The necessity of holiness follows also from the revealed nature of man. There is no happiness without holiness. Human nature is so made that its fulfillment, contentment, and freedom become realities only as we learn to love, worship, and serve our Maker. Psalm 16 shows that the man who finds fullness of joy in God’s presence here and hereafter is the one who has chosen the Lord as his portion, who loves righteousness (“the path of life”) and delights in the saints. This fact about ourselves needs highlighting in these hedonistic days: Only holiness brings full joy. Packer, J. I. (2001). God’s Plans for You (p. 136). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

The seeds of happiness, it has been truly said, grow most strongly in the soil of service. Often the “something else” that wins our allegiance is someone else, a person rather than an abstract concept. That is especially the case where spiritual happiness is concerned. This happiness comes from basking in the knowledge of the redeeming love of the Father and the Son and showing active loyal gratitude for it. You love God and find yourself happy. Your active attempts to please God funnel the pleasures of his peace into your heart. That is how it goes. Yet hot tub religion touches on a deep, sweet truth of theology when it highlights the fact that real enjoyment is integral to real godliness. We need to emphasize the Christian’s heritage of enjoyment. Unbelief makes us fear that God is a hard and unfriendly taskmaster who will begrudge us pleasure and require us to do things that we do not want to do and cannot enjoy. Scripture, however, shows us that the opposite is true. “You wi...

If the sheep are with the Shepherd ,—if the members are with the Head,—if the children of Christ’s family are with Him who loved them and carried them all the days of their pilgrimage on earth, all must be well, all must be right. I cannot describe what kind of place paradise is, because I cannot understand the condition of a soul separate from the body. But I ask no brighter view of paradise than this,—that Christ is there.* All other things in the picture which imagination draws of the state between death and resurrection, are nothing in comparison of this. How He is there, and in what way He is there, I know not. Let me only see Christ in paradise when my eyes close in death, and that sufficeth me. Well does the Psalmist say, “In Thy presence is fulness of joy.” (Psa. 16:11.)  It was a true saying of a dying girl, when her mother tried to comfort her by describing what paradise would be. “There,” she said to the child, “there you will have no pains, and no sickness; there...

Reading the book of Acts, we are struck with the emphasis on Jesus as the exalted and resurrected Lord. Luke often includes accounts that scripturally and historically emphasize Jesus’ resurrection.7 Jesus could not be the Messiah and Lord and the one through whom people receive forgiveness of sins if he remained in the grave. Luke speaks of “many proofs” (tekmēria) relative to Christ’s resurrection (Acts 1:3). Both Peter and Paul argued that Ps. 16 was not fulfilled in David’s life, and hence the words recorded fit only with Christ’s resurrection (Acts 2:24–31; 13:35–37).  David decomposed in the grave, and therefore the words of Ps. 16 must point to another, one who conquered death and whose tomb was empty. The Scriptures themselves point to Christ’s death and his resurrection (Acts 13:31–33; 26:22–23). Whereas the Pharisees are the primary opponents in Luke, the Sadducees come to the forefront in Acts, particularly because the apostles preached the resurrection (Acts ...

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Christ has begun to sit on the throne of the end-time kingdom, which he did not do in his ministry, though he was at that time inaugurating the kingdom. The fuller context of Acts 2:30–36 makes this clearer:   And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh suffer decay. This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says:          “The Lord said to my Lord,          ‘Sit at My right hand,          until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.’ ” ...

Interesting post by Jared Wilson today on  EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL (click) He quotes Piper- “Not feeling loved and not being loved are not the same. Jesus loved all people well. And many did not like the way he loved them. Was David’s zeal for the Lord imbalanced because his wife Michal despised him for it? Was Job’s devotion to the Lord inordinate because his wife urged him to curse God and die? Would Gomer be a reliable witness to Hosea’s devotion? . . . I have seen so much emotional blackmail in my ministry I am jealous to raise a warning against it. Emotional blackmail happens when a person equates his or her emotional pain with another person’s failure to love. They aren’t the same. A person may love well and the beloved still feel hurt, and use the hurt to blackmail the lover into admitting guilt he or she does not have. Emotional blackmail says, ‘If I feel hurt by you, you are guilty.’ There is no defense. The hurt person has become God. His emotion has become judge and jur...

Salvation from the grave in the Bible is more than being spared an untimely death, for if death has the last word, then death is god and swallows up the path of life. But the Bible teaches that death will be swallowed up by life from the dead (cf. Gen. 4:24; 2 Kings 2:1; Pss. 49:15 [16]; 73:23; Isa. 14:13–15; 1 Cor. 15:50–56).  As noted above, Proverbs clearly teaches immortality (not necessarily the resurrection of the body), but Proverbs 15:24 implies an ascending from the grave below. Other texts outside of Proverbs teach that the journey of the righteous ends in resurrection and/or the presence of God himself (Job 19:25–27; Pss 16:9–11; 49:15 [16] (cf. 49:8); 73:23–26; Isa. 14:13–15; Dan 12:2; John 14:1–4; 2 Tim. 4:18; Heb. 12:2).  The doctrine of immortality and resurrection from the dead is brought into the full light of day in the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the midst of history to assure the resurrection of those in him at the end of history (1 Cor. 15; 2 T...

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