Rooted in Him

07/08/2025

R.C. Sproul

29/07/2025

The Dead End of S*xual Sin
by Rosaria Butterfield

Unbelievers don’t “struggle” with same-s*x attraction. I didn’t. My love for women came with nary a struggle at all.

I had not always been a le***an, but in my late twenties, I met my first le***an lover. I was hooked and believed that I had found my real self. S*x with women was part of my life and identity, but it was not the only part — and not always the biggest part.

I simply preferred everything about women: their company, their conversation, their companionship, and the contours of their/our body. I favored the nesting, the setting up of house and home, and the building of le***an community.

As an unbelieving professor of English, an advocate of postmodernism and poststructuralism, and an opponent of all totalizing metanarratives (like Christianity, I would have added back in the day), I found peace and purpose in my life as a le***an and the q***r community I helped to create.

Conversion and Confusion
It was only after I met my risen Lord that I ever felt shame in my sin, with my s*xual attractions, and with my s*xual history.

Conversion brought with it a train wreck of contradictory feelings, ranging from liberty to shame. Conversion also left me confused. While it was clear that God forbade s*x outside of biblical marriage, it was not clear to me what I should do with the complex matrix of desires and attractions, sensibilities and senses of self that churned within and still defined me.

What is the sin of s*xual transgression? The s*x? The identity? How deep was repentance to go?

Meeting John Owen
In these newfound struggles, a friend recommended that I read an old, seventeenth-century theologian named John Owen, in a trio of his books (now brought together under the title Overcoming Sin and Temptation).

At first, I was offended to realize that what I called “who I am,” John Owen called “indwelling sin.” But I hung in there with him. Owen taught me that sin in the life of a believer manifests itself in three ways: distortion by original sin, distraction of actual day-to-day sin, and discouragement by the daily residence of indwelling sin.

Eventually, the concept of indwelling sin provided a window to see how God intended to replace my shame with hope. Indeed, John Owen’s understanding of indwelling sin is the missing link in our current cultural confusion about what s*xual sin is — and what to do about it.

As believers, we lament with the apostle Paul, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” (Romans 7:19–20). But after we lament, what should we do? How should we think about sin that has become a daily part of our identity?

Owen explained with four responses.

1. Starve It
Indwelling sin is a parasite, and it eats what you do. God’s word is poison to sin when embraced by a heart made new by the Holy Spirit. You starve indwelling sin by feeding yourself deeply on his word. Sin cannot abide in his word. So, fill your hearts and minds with Scripture.

One way that I do that is singing the Psalms. Psalm-singing, for me, is a powerful devotional practice as it helps me to melt my will into God’s and memorize his word in the process. We starve our indwelling sin by reading Scripture comprehensively, in big chunks, and by whole books at a time. This enables us to see God’s providence at work in big-picture ways.

2. Call Sin What It Is
Now that it is in the house, don’t buy it a collar and a leash and give it a sweet name. Don’t “admit” sin as a harmless (but un-housebroken) pet. Instead, confess it as an evil offense and put it out! Even if you love it! You can’t domesticate sin by welcoming it into your home.

Don’t make a false peace. Don’t make excuses. Don’t get sentimental about sin. Don’t play the victim. Don’t live by excuse-righteousness. If you bring the baby tiger into your house and name it Fluffy, don’t be surprised if you wake up one day and Fluffy is eating you alive. That is how sin works, and Fluffy knows her job. Sometimes sin lurks and festers for decades, deceiving the sinner that he really has it all under control, until it unleashes itself on everything you built, cherished, and loved.

Be wise about your choice sins and don’t coddle them. And remember that sin is not ever “who you are” if you are in Christ. In Christ, you are a son or daughter of the King; you are royalty. You do battle with sin because it distorts your real identity; you do not define yourself by these sins that are original with your consciousness and daily present in your life.

3. Extinguish Indwelling Sin by Killing It
Sin is not only an enemy, says Owen. Sin is at enmity with God. Enemies can be reconciled, but there is no hope for reconciliation for anything at enmity with God. Anything at enmity with God must be put to death. Our battles with sin draw us closer in union with Christ. Repentance is a new doorway into God’s presence and joy.

Indeed, our identity comes from being crucified and resurrected with Christ:

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. (Romans 6:4–6)

Satan will use our indwelling sin as blackmail, declaring that we cannot be in Christ and sin in heart or body like this. In those moments, we remind him that he is right about one thing only: our sin is indeed sin. It is indeed transgression against God and nothing else.

But Satan is dead wrong about the most important matter. In repentance, we stand in the risen Christ. And the sin that we have committed (and will commit) is covered by his righteousness. But fight we must. To leave sin alone, says Owen, is to let sin grow: “not to conquer it is to be conquered by it.”

4. Daily Cultivate Your New Life in Christ
God does not leave us alone to fight the battle in shame and isolation. Instead, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the soul of each believer is “vivified.” “To vivify” means to animate, or to give life to. Vivification complements mortification (to put to death), and by so doing, it enables us to see the wide angle of sanctification, which includes two aspects:

1) Deliverance from the desire of those choice sins, experienced when the grace of obedience gives us the “expulsive power of a new affection” (to quote Thomas Chalmers).

2) Humility over the fact that we daily need God’s constant flow of grace from heaven, and that no matter how sin tries to delude us, hiding our sin is never the answer. Indeed, the desire to be strong enough in ourselves, so that we can live independently of God, is the first sin, the essence of sin, and the mother of all sin.

Owen’s missing link is for believers only. He says, “Unless a man be regenerate (born again), unless he be a believer, all attempts that he can make for mortification [of sin] . . . are to no purpose. In vain he shall use many remedies, [but] he shall not be healed.”

What then should an unbeliever do? Cry out to God for the Holy Spirit to give him a new heart and convert his soul: “mortification [of sin] is not the present business of unregenerate men. God calls them not to it as yet; conversion is their work — the conversion of the whole soul — not the mortification of this or that particular lust.”

Freed for Joy
In the writings of John Owen, I was shown how and why the promises of s*xual fulfillment on my own terms were the antithesis of what I had once fervently believed. Instead of liberty, my s*xual sin was enslavement. This seventeenth-century Puritan revealed to me how my le***an desires and sensibilities were dead-end joy killers.

Today, I now stand in a long line of godly women — the Mary Magdalene line. The gospel came with grace, but demanded irreconcilable war. Somewhere on this bloody battlefield, God gave me an uncanny desire to become a godly woman, covered by God, hedged in by his word and his will. This desire bled into another one: to become, if the Lord willed, the godly wife of a godly husband.

And then I noticed it.

Union with the risen Christ meant that everything else was nailed to the cross. I couldn’t get my former life back if I wanted it. At first, this was terrifying, but when I peered deep into the abyss of my terror, I found peace.

With peace, I found that the gospel is always ahead of you. Home is forward. Today, by God’s amazing grace alone, I am a chosen part of God’s family, where God cares about the details of my day, the math lessons and the spilled macaroni and cheese, and most of all, for the people, the image-bearers of his precious grace, the man who calls me beloved, and the children who call me mother.

27/07/2025

24/07/2025

THE BLAME THAT SPEAKS OF OUR FALL

He stood in the garden, trembling, not from holy fear, but from the shame that now dr***d him like a withered fig leaf. When God questioned him, he did not cry for mercy. He did not weep over what was lost. He pointed. He blamed. And the very first words from fallen man were not of confession but accusation: “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat” (Genesis 3:12).

In that single reply, the depth of our corruption was laid bare. He did not just blame the woman. He blamed God. And that is what sin always does. It refuses to own guilt. It will not bow its head in repentance. It will not kneel before holiness. It must find another to carry the weight. And if no other man is near, it dares to lift a trembling hand toward heaven itself.

Adam did not plead for a way back. He did not cry out for a covering. He did not ask for grace. Instead, he indicted the Giver. “The woman You gave.” The gift became the excuse. And God, the Giver of every good thing, was made to stand trial in the twisted logic of a soul now separated from Him. What began with a longing to be like God in knowledge ends in the unthinkable, trying to make God like man in blame.

This is not a distant tale of a man long gone. It is the mirror before every one of us. We sin, and we excuse it. We fall, and we say others pushed us. We break God’s law, and we dress our rebellion in the robes of victimhood. We complain of temptation’s strength, of circumstances beyond control, of hearts too weak, and lives too burdened. But we rarely say what David finally said: “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight” (Psalm 51:4).

We have inherited Adam’s tongue. And worse, we have inherited his heart. For in every generation, man does not merely commit sin but he tries to make God complicit in it. When things fall apart, we question His goodness. When consequences arrive, we argue with His justice. When grace is offered, we want it on our terms. The pot blames the Potter, and dust raises its voice against glory.

There is a terrifying symmetry here. Adam was made in the image of God. But now, in his fall, he wants God remade in his image, do you get that? Man wants a God who shares blame, who overlooks sin, who can be charged when man errs. And that is what every false gospel offers today. A god who excuses sin. A god who feels bad for you. A god who, like Adam, shifts blame, because he cannot bear to condemn anyone. But that is not the God of the Bible.

The true God is holy. He will not be pulled into man’s courtroom. He will not share guilt, nor dismiss justice. And yet, in the mystery of grace, He did send forth His Son, the second Adam, not to point a finger, but to bear the curse. Christ did not say, “The humans You created.” He said, “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34). Christ came into the world as the Lamb to be slain. And He did not blame. He bore.

But only those who stop excusing themselves will run to Him. Only those who cry, “Woe is me, I am undone” (Isaiah 6:5), will be clothed in His righteousness. The gospel begins with truth, the truth about us. We are not victims. We are rebels. We did not just stumble. We fell with clenched fists. We did not simply eat fruit. We broke fellowship.

So today, if we hear His voice, let us not harden our hearts like Adam. Let us not shift the weight of our sin upon others or toward heaven. Let us come broken, silent, and undone. Let the covering not be leaves but the blood of the Lamb. Let the cry not be blame, but mercy. And let our boast be in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Because the first Adam blamed. But the second Adam bled. And only one of them can save us.

He, who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Jeremiah Knight

The Reformation Resurgence

23/07/2025

8 Sins You Commit Whenever You Look at P**n
By Tim Challies

We know that po*******hy is an ugly and harmful sin. We know that those who indulge in p**n have committed the sin of lust, but there is so much more to it than that. When you open your browser and begin to look at those images and videos, you are sinning in ways that go far beyond lust. Here are 8 sins you commit when you look at p**n.

In the moment you begin to look at p**n, you have allowed it to replace God as essential to your happiness.

1. You commit the sin of idolatry.
All sin is idolatry, an attempt to find joy and satisfaction not in God himself but in what God forbids (Exodus 20:3-6). Matt Papa says it well: “An idol, simply put, is anything that is more important to you than God. It is anything that has outweighed God in your life—anything that you love, trust, or obey more than God—anything that has replaced God as essential to your happiness.” In the moment you begin to look at p**n, you have allowed it to replace God as essential to your happiness. You’ve committed the sin of idolatry.

2. You commit the sin of adultery.
This is the most obvious sin you commit when you use p**n. In Matthew 5, Jesus draws a clear connection between lust and adultery. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (27-28). P**nography is lust and exists to foster lust. But lust is simply a form of the wider sin of adultery, the deed or desire to be s*xually involved with someone other than your spouse.

3. You commit the sin of deceit.
Deceit is the act of concealing or misrepresenting your actions. Because po*******hy generates shame, you will hide it, cover it up, or refuse to confess it. When you erase your browsing history to keep your parents from finding out, when you use it in secret to keep your spouse from learning about your addiction, when you refuse to proactively confess it to an accountability partner, when you participate in the Lord’s Supper even though you are unrepentantly given over to it, you are practicing deceit. And the Bible warns of the dire consequences: “No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes” (Psalm 101:7).

4. You commit the sin of theft.
The p**n industry is being badly damaged by piracy, by people illegally distributing copyrighted material. Some estimates say that for every 1 video that is downloaded legally, 5 are downloaded illegally. Fully 60 percent of all illegal downloads are of p**nographic content. While we can be glad that the industry is in dire straits, we have no right to participate in such theft, for God says clearly, “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15). When you use p**n, you are almost definitely watching material that has been stolen and, in that way, you are participating in its theft.

5. You commit the sin of greed.
S*xual sin is greed, a form of taking advantage of another person to defraud them of something that is rightly theirs. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul insists “that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter [of s*xual sin], because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you” (6). The word translated “wrong” in this context refers to greedily taking something from someone else. It is to allow greed to motivate fraud, to unfairly and illegitimately use another person for your ignoble purposes.

6. You commit the sin of sloth.
We are called in all of life to “redeem the time,” to understand that we live short little lives and are responsible before God to make the most of every moment (Ephesians 5:16). Sloth is laziness, an unwillingness to use time well, and reflects a willingness to use time for destructive instead of constructive purposes. In that way po*******hy is slothful, a misuse of time. It is using precious moments, hours, and days to harm others instead of help them, to foster sin instead of kill sin, to backslide instead of grow, to pursue an idol instead of the living God.

7. You commit the sin of s*xual assault.
A person who drives a getaway car for a band of bank robbers will rightly be charged with murder for anyone who is killed in committing that crime. The person who voluntarily watches s*xual assault for purposes of titillation is rightly guilty of that s*xual assault. And a nauseating quantity of po*******hy is violent in nature, displaying men taking advantage of women. Sometimes these women have volunteered for such degradation and sometimes they are forced or r***d into it. To watch such horrifying s**t is to be a participant in it and to bear the moral blemish of it.

8. You commit the sin of ignoring the Holy Spirit.
As a Christian, you have the tremendous honor and advantage of being indwelled by the Holy Spirit. One of the ways the Spirit ministers to you is in giving you an internal warning against sin. Paul assures that the Spirit warns against s*xual sin in particular, then provides a stern caution: “Therefore whoever disregards this [warning], disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thessalonians 4:8). To commit s*xual sin is to ignore the Holy Spirit, to actively suppress his voice as he warns that you need not and should not commit this sin. He provides everything necessary to resist this temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13). To resist the Spirit and ignore his ministry to you is a serious offense against a holy God.

It is sinful to lust after another person and to enable this lust through po*******hy. Yet the sin bound up in po*******hy goes far deeper than mere lust. It extends to idolatry, adultery, deceit, theft, greed, sloth, s*xual violence, and ignoring the Holy Spirit. Romans 14:12 warns: “So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” Thankfully, what God demands God provides, and he does so through the gospel. Those who have trusted Jesus Christ can have confidence that Christ has satisfied our account, that he has satisfied God’s wrath against our sin, that he has provided us with his own righteousness. Yet we must also know that he has done this not so we can remain in our sin, but that we can “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).

22/07/2025

NOT BY CHANCE, BUT BY HIS FATHERLY HAND

Not a leaf falls. Not a drop of rain touches the soil. Not a sigh escapes your mouth without God knowing it. There is no such thing as randomness in a world ruled by the hand that split the Red Sea and counts the stars one by one.

We often imagine providence as something abstract, detached, or even poetic but Scripture never treats it that way. It is personal. It is precise. It is the very reason the sun rises when it does, and the very reason your heart did not stop in your sleep.

Providence is not God reacting. It is God ordaining. When the rains come, He sends them. When the drought withholds, He withholds. He is not absent in disaster or uninvolved in plenty. He governs both. He sits over the flood, not outside of it. And in doing so, He reveals that nothing is accidental.

Prosperity and poverty. Health and sickness. A full table or an empty one. These are not signs of approval or disapproval, as the world might assume. They are tools in the hand of a sovereign Father. They shape us. They break us. They rebuild us. They strip us of self and drive us to Christ.

Behind the bread on your table is the hand of God. Behind the empty cupboard is the same hand. Job knew this when he said, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” Job 2:10 ESV. He was not confused. He was convicted. He knew that every season, whether soft or severe, was wrapped in the folds of God’s eternal wisdom.

We live in a culture obsessed with control and allergic to mystery. But God’s providence is not something we control. It is something we submit to. It humbles the proud and lifts the broken. It whispers, “You are not forgotten,” even when everything else screams otherwise.

You may not know why a prayer goes unanswered or why affliction stays long in your home. But this you must know, God does not throw dice. Not with the sparrow. Not with your pain. Not with your days. Every chapter of your life is written in ink that cannot smudge, and not a single line will go unused in the grand story He is telling.

His providence is not cruel fate. It is not karma. It is not chance. It is the work of a Father whose hands bled to redeem you and whose hands now hold you even when you feel like you are falling.

We will not always understand. But we can always trust. Because those hands that rule the storm are the same hands that were pierced for you.

Let the world chase luck and fear loss. Let the world blame fate and cling to self-made dreams. But let us rest in this, EVERYTHING comes to us not by chance but from the Father who has never failed His own.

And that changes everything.

He, who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Jeremiah Knight

The Reformation Resurgence

20/07/2025

"Loss of interest in the word of God is loss of interest in God." (John Piper)

16/07/2025

Click on pic to expand...

This flowchart brilliantly depicts the questions we should be asking in light of Romans 14:1–15:13 and 1 Corinthians 8–10.

By Vaughan Robert, p. 133 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0830837981/?tag=andynaselli-20

The Reformation Resurgence

15/07/2025

Blessed to have known such a great preacher, praise God for the life of Pastor John MacArthur..

Our hearts are heavy, yet rejoicing, as we share the news that our beloved pastor and teacher John MacArthur has entered into the presence of the Savior. This evening, his faith became sight. He faithfully endured until his race was run. More information will be available soon.

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

2 Timothy 4:1-8