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Good News Summer 2013.Qxd Summer 2013 Good News Working to see what Christ is going to do in Scotland tomorrow! THE GLORIES OF CHRIST - HIS GLORY AS THE SINLESS ONE A DIFFERENT TAKE - OUT OF STEP NEWS & REPORTS SEMESTER IN SCOTLAND 2013 RP MISSION TEAM TO SCOTLAND REFORMATION HISTORY - DAVID DICKSON RPCS REFORMATION TOUR MAN TO MAN & WOMAN TO WOMAN Scottish RP Theological Seminary Rev. Tim Donachie Rev. David Karoon Rev. Andrew Quigley Rev. Kenneth Stewart RPCS Minister Stornoway RPCS Airdrie RPCS Glasgow RPCS training men for ministry in Scotland Good News editorial ‘Good News’ is the official church magazine of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland and is published four times a year. The goal of the publication is simple, to inform and encourage those who are either participating or interested in the life of the RPCS. www.rpcscotland.org For the want of You can download it free from the rpcscotland.org website. If you wish to get a copy posted, the cost is visionary plodding! £10.00 per annum. Could it be that one of the issues that is debilitating the Church in Scotland today is the want of a willingness to engage in visionary plodding on the part of ministers. By ‘visionary plodding’ I mean the ability to stay deter- contents minedly focused on the primary tasks of preaching and praying to see sinners saved and saints sanctified. page 2 RPCS Ministers on Sermonaudio The reasons for this? Well, how about these two? page 3 Editorial First, the world’s view of plodding. The idea of plodding is one that carries with it strong pages 4-5 The Glories of Christ negative undercurrents. Plodding is associated with being unimaginative, lacking in creative ability, pages 6-7 News slowness, having a tendency towards being ponderous. It’s not a very appealing image. It’s a perception which page 8 A Different Take - OUT of Step doesn’t evoke much excitement and certainly doesn’t pages 9-12 RP Mission Team To Scotland register a great deal of kudos. So the idea of plodding to do the primary things of preaching and praying in a page 13 Interview with Stephen McCollum culture which is adamant in its proclamation of ‘don’t preach at me’ simply isn’t attractive. page 14 Semester In Scotland page 15 Scottish RP Theological Seminary Second, the minister’s view of himself. This, in a sense, follows on the first point. The idea of page 16 Ref. History David Dickson being a visionary plodder is seriously militated against, because of the constant need to be seen to be ‘doing page 17 Man to Man something’. Because of the relative vulnerability ministers can allow themselves to feel, they can find page 18 20013 RPCS Reformation Tour themselves emotionally exposed. Yes, they want to do page 19 Woman to Woman what God says, but at the same time there is a quiet reluctance to do anything that might cause undue page 20 Reformation History Website offense. A bipolar view of life and work then takes over and the perceived antidote - ‘be seen to be doing’. The thinking being, that no one can question your worth because you are at least putting in the effort. Editor & Design - Rev. Andrew Quigley I think a life of visionary plodding, grounded in and aris- Distribution - Beth Bogue ing from the foundation that it’s about fearing God and no one else, is the key to success, whatever that is, in Good News the ministry. c/o 48 North Bridge Street, Airdrie, Scotland ML6 6NE Yours In Christ, [email protected] Andrew (01236) 620107 Rev Andrew Quigley page 3 The Glories of Christ: His Glory As The Sinless One In our previous study we thought of passed on to the early church and claimed to be or He was the greatest the Lord Jesus Christ as the perfect became enshrined in the Holy Spirit impostor and fraud that the world has man but in considering His humanity inspired Scriptures of the New ever known, for the things He claimed we must never forget nor minimise Testament. The writer of the letter to for Himself are truly amazing. He His perfect and spotless sinlessness. the Hebrews described the Lord Jesus claimed that He always pleased God, We read in Hebrews 4:15 that He was Christ as ‘holy, blameless, pure, set Jn. 8:29, when the Scripture says, tempted in every way as we are, yet apart from sinners’ (Heb.7:26). He ‘there is none righteous, not even without the slightest taint or stain of also made the astonishing claim that one’, Rom.3:10. He claimed to not be sin. The perfect, sinless character of Jesus was ‘tempted as we are, yet tainted with original sin, Jn. 14:30, Jesus was not only in perfect harmo- without sin’ Heb. 4:15. The statement when Scripture declares that we are ny with His divinity but plainly testi- made by the apostle Paul in 2 ‘born in sin’, Ps.51:5. He was even Corinthians 5:21 was quite unequivo- able to challenge His enemies to point fied to in the pages of Holy Scripture. cal when he said quite simply about out any sin that He had committed, Jesus that ‘He knew no sin’. which they were unable to do, Jn. 8:46, and although He told His disci- 1. The testimony It was not just His friends and inti- ples to pray for forgiveness of sin, of Scripture mate acquaintances however, who Matt. 6:12, He never prayed that for testified about his perfections, even Himself. Not only did the Lord Jesus As Jesus walked the highways and His enemies were forced to acknowl- Christ not commit sin, it was impossi- byways of Palestine coming into con- edge that this was no ordinary man. ble for Him to commit sin. tact with all sorts and conditions of The one described as ‘the son of men, facing many difficult and trying perdition’ realised that the one he situations, suffering the weariness had so cruelly betrayed was indeed and frustration that is common to without fault when he declared ‘I 2. The impossibility men, those who knew Him best testi- have betrayed innocent blood’, Matt. of sin in Jesus fied to His sinless behaviour. At a 27:4. The worldly and self-seeking time when many disciples left, Peter Proconsul, Pontius Pilate, no lover of Although as we have seen, Jesus was made the amazing statement ‘you are the Jews, said three times that he truly man, His human nature was unit- the Holy One of God’, and writing could find no guilt in Jesus, John ed to and controlled by the divine – later to the young church he applied 18:38, 19:4,6, and the centurion He had a human nature but He was a the Messianic words in Isaiah 53:9 to charged with the dreadful task of cru- divine person. He took upon Himself Jesus when he wrote in 1 Peter 2:22 cifying Jesus declared, ‘Certainly this the ‘likeness of sinful flesh’ but in His ‘who committed no sin, nor was any man was innocent’ Luke 23:47. person He was the same from all eter- deceit found in his mouth’. The disci- nity. The Bible makes it abundantly ple John, described as ‘the disciple The sinlessness of the Lord Jesus was clear that Jesus was conceived by the whom Jesus loved’ (John 13:23) testified to not only by His friends and Holy Spirit, Matt. 1:20 and thus He had wrote, ‘In Him is no sin’ (1 John 3:5). His enemies, but supremely, by no taint of original sin, Jn. 14:30. He This eyewitness testimony was Himself. Either Jesus was what He was separate from sinners in the page 4 sense that He did not inherit their Such a suggestion however, fails to There is great comfort in this for the guilt. Because Jesus had no understand the severity of the temp- child of God. At the present time he indwelling sin, sin was always repug- tations of Christ and the absolute has the assurance that whatever nant to Him. The impossibility of sin wonder of Him withstanding the full temptation he experiences, the Lord in the Lord Jesus Christ is extremely assault of the devil. A test is no less Jesus fully understands and is able to important, for if it had been possible real because it is certain that the thing help. Sometimes the believer thinks for Jesus to sin, then it would have tested cannot fail. The refining fire by that his particular temptation is been possible for the whole of God’s which gold is tested is no less hot unique and that nobody knows what redemptive plan to fail. Redemption because it is absolutely certain that he has to bear, but when we consider could only be accomplished by the pure gold cannot fail the test; it sim- the Lord Jesus we realise that He offering of a spotless and pure sacri- ply proves its genuineness. Just as knows, He sympathises, He cares and fice. For there to have been atone- impurities and dross are burned off in can enable us to overcome as He did. ment for sin it was necessary that a the refining process and only the There is also the glorious assurance pure, sinless substitute should suffer purest of gold can survive, so it is only that one day, in the glory of heaven, the wrath of a holy God against sin in the Lord Jesus Christ who knows the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ will place of sinful men.
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