One problem with suffering is that we often fail to consider it until we are in the midst of it. In those moments, we are unlikely to hear anything over the roar of our pain. Thankfully, books like this one take us through these issues before we face them, answering real questions for real situations. It takes suffering out of the academic realm and frames it squarely in terms of how it applies to our suffering.  

It isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory and his people’s good. [42]

In order for Jesus to risk making a prediction that Peter would deny him three times before dawn (remember: in the Old Testament, a prophet was discredited as God’s spokesman if all of his predictions did not come true), the circumstances that God would have had to orchestrate would have included his ensuring that Peter would be confronted with questions about his relationship with Jesus exactly three times. And how could God ensure this without at least potentially overriding the freedom of the questioners to ensure that result? [52]

It is only after God has regenerated us that we possess true freedom of the will, for it is only after our spiritual rebirth that we are able through the power of God’s Spirit living within us to choose anything other than sin. [60]

Scripture both assumes and asserts that we are to take more than our wants and desires into consideration, with the understanding that if his law runs against our wants and desires, then we are to choose to follow his law rather than satisfy our wants and desires. And, according to Scripture, every human being knows this. [61]

Our Lord’s crucifixion is the supreme instance of how God ordains real evil for his own glory and his children’s good: in that case, the most awful act ever done—the crucifixion by wicked yet responsible men of God’s only Son, “the Holy and Righteous One” who is the very “Author of life”—was and is also the most wonderful event that has ever occurred because it was through Christ’s utterly unjust and undeserved crucifixion and death that God was reconciling the world to himself. [66] 

TOP

Can Christians know they are truly saved? Can we be confident in what God has promised? Talbot explains that, while our primary assurance lies in the faithfulness of the One who has made these promises to His people, we can also find confirmation of faith in the evidence of our lives. He briefly examines what Scripture reveals as the tests of conversion (namely ongoing faith and repentance) and how to identify those qualities, or their lack.  

True conversion is more of an ongoing activity than a onetime experience. It is the act of deliberately and repeatedly turning from vanity, sin, and Satan to serve the true and living God. [16]

American Christianity tends toward a kind of ‘easy-believism.’ The Gospel is often presented in a way that suggests that someone is saved as soon as he or she has simply ‘accepted’ Jesus as Savior, even if that ‘acceptance’ never manifests itself in the emotional and volitional recentering of that person’s entire life. But this is actually the paradigm of the sort of dead and fruitless faith that the whole New Testament condemns. [28]

As Adam’s children, we are not just spiritually faint; we are spiritually dead. Consequently, we can neither hear nor respond to God’s gospel call. God must bring us back to spiritual life in order for us to be able to grasp and embrace what His Son has done. Only then can we truly repent and believe. At that very moment God declares us righteous. In regeneration God revives the spiritually dead so that they may then exercise saving faith and He may then apply to them all the benefits of Christ’s work. [30]

Sanctification, like conversion, involves conscious and deliberate choices on our part, choices that arise out of what God is doing within us but are our choices nonetheless. Hence it is entirely appropriate to find our Lord and His apostles urging and indeed commanding us to put off our old selves. [41]

If we do not manifest the signs of the Spirit, it is presumptuous for us to claim that we are saved, even if we have made a profession of faith in Jesus at some point in our lives. [44] 

TOP