpretive cautions frame the study: the ontological chasm between Creator and creature, the legitimacy of biblical speculation, the revelatory condescension of God in anthropomorphic language, the necessity of reading any text in light of the whole canon, and the call to sustained mental exertion in theological study.