J C Ryle to the upcoming conventions

It's summer time, which means "mainline church synods." Believe me, I'm deeply grateful not to have to anticipate dealing with the fallout from these anymore. But since there are some coming up (especially for the PCUSA and TEC's House of Bishops), I thought I'd pass on the incomparable Ryle's advice about what makes (or unmakes) a barren church.

If ministers do not teach sound doctrine, and their members do not live holy lives, they are in imminent peril of destruction. God is every year observing them, and taking account of all their ways. They may abound in ceremonial religion. They may be covered with the leaves of forms, and services, and ordinances. But if they are destitute of the fruits of the Spirit, they are reckoned as useless clutter on the ground. Except they repent, they will be cut down.

+J. C. Ryle, D.D.

Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke volume 2 , [Carlisle, PA:Banner of Truth, 1998], 114, 115.

Whither infallibility

There must be a real heartfelt belief that God’s promises are sure and to be depended on – a real belief that what God says in the Bible is all true and that every doctrine contrary to this is false, whatever anyone may say. There must be a real belief that all God’s words are to be received, however hard and disagreeable to flesh and blood, and that His way is right and all others wrong. This there must be, or you will never come out from the world, take up the cross, follow Christ and be saved.

~ J.C. Ryle

Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots, “Moses: An Example”, [Moscow, ID: Charles Nolan Publishing, 2001], 173.

Getting Ryled Up

Let us carefully hold fast the great doctrine of the plenary inspiration of every word of the Bible. Let us never allow that any writer of the Old or New Testament could make even the slightest verbal mistake or error, when, writing as he was “moved by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21.) Let it be a settled principle with us in reading the Bible, that when we cannot understand a passage, or reconcile it with some other passage, the fault is not in the Book, but in ourselves. The adoption of this principle will place our feet upon a rock. To give it up is to stand upon a quicksand, and to fill our minds with endless uncertainties and doubts.

~ J.C. Ryle

Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke volume 1, [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986], 4.

Returning the favor

There's an old joke that runs "God made man in His own image...and we've been returning the favor ever since." As Calvin said, our hearts are idol factories. If we are not busy filling our minds with the person and work of the true God as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures, we will paint a god of our own imagining. Hear the sage words of the venerable Bishop of Liverpool.

“Beware of manufacturing a god of your own: A god who is all mercy but not just, A god who is all love but not holy, A god who has a heaven for everybody but a hell for none. Such a god is an idol of your own. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible.”

Bishop J.C. Ryle, DD

John Charles Ryle (1816-1900) served the Church of England from 1841 to the year of his death. Thoroughly evangelical and uncompromising in his principles, he became widely known for his prolific writing and his faithful service as a pastor. The last twenty years of his life he served as Bishop of Liverpool.

Ryle on Frequent Communion & Sanctification

"The person that goes regularly and intelligently to the Lord's Table finds it increasingly hard to yield to sin and conform to the world."

~ J.C. Ryle, first Bishop of Liverpool

You will have multiple opportunities for Table Fellowship with Our Lord this Lent - on Sundays and Wednesdays. I have found that since joining a sacramental church, my personal holiness has increased. I attribute this directly to receiving the Body & Blood of Our Lord, with the assurances of an apostolic priesthood. (When I was in a non-apostolic church, we still received weekly - but I'd be more inclined to say "weakly" since it did not have the sanctifying effect it has on me now.)

Evangelical or evanjellyfish?

“One plague of our age is the widespread dislike to what men are pleased to call dogmatic theology. In the place of it, the idol of the day is a kind of jellyfish Christianity – a Christianity without bone, or muscle, or sinew, – without any distinct teaching about the atonement or the work of the Spirit, or justification, or the way of peace with God – a vague, foggy, misty Christianity, of which the only watchwords seem to be, ‘You must be..liberal and kind. You must condemn no man’s doctrinal views. You must consider everybody is right and nobody is wrong’.”

~ J.C. Ryle

The Upper Room, “One Blood”, 99.