Dressed To Kill (Spiritual Warfare And Armour) Order Printed Copy

Author: Rick Renner
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About the Book

"Dressed To Kill" by Rick Renner is a comprehensive guide to spiritual warfare, focusing on the importance of putting on the full armor of God to protect oneself against the attacks of the enemy. Renner delves into the significance of each piece of armor mentioned in Ephesians 6, providing insight and practical strategies for believers to effectively combat spiritual opposition.

John Wesley

John Wesley, (born June 17, 1703, Epworth, Lincolnshire, England—died March 2, 1791, London), Anglican clergyman, evangelist, and founder, with his brother Charles, of the Methodist movement in the Church of England. John Wesley was the second son of Samuel, a former Nonconformist (dissenter from the Church of England) and rector at Epworth, and Susanna Wesley. After six years of education at the Charterhouse, London, he entered Christ Church, Oxford University, in 1720. Graduating in 1724, he resolved to become ordained a priest; in 1725 he was made a deacon by the bishop of Oxford and the following year was elected a fellow of Lincoln College. After assisting his father at Epworth and Wroot, he was ordained a priest on September 22, 1728. Recalled to Oxford in October 1729 to fulfill the residential requirements of his fellowship, John joined his brother Charles, Robert Kirkham, and William Morgan in a religious study group that was derisively called the “Methodists” because of their emphasis on methodical study and devotion. Taking over the leadership of the group from Charles, John helped the group to grow in numbers. The “Methodists,” also called the Holy Club, were known for their frequent communion services and for fasting two days a week. From 1730 on, the group added social services to their activities, visiting Oxford prisoners, teaching them to read, paying their debts, and attempting to find employment for them. The Methodists also extended their activities to workhouses and poor people, distributing food, clothes, medicine, and books and also running a school. When the Wesleys left the Holy Club in 1735, the group disintegrated. Following his father’s death in April 1735, John was persuaded by an Oxford friend, John Burton, and Col. James Oglethorpe, governor of the colony of Georgia in North America, to oversee the spiritual lives of the colonists and to missionize the Native Americans as an agent for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Accompanied by Charles, who was ordained for this mission, John was introduced to some Moravian emigrants who appeared to him to possess the spiritual peace for which he had been searching. The mission to the indigenous peoples proved abortive, nor did Wesley succeed with most of his flock. He served them faithfully, but his stiff high churchmanship antagonized them. He had a naive attachment to Sophia Hopkey, niece of the chief magistrate of Savannah, who married another man, and Wesley unwisely courted criticism by repelling her from Holy Communion. In December 1737 he fled from Georgia; misunderstandings and persecution stemming from the Sophia Hopkey episode forced him to go back to England. In London John met a Moravian, Peter Böhler, who convinced him that what he needed was simply faith, and he also discovered Martin Luther’s commentary on the Letter of Paul to the Galatians, which emphasized the scriptural doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. On May 24, 1738, in Aldersgate Street, London, during a meeting composed largely of Moravians under the auspices of the Church of England, Wesley’s intellectual conviction was transformed into a personal experience while Luther’s preface to the commentary to the Letter of Paul to the Romans was being read. From this point onward, at the age of 35, Wesley viewed his mission in life as one of proclaiming the good news of salvation by faith, which he did whenever a pulpit was offered him. The congregations of the Church of England, however, soon closed their doors to him because of his enthusiasm. He then went to religious societies, trying to inject new spiritual vigour into them, particularly by introducing “bands” similar to those of the Moravians—i.e., small groups within each society that were confined to members of the same sex and marital status who were prepared to share intimate details of their lives with each other and to receive mutual rebukes. For such groups Wesley drew up Rules of the Band Societies in December 1738. For a year he worked through existing church societies, but resistance to his methods increased. In 1739 George Whitefield, who later became an important preacher of the Great Awakening in Great Britain and North America, persuaded Wesley to go to the unchurched masses. Wesley gathered converts into societies for continuing fellowship and spiritual growth, and he was asked by a London group to become their leader. Soon other such groups were formed in London, Bristol, and elsewhere. To avoid the scandal of unworthy members, Wesley published, in 1743, Rules for the Methodist societies. To promote new societies he became a widely travelled itinerant preacher. Because most ordained clergymen did not favour his approach, Wesley was compelled to seek the services of dedicated laymen, who also became itinerant preachers and helped administer the Methodist societies. Many of Wesley’s preachers had gone to the American colonies, but after the American Revolution most returned to England. Because the bishop of London would not ordain some of his preachers to serve in the United States, Wesley controversially took it upon himself, in 1784, to do so. In the same year he pointed out that his societies operated independently of any control by the Church of England. Toward the end of his life, Wesley became an honoured figure in the British Isles.

The Hill We All Must Die On

The doctrine of penal substitution is under attack today — and that’s an understatement. From voices outside of evangelical theology to those within, the historic Reformation view of the cross is claimed to be a “modern” invention from the cultural West. Others criticize the doctrine as sanctioning violence, privileging divine retributive justice over God’s love, condoning a form of divine child abuse, reducing Scripture’s polychrome presentation of the cross to a lifeless monochrome, being too “legal” in orientation, and so on. All of these charges are not new. All of them have been argued since the end of the 16th century, and all of them are false. Yet such charges reflect the corrosive effects of false ideas on theology and a failure to account for how the Bible, on its own terms, interprets the cross. Given the limitations of this article, I cannot fully respond to these charges. Instead, I will briefly state four truths that unpack the biblical-theological rationale of penal substitution. In so doing, my goal is to explain why penal substitution should be embraced as God’s good news for sinners. Four Questions to Get Right It is only in viewing Christ as our penal substitute that we truly understand the depth of God’s holy love for us, the horrendous nature of our sin before God, and the glory of our substitute — Jesus Christ our Lord — whose obedient life and penal death achieved our right standing before God and the full forgiveness of our sins. Let us now turn to these truths that are crucial to affirm and that lead us to glory in our Lord Jesus Christ as our penal substitute. 1. Who Is God? First, we must get right who God is as our triune Creator-Covenant Lord. Mark it well: debates over the nature of the atonement are first and foremost doctrine of God debates. If our view of God is sub-biblical, we will never get the cross right. From the opening verses of Scripture, God is presented as eternal, a se (life from himself), holy love, righteous, and good — the triune God who is complete in himself and who needs nothing from us (Genesis 1–2; Psalm 50:12–14; Isaiah 6:1–3; Acts 17:24–25; Revelation 4:8–11). One crucial implication of this description is that God, in his very nature, is the moral standard of the universe. This is why we must not think of God’s law as something external to him that he may relax at will. Instead, the triune God of Scripture is the law; his will and nature determine what is right and wrong. This view of God is often forgotten in today’s discussion of the atonement. Following the “New Perspective on Paul,” some argue that God’s justice/righteousness is only “God’s covenant faithfulness,” that is, God remaining true to his promises. No doubt this is true. However, what this view fails to see is that “righteousness-justice-holiness” is first tied to God’s nature as God. That is why, in light of sin, God, who is the law, cannot overlook our sin. God’s holy justice demands that he not only punish all sin, but also, if he graciously chooses to justify the ungodly (Romans 4:5), he must do so by fully satisfying his own righteous, holy moral demand. Thus, given our sin and God’s gracious choice to redeem us, the question that emerges across redemptive history is this: How will God demonstrate his holy justice and covenant love and remain true to himself? The answer is only found in the Father’s gift of his Son, Jesus’s obedient life and substitutionary death, that results in our justification before God in Christ (Romans 3:21–26). 2. Who Is Man? Second, we must get right who humans are as God’s image-sons created to be in covenant relationship with God. Specifically, we must grasp who Adam is, not only as a historic person, but also as the covenant representative/head of the human race (Romans 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22). Why is this significant? Because in creation, our triune Creator-Covenant God sets the conditions of the covenant and rightly demands from Adam (and all of us) total trust, love, and obedience — a truth reflected in God’s first command. But the flip side is also true: If there is covenant disobedience, given who God is, there is also his holy judgment against our sin that results in the penalty of physical and spiritual death (Genesis 2:15–17; cf. Romans 6:23). 3. How Can God Justify Sinners? Third, we must get right the serious problem of our sin before God. Sadly, Adam did not love God with full covenant devotion. Instead, he disobeyed God, thus bringing sin, death, and God’s curse into the world. In the Bible’s storyline, Adam’s sin changes everything! From Genesis 3 forward, “in Adam,” the entire human race becomes guilty, corrupted, condemned, and under the judicial sentence of death (Genesis 3; Romans 5:12–21; Ephesians 2:1–3). If God is going to redeem, which he has graciously promised to do (Genesis 3:15), how is he going to do it? Remember, given who God is in all of his moral perfection, and given that he is the standard of holy justice who will not deny himself, how will God declare sinners justified before him apart from the full satisfaction of his moral demand? God must punish sin and execute perfect justice because he is holy, just, and good. He cannot overlook our sin nor relax the demands of his justice, and in truth, thankfully so! But to justify us, our sin must be fully atoned. How, then, can God punish our sin, satisfy his own righteous demand, and justify sinners? Add to this point: To undo, reverse, and pay for Adam’s sin, we need someone who will come from the human race and identify with us (Genesis 3:15), render our required covenantal obedience, and pay the penalty for our sin. We need someone who will become our covenant representative and substitute, and by his obedient life and penal death secure our justification before God. And wonder of wonders, Scripture gloriously announces that there is one man — and only one — who can do this for us, namely our Lord Jesus Christ (Hebrews 2:5–18). 4. Who Is Jesus? Fourth, we must get right who Jesus is, what he does for us, and that he alone can redeem, reconcile, and justify us before God. Who is the Jesus of the Bible? In short, he is God the Son incarnate, the second person of the triune Godhead. He is no abused child or some third-party individual who stands independent of God. We cannot think of his atoning work apart from thinking of the entire triune God accomplishing our salvation. Furthermore, as the eternal Son, eternally loved of his Father and the Spirit, in God’s plan, he voluntarily took on the role of becoming our Redeemer. And in his incarnation, he identified with us in order to represent us before God (Hebrews 5:1). In his obedient human life, Jesus, as the Mediator of the new covenant, obeyed for us as our legal covenant representative. In his obedient death, Jesus, as the divine Son, satisfied his own righteous demand against us by bearing the penalty of our sin as our substitute (Romans 5:18–19; Philippians 2:6–11; Hebrews 5:1–10). And in doing all of this, the Father’s love was revealed in Jesus’s penal substitution because of who Jesus is as the Son incarnate, the Last Adam, and the only Mediator of God’s people (Romans 5:8–11). Don’t Get Bored with the Gospel The truth of the matter is this: penal substitution is not a view to be replaced by something “better” or dismissed as a relic of the past. There is no greater news than this: Christ Jesus, as the divine Son incarnate, perfectly meets our need before God by his obedient life and substitutionary death. In Christ the triune love of God is gloriously revealed because in Christ we receive the gift of righteousness which is now ours by faith in him. In union with his people, Christ, as our new covenant head, obeys in our place, dies our death, and satisfies divine justice, which is evidenced in his glorious resurrection. As a result, by faith alone, in Christ alone, his righteousness is ours — now and forever (Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13). By faith-union in Christ, we stand complete: justified before God by the forgiveness of our sins and clothed in his righteousness (Romans 4:1–8; 5:1–2). Following the Bible’s teaching on this matter, may we learn anew to say with Paul, “For I decided to know nothing . . . except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15). Article by Stephen Wellum