Tabletalk

from ligonier ministries and r. c. sproul | december 2010

OVER COMING APATHY

MERCY MINISTRY IN WORD AND DEED

publisher Ligonier Ministries executive editor R. C. Sproul editor Burk Parsons

senior associate editor Chris Donato associate editors Keith A. Mathison, Robert Rothwell

production manager Scott Devor creative director Geoff Stevens art director Monty Morgan

marketing manager John Cobb circulation Dawn Sanders

Tabletalk (usps 009-013) is published monthly by Ligonier Ministries, inc., 400 Technology Park, Lake Mary, FL 32746. Periodicals postage paid at Lake Mary, FL, and additional mailing offices. The daily Bible studies are copyright 2009. Ligonier Ministries, Inc. Unless noted, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Ligonier Ministries, 400 Technology Park, Lake Mary, FL 32746-6229.

On the Cover: Save the Children photo by Eli Reed © 1997 South Africa Magnum Photos

CORAM DEO // LIVING BEFORE THE FACE OF GOD

Truly Reformed Theology

BY BURK PARSONS

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that no one has taught me more about the Bible and its theology than R. C. Sproul. And it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that no one has taught me more about mercy ministry than R. C. Sproul. Having worked for R. C. going on twelve years, I have witnessed, firsthand, one man’s faith working itself out in love. As the testimonies of his wife and children reveal, his theology of grace sustains his concern for the hungry, the widow, and the orphan. Appropriately, his theology informs his practice, as should ours.

At its core, Christian theology is a theology of grace. One of the primary distinctions of Christian theology is the doctrine of grace, which pervades every area of our faith and life. Throughout the centuries of history, Christians have testified to this truth. When Paul, in the first century, and the Reformers, in the sixteenth century, contended earnestly for the faith, they contended not only to preserve the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone but to preserve the all-encompassing gospel religion of God’s grace. This gospel informs everything we are and, thus, everything we do as we show forth our faith in word and deed, with God’s gospel and God’s glory at the forefront of our mission, not our own socialized gospel or our own societal glory.

The puritans of the seventeenth century were a people of holy and gracious action whose ministry in word and deed was motivated by the biblical theology of grace, which liberates redeemed sinners to give sacrificially in response to God’s giving of Himself on the cross. In a puritan prayer from The Valley of Vision, we read: “Give me a holy avarice to redeem the time, to awake at every call to charity and piety, so that I may feed the hungry, clothe the naked, … diffuse the gospel, show neighborly ...