Review: Growing in Holiness

January 31, 2020January 30, 2020 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Growing in Holiness, R. C. Sproul. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019.

Summary: Compiled from the author’s lectures, the book offers both theological basis and practical help for the believer for growing in Christ-likeness.

This is one of those books I wish I had fifty years ago. I knew what it meant to become a Christian, but had no notion of what it meant to be a Christian. How should I live after I’ve believed? How do I overcome sin? How can I be assured of my salvation? How does Christ form his character in me? R. C. Sproul addresses all these questions and more in this book, which is a compilation of his lectures on growing in holiness, or our sanctification.

He begins by giving a very clear articulation of the goal of our life in Christ: “The goal of human life is to mirror and to reflect the very character of God.” Sproul acknowledges that coming to Christ can make more complicated as we are more aware of the gap between how we live, and the life to which we are called in Christ. Believing doesn’t make life easier, but rather we face opposition from the world, the flesh, and the devil and our own powerlessness apart from God and the support of his people. Sproul talks about the call to righteousness as the inevitable fruit of Christ’s saving work, and yet the truth that our salvation is grounded in the righteousness of Christ, and not our imperfect efforts.

Sproul contends that we may enjoy the assurance of our salvation. This is not faith in faith, the church, or experience but comes out of the trust that obeys Christ, repents from sin, and lodges one’s hope in the finished work of Christ. Such assurance is great encouragement in continuing to press on to become more and more like Christ. Our confidence in Christ moves us to profess Christ with others, deepening our own assurance.

The next two chapters focus on the virtues also called “the fruit of the Spirit.” Sproul focuses a whole chapter on the first and greatest of these, love–love that is long suffering, characterized by kindness, humility, and self-control. He walks through the remaining fruit of the Spirit, explaining what each of these looks like in the life of the believer. Finally, he returns to the ultimate goal of becoming like God, like Christ in our character. This comes as we focus on Christ, trust and obey him implicitly like children, and over time, grow up to maturity as we diligently, year in and year out, diligently pursue the means of grace.

Sproul helps us understand both how our sanctification depends on the provision of Christ, but also that we must persist in laying hold of that provision, settling for nothing less than growing up to be like Jesus in character. In the words of Philippians 2:12-13, we work out the salvation that God is working in us. Sproul neither lowers the standard nor makes it simply an accomplishment of human effort. He consistently throughout this work points us to the goal of growing to be more and more like Christ, and encourages us that in one day we will indeed be glorified, that Christ will accomplish his goal for us.

R. C. Sproul went to be with the Lord in 2017. We are fortunate for the efforts of the Ligonier Library and Baker to compile his lectures offering theologically rich and practical to the chief end of our lives.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Getting the Gospel Right

August 25, 2017August 24, 2025 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

Getting the Gospel Right, R. C. Sproul. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2017 (repackaged edition, originally published 1999).

Summary: A critical discussion of the Evangelicals and Catholics Together statement “The Gift of Salvation” (1997) centering on what it sees as an inadequate understanding of justification by faith alone, accompanied by a discussion of “The Gospel of Jesus Christ,” a statement by evangelicals in response.

“…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21)

Many Christians, surveying the landscape of a church riven through history by schism and division, believe this is a scandal that undermines witness to an unbelieving world. They find support for this idea in the prayer of Jesus for his followers, connecting their oneness to the world believing that the Father sent the Son. And this has moved some to come together with other believers from other parts of the church to see if they might articulate a common basis for a shared witness to the one Lord they believe in. In 1994, Richard John Neuhaus and Charles Colson convened a group of evangelical and Catholic leaders to see if this might be possible. Over the years this group has released a series of statements on various, often controverted, issues including justification, Scripture, the communion of the saints, Mary, the sanctity of life, religious freedom, and in 2015, a statement of marriage. The statements have explored both what might be affirmed in common, and what differences remain, while focusing on common witness to the risen Lord.

Needless to say, such efforts have come in for harsh criticism from evangelicals and Catholics alike. R.C. Sproul’s book, recently released in “repackaged” form represents an example of the criticism these statements have faced, focused here around the second of the statements, released in 1997, “The Gift of Salvation,” that addresses the matter of justification and the Reformers’ commitment to sola fide (justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone), a major fault line between the churches of the Reformation and the Roman Catholic church.

On its face, Sproul contends that “The Gift of Salvation” appears to be a statement evangelicals could embrace and a breakthrough affirmation by Catholics. In particular the statement affirms:

Justification is received through faith,
Justification is not earned by good works or merits of our own,
Justification is entirely God’s gift,
In justification God declares us to be his friends on the basis of Christ’s righteousness alone, and
Faith is not mere intellectual assent but an act of the whole person, issuing in a changed life.

(Summary quoted from “An Appeal to Evangelicals” but essentially the same as Sproul).

Sproul finds that while, in the words of the statement “this agrees with sola fide,” it fails to affirm key ideas of what the Reformers meant by sola fide. In particular, these statements fail to deal with a crucial difference in how Christians are declared righteous friends of God. For Reformed believers, this has involved the believe in imputation–that our sins were imputed to Christ on the Christ and his righteousness imputed to us, apart from any work or merit on our part. The Catholic understands that while we are saved by grace through faith, this is assisted by God’s infusing of a person with a saving righteousness, with which it is important to cooperate in order to be justified. These and other differences are, in fact acknowledged in the statement as matters for further study and dialogue. For Sproul, the lack of agreement at this point undermines common witness, and in fact he contends that these are in fact different gospels.

The first part of the book discusses “The Gift of Salvation” with a statement by statement critical review. Sproul concedes the evangelical bona fides of the evangelicals who signed the statement and the good will of the signers but believes that the infelicities (at very least) or worse, the “studied ambiguities” that conveyed an apparent unity through the use of imprecise language that could be understood differently by each party are dangerous because they reflect a dangerous departure from sola fide.

The second part of the book begins with a statement drafted in response to “The Gift of Salvation” titled “The Gospel of Jesus Christ.” This statement summarizes a Reformed understanding and also includes a series of affirmations and denials to clearly delineate both what evangelicals do and do not believe. Sproul then expands upon each of these affirmations and denials. Signers of the statement include evangelical signers of “The Gift of Salvation” and evangelicals who disagreed with the statement–an effort to mend the rift within evangelicalism caused by the statement. The book concludes with appendices that contain the complete text of both statements, and lists of their signers.

Sproul could have been a great lawyer! Lawyers scrutinize language for any ambiguities that could lead to disagreement between contracting parties. He realizes that fuzziness of ideas or “studied ambiguities” generally end badly through misunderstandings or doctrinal drift. Both Catholic and Evangelical commentators on this statement have noted this concern. Sproul’s concerns and careful work cannot be lightly dismissed in an age that is careless with words and increasingly inured to a culture of deceit.

What troubled me was an attitude that seemed satisfied with affirming orthodox evangelical belief and differentiating it from Catholic belief, without any further effort to propose how the divide might be healed. Sproul certainly acknowledges there are genuine Catholic believers, but in contrast to Colson and Neuhaus, does not seem to have any sense of urgency for common witness amid the pressing challenges of our day, nor for efforts to root that witness in a shared theological understanding. Likewise, the book does not address more recent discussions around justification within the evangelical community resulting from New Perspective scholarship.

What I find myself wrestling with, while appreciating Sproul’s theological precision, is what seems an unspoken assumption that the Reformed tradition reached a terminus with statements like the Heidelberg Catechism and Westminster Confession, and likewise Catholicism in the Council of Trent. While each of these reflected a developing understanding, albeit contrasting, of the testimony of our shared scriptures, is no advance in understanding possible in our day? Is there no possibility of development of doctrine (such as occurred as the church sought to articulate its understanding of the Trinity and Incarnation in earlier centuries)? Have we concluded that no further understanding is possible of the authoritative testimony of scripture that could lead to agreements that are not exercises in “studied ambiguity”? And is there no value in proximate shared understandings along the way, that honestly acknowledge differences while affirming ways, and bases by which we might stand together in a secularizing age?

R. C. Sproul, and the signers of “The Gospel of Jesus Christ” may well have gotten that gospel “right.” I found nothing with which I took exception. Yet my reading left me with questions of how we might be one, not merely “invisibly” as Sproul discusses in the beginning of this book, but in visible ways that the world may see, and thus believe.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Last Days According to Jesus

January 12, 2016January 12, 2016 / rtrube54 / 4 Comments

The Last Days According to Jesus, R. C. Sproul. Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2015 (originally published in 1998).

Summary: R.C. Sproul takes on the time-frame issues of the New Testament that seem to reflect an expectation of an imminent return of Christ and gives serious consideration to the preterist position that all or most of the predictions concerning the Last Days were fulfilled by the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

Understanding the “Last Days” predictions made in the gospels by Jesus as well as in the epistles and in the Revelation to John is among the most challenging areas of Bible study for most Christians. Furthermore, skeptical scholars take the statements of Jesus and others about the nearness of his return at face value and contend that on this, Jesus and the New Testament writers were mistaken.

In this work, R. C. Sproul takes on this question and challenges both the skeptics and those who believe most of the Last Days prophecies concern the future by considering the work of J. Stuart Russell and Kenneth L. Gentry, preterist scholars. In fact, he gives these scholars such consideration that I thought at one point that he was going to announce that he had adopted their position, which would mean arguing that the rapture of the church, the resurrection of the dead and the return of Christ all occurred in the events of 70 AD, which requires spiritualizing these events. Sproul does not, but he does take up the cause of moderate preterism in arguing that much of what Jesus predicted in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24 and parallels) was fulfilled with the fall of Jerusalem. He also seems to endorse Gentry’s contentions that Revelation was written prior to 70 AD, a view that even most evangelical scholars would not accept.

What weighs heavily for Sproul are the time frame references that say such things as “Behold, I come quickly” or “the time is near”. These make the most sense if one takes at least a moderate preterist view. He, at the same time, refuses to take a full preterist view because he cannot accept the “spiritualized” versions of the rapture of the church, the resurrection and a return of Christ that was hidden, all of which go against the biblical evidence.

The last two chapters take on other questions often of concern in Last Days discussions. One is the identity of the Antichrist and the other concerns the different millenial views. Sproul does propose an identification for the Antichrist while not, in this volume, identifying his millenial views.

I particularly appreciated Sproul’s careful study of Matthew 24, to which he devotes several chapters. His study of both the epistles and Revelation seemed a bit more cursory but still dealt with the relevant texts. I felt he didn’t seriously engage the scholarship that argues for a later date for Revelation.

It did seem to me a curious choice that he devoted so much of the book to the views of Russell, a nineteenth century scholar who would not be familiar to most. Much of this had to do with his serious consideration of the preterist view for which Russell argued, perhaps at the very time when dispensationalism was gaining its initial head of steam.

What I think of greatest value in this book is Sproul’s serious consideration of the time-frame references of Jesus and also his arguments that we must understand much of the “last days” fulfillment to have occurred with the fall of the temple and of Jerusalem. Sproul also provides very clear explanations of the various millenial positions and the model of a scholar who takes the Bible seriously as the final authority in these discussions. Whether you agree with Sproul’s moderate preterism or not, you might, as did I, find that Sproul gives you some new things to consider.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”