Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.
If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.
Summary/Engagement
Let it never be said that gospel-centered is a fad. Sibbes, if nothing else, has shown us that being Gospel centered is not new. It is merely being faithful to the text. We again walk the streets of Christ’s glory with brother Sibbes, learning that Christ is both Lord of the living and of the dead. We learn that Christ purchased a people for himself in his substitutionary death on the cross. We learn that Christians have life through this death and resurrection.
We learn, and read, and nod our heads.
“He will not lose the price of his own blood.”
Application / Further Discussion
We can learn much, but I must stop and ask, did Christ die for you?
It is a wonderful thing to read and hear of Christ’s death and see the beauty of the Gospel. It is truly good news to know that: God created Adam and Eve to live in harmony and joy with him. Yet, they sinned and separated themselves and all their children, all of us, from God. Sin has corrupted all of us and we are by nature at enmity with God. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live perfectly, die in the place of sinners for sin, and raise gloriously from the dead in victory, his sacrifice accepted. It is this Christ, very God of very God, who offers now salvation to all who turn from their sin and believe in Jesus Christ.
Friends, is this you? I do not mean the mere intellectual acceptance of an idea, or the acknowledgement that you know what the gospel is. Have you repented and believed in Him?
Are you living for Him? “We must live the rest of our days, not according to the lusts of men, or of our own lusts, but according to the will of God.” What motivates your heart; your lusts, or your love for Him?
Do you know Him, or just know about Him? Are you my brother or sister in Christ, or have you been lulled into a deluded life of moralism? So much of what passes for Christianity now is nothing more than feel good moralism. “Therapeutic moralistic deism,” as Christian Smith calls it. God is good, he makes me feel good, and I’ll do good to please him.
No. That is not Christ.
God is good, we are not. We cannot earn his love by what we do. We are under his just and right condemnation and wrath awaiting eternal conscious suffering in hell so long as our sins are on our own head. He is just to send you and I to hell for that one “white” lie, stealing a cookie, or speeding on the highway. We minimize these things and consider ourselves good. He measures our sin and considers us evil.
Sin is serious and eternal. Why else would God send God to satisfy the wrath of God? We cannot do it.
Maybe you do know Christ but you need to return to your first love and behold him again as holy, lovely, pure, and beautiful. I am calling all of us to holiness. None of us are perfect, and far from me using that familiar phrase to explain away some seemingly minor sin (yet sin that damns us to hell), I use it to say we must therefore all strive to be holy. I cannot stress strongly enough nor communicate clear enough your dire need for holiness.
It is not legalism to call you to repentance and faith nor is it legalism to call you to holiness.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)
“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (2 Cor. 13:5)
It is an intellectual faith, full of knowing, deep in truth, rich in knowledge. However, if you do not engage the heart and soul with the mind by not only knowing but repenting and believing, you have not left the starting line of the race. You haven’t even begun. Knowledge of Christ is good, but knowing Christ himself is life.
Are you living for Christ, or are you living for you?
“What is the end of our hearing sermons, or our reading, and all the pains we take in the means of salvation? Not only to know what God will do to us, but what he will have of us.
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In all things we must labour to direct our lives according to his will.“
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Last week, we read The Hidden Life.
Next week, we read Salvation Applied.
