Theological term
Soteriology
23 sermons · All terms
Ask FGBC 68: Are Reformed Baptists More Baptist or More Reformed?
The question 'Are Reformed Baptists more Baptist or more Reformed?' draws out a careful answer: the two labels are not competing loyalties but successive correctives — Reformed Christianity corrects medieval Roman Catholic and Lutheran error, while the Baptist stream carries the Reformation's logic further in ecclesiology, the church-state relation, and liberty of conscience. Which emphasis comes to the foreground depends entirely on the conversation partner: against Christian nationalism the Baptist distinctives press harder; against Arminian dispensationalism the Reformed heritage dominates. The panel settles on a working formulation: Reformed in soteriology and theology proper, Baptistic in ecclesiology, and — with the addition of what the Reformation did not yet reform — small-c Catholic, Reformed, and Baptist.
The Gifts Given by Christ
John 14:25–27 presents two gifts Christ gives his disciples on the eve of his departure: the Holy Spirit and his peace. The sermon expounds the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, the Spirit's specific work of teaching and bringing Scripture to remembrance in the apostles, and the distinction between Christ's objective, lasting peace and the transient peace the world offers. The practical weight falls on the call to displace carnal fear — which the sermon argues signals bad theology, lack of kingdom priority, and ultimately endangers the soul — with the peace that flows from knowing the triune God.
The Introduction to the Book of Titus
Titus 1:1–4 contains one of Paul's longer epistolary introductions, and the reason is pastoral and strategic: Paul is authenticating the ministry of Titus among a difficult, newly-planted congregation on Crete by anchoring his own apostolic authority in the eternal decree of God. The sermon surveys the historical and biographical background of the pastoral epistles before working through Paul's self-designation as bondservant and apostle, his two-fold apostolic purpose (the salvation and sanctification of God's elect), and the grounding of that purpose in the covenant of redemption purposed before time began. The greeting's triad of grace, mercy, and peace — flowing from both God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, each called 'Savior' — opens a rich vein of covenant theology, Christology, and soteriology that will run through the entire book.
The Council at Jerusalem, Part 4
Acts 15:22–35 records the Jerusalem Council's formal response to the Judaizing heresy: the drafting of a letter, the commissioning of Judas Barsabbas and Silas, and the delivery of that letter to the churches of Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. The passage is expounded to show that the council's decree condemning the addition of circumcision and Mosaic ceremony to faith in Christ constitutes a decisive affirmation of justification by faith alone — not by infusing righteousness, but by pardoning sin and imputing Christ's active and passive obedience. The sermon draws out the unity achieved through doctrinal deliberation, the guidance of the Holy Spirit through ordinary means, and the courage of those who risk their lives for the name of Christ, closing with a call to look to Christ alone for salvation.
The Council at Jerusalem, Part 2
The Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 confronts the Judaizing error that Gentile salvation requires circumcision and law-keeping in addition to faith in Christ. Drawing on Peter's testimony in Acts 15:6–12 and its grounding in the Cornelius episode of Acts 10, the sermon argues that God himself made no distinction between Jew and Gentile, purifying hearts by faith alone — making any human addition to the gospel a direct testing of God. Faith is shown to be the empty hand that receives Christ's righteousness, not a virtue that earns it, and the church is called to guard the law-free gospel against every cultural or ecclesiastical supplement that would corrupt it.
The Judgment of God upon Idolaters
Romans 1:18–32 expounds Paul's indictment of Gentile idolatry as the root of all human unrighteousness, demonstrating that ungodliness — the rejection of the true and living God — inevitably produces the full range of moral disorder catalogued in verses 29–31. General revelation renders every person without excuse before God, yet it is insufficient to save; only the special revelation of the gospel, culminating in the propitiation of Romans 3:21–26, provides the antidote to mankind's idolatrous condition. The sermon traces the descent from suppressed knowledge of God through exchanged glory, divine abandonment, and catalogued vice, and closes by calling hearers to identify their own idols — theological, material, and self-oriented — and to look to Christ alone for justification.
The Benefactions of the Ascended Christ
The ascended Christ does not cease his mediatorial activity after the resurrection — he pours out benefactions upon his church. Preaching through Acts 2:22–43, this sermon examines two of three categories of those gifts: his charismatic benefactions (the gift of preachers, the act of preaching, and the Spirit's empowerment for proclamation) and his soteriological benefactions (effectual calling and the forgiveness of sins). Believers are urged to pray for their preachers, to come eager to hear the Word preached, and to give thanks daily for the grace by which God raises dead sinners to life in Christ.
2LCF Chapter 31 - Of the State of Man After Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead
2 London Baptist Confession chapter 31 surveys the state of the soul between death and the final resurrection, and the resurrection of both the just and the unjust. The chapter distinguishes the intermediate state — in which the souls of the righteous are immediately with Christ in paradise while the souls of the wicked are cast into hell — from the final resurrection, when body and soul will be reunited and raised to honor or dishonor. The sermon refutes soul sleep, limbus patrum, limbus infantum, and purgatory as departures from Scripture, arguing that purgatory is an affront to the finished atonement of Christ. Hearers are called to find comfort in the bodily resurrection, to resist Gnostic tendencies that denigrate the body, and to embrace the simplicity of biblical eschatology rather than elevating millennial schemes to tests of orthodoxy.
A Psalm of Habakkuk
Habakkuk 3 is a psalm composed by the prophet on the brink of the Babylonian devastation of Judah, and it shows what it looks like when a man lives out the principle of Habakkuk 2:4 — 'the just shall live by his faith.' Working through the psalm's three movements — petition, remembrance, and refuge — the sermon traces four gifts that faith provides in tumultuous times: rest in the day of trouble, joy in God amid devastation, stability grounded in God's strength, and material for the corporate worship of the church. The evangel is pressed home at the close: no human righteousness commends a sinner to God, and the sole instrument by which a sinful soul enters saving union with Christ is faith receiving and resting on Christ and His imputed righteousness.
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.
The Usefulness of Scripture
Paul's claim in 2 Timothy 3:16–17 that all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable is examined across four categories of usefulness — doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness — before turning to Scripture's specific function in completing and thoroughly equipping the man of God for every good work. The sermon challenges the anti-doctrinal sentiment prevalent in contemporary evangelicalism, arguing that indifference to biblical doctrine is indifference to God himself. Ministers in particular are shown to be completed not by leadership models or charismatic gifts but by deep saturation in the word of God. The hearer is called to approach Scripture not as a duty to discharge but as a daily feast — mining its treasures with diligence and gratitude.
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
Peter's question about the limits of forgiveness — 'up to seven times?' — draws from Christ the parable of a servant forgiven an astronomically unpayable debt who then seizes a fellow servant over a trifling sum. This sermon works through Matthew 18:21–35 in three movements: the setting of Peter's question, the three scenes of the parable itself, and the concluding verdict of verse 35. The central argument is that the forgiven community must be a forgiving community — not by counting to 490, but by forgiving without counting — and that a professing Christian who withholds forgiveness from a repentant brother thereby gives evidence that he himself has never truly received the grace of God.
The Pursuit of Christian Unity
Ephesians 4:1–3 commands believers to walk worthy of their calling by cultivating four virtues — lowliness, gentleness, long-suffering, and forbearing love — as the means by which the church maintains the Spirit-wrought unity already given to it. The sermon distinguishes this genuine, truth-grounded unity from any ecumenicism that achieves togetherness by dissolving doctrinal conviction. Because the Holy Spirit is the author of church unity and the triune God is its ultimate foundation, to abandon the pursuit of it is to dishonor God himself. Hearers are pressed to give diligent, active effort to preserve what the Spirit has produced, and those outside of Christ are reminded that Christian ethics, including the pursuit of unity, can only flow from salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification, Part 2
The forensic doctrine of justification — God's one-time legal declaration that the sinner is righteous on the sole ground of Christ's imputed righteousness — faces persistent assault in every era. This session surveys three modern deviations: Arminian evangelicalism (which collapses faith into a meritorious work or relocates righteousness within the believer), the New Perspective on Paul (which reframes Paul's argument as a corrective for ethnic exclusivity rather than a remedy for the condemnation of sin), and the Federal Vision (which renders righteousness relational, conflates Christ's faithfulness with the believer's, and anticipates a future eschatological justification grounded in covenantal obedience). Against all three, Scripture and the confession insist that justification is a completed legal verdict, not a process, and that its ground is exclusively the active and passive obedience of Christ credited to the elect.
The Exceeding Riches of God's Grace
Ephesians 2:8–9 presents the doctrine of salvation as originating entirely in the triune God — elected by the Father before the foundation of the world, redeemed through the blood of the Son, and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Preached on Reformation Day, this exposition traces the grace-alone, faith-alone framework of the Five Solas back to their Pauline foundation, demonstrating that the Protestant Reformation was a recovery of plain biblical reading rather than a theological novelty. The sermon confronts the human tendency toward self-credit in salvation by exposing total depravity in Ephesians 2:1–3, so that the 'but God' of verse 4 lands with full force. Hearers are urged to abandon every ground of boasting and to look to Christ alone for salvation.
The Final Charge
The final two verses of 1 Timothy close Paul's first letter to Timothy with a charge that is as urgent as it is simple: guard the deposit and avoid the dangers. This sermon works through the nature of that deposit — the gospel of God, owned by God, entrusted to Paul and passed to Timothy and the church as stewards — and the dangers that threaten it: the profane and idle babblings of false teachers whose contradictions are falsely called knowledge. The application presses the church to see that faithful gospel preaching is inseparable from the glory of God, the edification of believers, and the salvation of sinners, and that the only power sufficient to sustain that fidelity is the grace with which Paul both opens and closes the epistle.
The Conduct of the Good Minister, Part 1
What marks a minister as truly 'good' in the sight of God? Expounding 1 Timothy 4:6–11, this sermon argues that ministerial faithfulness is defined not by popularity, giftedness, or leadership skill, but by the diligent instruction of the congregation in sound doctrine — the words of faith and good teaching. The pursuit of godliness, understood as rigorous training for the unhindered service of God, surpasses all bodily discipline because it carries promise for both the present life and the age to come. The sermon concludes by addressing the contested phrase 'Savior of all men' in verse 10, rejecting universalism and unlimited atonement in favour of a reading grounded in God's common grace and providential preservation, with special and saving grace belonging distinctively to those who believe.
The Gospel Committed to Paul
What does it mean that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners? Expounding 1 Timothy 1:15–17, this sermon traces the faithful saying of verse 15 from its roots in the eternal decree of God through the covenant of grace to its historical execution in the incarnation and atoning work of Christ. Paul's own conversion is examined as a paradigm of sovereign mercy — not a unique case, but a pattern establishing that even the chief of sinners may obtain grace — and the sermon closes with Paul's doxology as the only fitting response to the gospel of free and sovereign grace.
Thanksgiving for the Mercy of God
Psalm 103 calls every redeemed soul to deliberate, whole-hearted praise — not as a passive emotion but as a disciplined act of self-address rooted in theological memory. The sermon works through three movements: the reminder to bless God (vv. 1–2), the reasons to bless God both individually and corporately (vv. 3–18), and the universal summons extending that call to angels and all creation (vv. 19–22). Forgiveness of all iniquities stands at the head of the list of benefits, and every temporal and spiritual blessing flows from a God whose mercy is not transient like the grass of the field but everlasting to everlasting. The psalm, rightly applied in the new-covenant believer's life, keeps one near the cross, corrects the tendency toward practical atheism, and transforms ingratitude into genuine thanksgiving.
The Governing Principle of Kingdom Life
Matthew 6:31–34 sets out the governing principle of kingdom life: the disciple of Christ is to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and not to be paralyzed by the carnal anxiety that marks Gentile existence. The sermon draws a sharp contrast between those who have no doctrine of a sovereign Father and those who confess one, arguing that a Reformed understanding of God's sovereignty must extend beyond soteriology into the daily trials of earthly life. To worry about food, drink, and clothing is to live as a Gentile; to rest in the Father's knowledge of our needs, pray as Christ taught, and pursue the kingdom first is to live as a loyal subject of God's reign.
Theology and the Martyrdom of Stephen
Acts 7:51–8:4, the martyrdom of Stephen, yields five distinct theological loci for examination: prophecy, the Trinity, covenant theology, hamartiology, and soteriology. The sermon traces how Jesus's words in Matthew 23, 24, 26, and 16 are precisely fulfilled in Stephen's trial, death, and the church's subsequent scattering, vindicating the veracity of Scripture. The doctrine of total depravity is pressed hard against the stiff-necked resistance of Stephen's murderers, while the conversion of Saul — the consenting bystander who becomes the church's greatest herald — is offered as the premier exhibit of irresistible, effectual grace. The hearer is called to love the Word that predicts and fulfils, to glory in the triune God who sustained Stephen, and — if unconverted — to bend the knee to the same Christ Stephen gazed upon at the moment of his death.
Introduction to Galatians
Paul's letter to the Galatians stands as a polemic defence of justification by faith alone — a truth so foundational that its corruption, however subtle, constitutes the destruction of the gospel itself. This introductory exposition surveys the authorship, dating, and destination of the epistle, arguing for the South Galatian theory and an early date of AD 48–49, while tracing the theological threads that run through the letter: the integrity of the gospel, justification sola fide, the atoning work of Christ, and Paul's apostolic authority. The Judaizing error that provoked Paul's letter is shown to be perennially recurring — in Roman Catholic merit theology, in the New Perspective on Paul, in Federal Vision, and in the subtler forms of works-righteousness embedded in church culture. Hearers are called to rest their entire standing before God on the imputed righteousness of Christ received through faith alone, and to contend earnestly for that doctrine as Paul did.
A Faithful Saying
The phrase 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners' (1 Timothy 1:15) is not rhetorical decoration but a precise theological claim about the nature and scope of redemption. This exposition works through Paul's self-description as 'chief of sinners' — blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent man — to show that the depth of his depravity magnifies rather than diminishes the glory of sovereign, particular grace. The sermon argues that Calvinistic soteriology reduces to one confession: God saves sinners, doing everything from election to glorification, leaving no share of the decisive act to man. Hearers are called to respond to this grace with informed, exhilarated worship and to press the invitation upon every sinner who imagines himself too wretched to be saved.