The Sufficiency of Christ and the Sufficiency of Scripture

Great article on the sufficiency of Christ and Scripture. Praise God for His care and mercy to us! 


"Scripture is enough because the work of Christ is enough. They stand or fall together."
The Sufficiency of Christ and the Sufficiency of Scripture

Session 2 of Clarus '13

This post is a summary of Paul Tripp’s message from Friday evening at Clarus, March 8, “Self Examination Is a Community Project,” from Hebrews 3:13.

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What is happening in the little moments of your life? Dr. Tripp explained that we don’t live in the big moments of life but in the 10,000 little moments that shape our character. If God doesn’t rule us in the utterly mundane, He doesn’t rule us because the utterly mundane is where our address is.

To help us see the importance of relationships, Dr. Tripp taught from two passages. In 2 Peter 1:3-9, Peter is proposing that it is possible to be a true believer in Christ and yet be ineffective and unfruitful. Three questions naturally arise from this passage. First, Who are these people Peter is talking about? In a way, Peter is talking about all believers in Christ as being ineffective and unfruitful. Second, Why are these people ineffective and unproductive? In verse 9, Peter says: “…having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins,” and Dr. Tripp pointed out that the root of the issue is identity. If we forget who we are, we will quit pursuing what belongs to us in Christ. And third, How does this happen? Dr. Tripp suggests that we become can be ineffective and unproductive by evidence-denial – we deny our need for God’s grace in our lives. Evidence denial then leads to grace-devaluing. If the person doesn’t see the need for grace, grace has no value, therefore, that person becomes a grace-devaluer. Grace is only valuable to the person who knows that he or she is a sinner. In asking what all of this has to do with relationships, Dr. Tripp emphatically answered, “Everything.”

Dr. Tripp then led us to the second passage, Hebrews 3:12-13, which is both a warning and a call to believers in Jesus. The author of Hebrews is indicating a declining progression of an evil and then unbelieving heart that leads you to fall away from the living God. This is an alarming spiritual decline, but how does this happen? Dr. Tripp explained that it is because we are all extremely skilled, self-swindlers. We convince ourselves that our sin really isn’t that bad, and we harden our hearts. What once bothered us doesn’t bother us anymore. We aren’t open to change because we have become too satisfied where we are. The author of Hebrews then tells us we harden our hearts because of sin. Sin is deceitful. We become spiritually blind and we are blind to our blindness. Even though the power of sin has been broken, we can’t clearly see ourselves because the presence of sin still remains.

What then has God provided for the hard-hearted believer? He has provided help in the form of relationships. Hebrews 3:13a says, “But exhort one another every day.” We need to be encouraged and exhorted daily, so that we won’t be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Dr. Tripp explained that God has designed people as “instruments of seeing” for our lives. Every day we all are capable of being significantly blinded to our own condition, so we need “an intentionally intrusive, grace-based, Christ-centered, redemptive community” that is able to see in us what we cannot see in ourselves.

Dr. Tripp offered some great applications to these passages. The first is to honestly ask ourselves if there is a person in our life who can be that “instrument of seeing.” Can you name that person? The second is a prayer that we can all consider implementing into our daily prayer life: Confession– I am a person in desperate need of help; Pray – that in His grace He would send helpers our way; Cry for help – that we would have the humility to receive the help when it comes.

We can come to our Lord Jesus in our time of need because all of our rejection has been fully borne by Him on the cross. May it be so, that we run to our King Jesus for His glory and for our good.

CLARUS 2013

Just a few more days until Desert Springs Church's annual theology conference called Clarus. The conference is completely sold out, but the sessions will be available in audio form on the church's website shortly after the conference. I am very excited for this conference and looking forward to sitting under the teaching of our very qualified speakers, Paul Tripp and Timothy Lane.

Clarus

Here is how DSC’s teaching elder, Pastor Ryan Kelly, explains what Clarus is:

Since 2005 Desert Springs Church (DSC) has held an annual conference weekend with a guest speaker and a focused topic. In 2008 we started giving it a name, Clarus—which is Latin for bright, clear, or radiant. We think that word aptly reflects our intentions with this conference: that God and His truth would be made more clear, more radiant to us, and more powerfully penetrating in us. To that end we set aside a full weekend every year for fellowship, singing, prayer, and instruction about God’s words and ways. In 2011, Clarus became a Regional Conference of The Gospel Coalition.

Clarus 2013

Ryan introduces this year’s theme:

God’s plan for our redemption is not merely to reconcile us to Himself, but to point us to those who share this reconciliation, the church. In Christ, Christians become part of a new family.

. . .Roughly 50 times the New Testament tells Christians to do something one to another. We sometimes refer to these as the one-anothers—e.g., love one another, serve one another, pray for one another, stir up one another, encourage one another, sing to one another, etc. Such commands simply cannot be done alone. We need partners. We need a partnership—which is really what “fellowship” is.

. . .To that end, we Christians meet regularly for worship and teaching; we read the Scriptures and pray, alone and in our families; we read good books and recommend them to others; we keep working at these relationships and our ministry to each other.

Dr. Tripp and Dr. Lane are not addressing a subject reserved for vocational ministers or even those involved in formal biblical counseling. They are addressing Christians with God’s Word concerning a most basic aspect of Christian discipleship: speaking the truth in love.

As Christians, we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18), and we are to also grow together (Ephesians 4:15-16). We do not do this perfectly because we are sinful people in need of a Savior. We hurt those that we love the most; we isolate ourselves from others because we don’t want our hearts exposed; we may put on a “good face” when we are around others, but inside we are in utter turmoil; we worship our own kingdoms. Without living in true Christ-centered biblical community, we will wallow in our failures and sins and live as those who have no hope.

But, of course, God calls us to something greater. He calls us to Himself! He calls us through the truth of the gospel, the hope of lasting change and the grace of God. In tune with Matthew 6:33, we seek His kingdom and His righteousness and in so doing, Jesus knits His church together because we are seeking after Him, not our own interests. He exposes our hearts and our sin for the good of His children and for the glory of God. We then let others in because we see that we need Jesus and each other. As Dr. Tripp and Dr. Lane remind us, “change is a community project.”

At DSC, we have been greatly helped by Dr. Tripp and Dr. Lane’s resources.How People Change and Instruments In the Redeemer’s Hands have been used here to train our membership in biblical counseling. This fall, our Community Groups worked through Paul Tripp’s marriage DVD series, What Did You Expect?: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage.

On a personal note, as a lay-biblical counselor at DSC, I am very excited to be part of a church that upholds the primacy of the Word in the pulpit, but also as central to the life of every Christian. And I’m thankful for this annual conference and the blessing that it has been to our church. Having Dr. Lane and Dr. Tripp teach will serve as an invaluable resource and encouragement, not only for the DSC family, but also for those from around the Southwest region who will join us. My hope is that this conference will remind us of our great need of Jesus both individually but also corporately. Christ is indeed the head of his church. By God’s grace, we are praying for the church in the Southwest region to be encouraged in the all-important work of one-anothering the Word.

For more information on this year’s conference, including talk titles and registration, visit clarusabq.com.