Calvin: Why He Still Matters
May 20, 2009
W. Robert Godfrey, author of the new biography of John Calvin entitled John Calvin: Pilgrim and Pastor, wrote an inspiring article on Calvin’s significance to ministers today. Here is an excerpt:
Calvin exemplified in his life and work a determination to seek to bring every thought captive to Christ. That was his passion, such was his confidence in the Word of God. That is also what he wanted to teach others. To quote Calvin, “Whoever, therefore, would desire to persevere in uprightness and in integrity of life, let them learn to exercise themselves daily in the study of the word of God; for, whenever a man despises or neglects instruction, he easily falls into carelessness and stupidity, and all fear of God vanishes from his mind” (Commentary on the Psalms, on Ps. 18:22). Calvin was certain that many people tended very naturally to carelessness and stupidity. That is surely a lesson that does not need to be taught from Scripture; it is a lesson that pastors learn by experience! Calvin recognized, and we should recognize because it is even truer today, that we are surrounded by voices that are blaring lies. The only way to sort that out is to be sure that the Bible is constantly speaking to us, that the Bible is in our hearts and in our ears and in our mind so that that authority of the Word of God is a living and vital authority for us. The Bible must constantly challenge the way we look at the world, the way we look at our fellow men and women, the way we think about God and his world.
It has been in my experience that when I am most sorrowful for the sinner, I love him the most, and I am moved to plead for him before the throne of the Most High Judge. We are often uncomfortable around the carnal man. His words offend our sensibilities. His ideas counter our convictions. As he converses, obliviously and ignorantly, we begin to see his heart. As a man speaks, so he is. Why do our hearts sometimes despise him? Do we hate him? Why does he anger us? It is here that we see our hearts. It is easy to see the sins of others; it is more difficult to see our own. Hatred, jealousy, bitterness, wrath, backbiting, slander, and gossip are carnal works. They proceed from an unloving, wicked, and impure heart. If one wishes to break this heart, he must know the love of God in the gospel. Consider the following passages of Scripture:
Elisha looks at the messenger Hazael and begins to weep. He experiences great sorrow for the sinner:
And he fixed his gaze and stared at him, until he was embarrassed. And the man of God wept. And Hazael said, “Why does my lord weep?” He answered, “Because I know the evil that you will do to the people of Israel. You will set on fire their fortresses, and you will kill their young men with the sword and dash in pieces their little ones and rip open their pregnant women.” And Hazael said, “What is your servant, who is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?” Elisha answered, “The Lord has shown me that you are to be king over Syria.” Then he departed from Elisha and came to his master, who said to him, “What did Elisha say to you?” And he answered, “He told me that you would certainly recover.” But the next day he took the bed cloth and dipped it in water and spread it over his face, till he died. And Hazael became king in his place. (2 Kings 8:11-15)
Elisha wept because he knew the great sins that Hazael would committ. What sorrow the man of God will experience! He weeps because he loves.
Note, next, the way in which Jeremiah weeps for the wicked Israelites who recieved the just recompense for their unbelief:
Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! (Jeremiah 9:1)
Note next the way in which Paul spoke to the Philippians about the enemies of the cross:
For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. (Philippians 4:18-9)
He speaks of the enemies of the cross with tears! Do we?!
Note next the way Lot related to the sinners around him in 2 Peter 2:7-8:
and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard)
Lot was greatly distressed by the conduct of the wicked; his soul was tormented by what he saw and heard. Do our souls feel a tormenting weight and sorrow for a lost world?
Note next the language of the Pslamist in 119:136, 158:
“My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.”
“I look at the faithless with disgust, because they do not keep your commands.”
The Psalmist has a great zeal for the Lord’s law. Tears fill his eyes when it is broken. Do we share in his heart?
Indeed, there is a real hatred for sin in the Christian’s soul, even as his hatred is tempered by love for the sinner’s soul. It is not some fuzzy love stripped of all justice and righteousness. It is a perfect love, the kind of love that comes from God (1 John 4:7-8). No Christian can say he loves God if he does not love the wretched sinner. For so was the Christian in times past! (Ephesians 2:1-7; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
Application:
The key to loving the sinner and hating the sin is to know the heart of God. Do you know his heart? Perhaps, you just know his mind. Perhaps, you just know his truth but walk ignorantly of his person. The man who has not the heart of God will become a Pharisee with his doctrine. Meditate, therefore, heavily upon the love of God in the gospel. Love is from God, and thusly, he sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10). You were not looking for God, but he was looking for you. You were not loving God, but he was loving you. He demonstrates his love for you in the gospel, even when you were still a sinner. You who have been enlightened by the gospel: Walk with grief-stricken joy, and love the heathen around you. He knows not what he does.
Whoever . . . has tasted of the love Christ, and has known, by his own experience, the need and the worth of redemption, is enabled, Yea, he is constrained, to love his fellow creatures. He loves them at first sight; and, if the providence of God commits a dispensation of the gospel, and care of souls to him, he will feel the warmest emotions of friendship and tenderness, while he beseeches them by the tender mercies of God, and even while he warns them by his terrors.
As to your opponent, I wish, that, before you set pen to paper against him, and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord’s teaching and blessing. This practice will have a direct tendency to conciliate your heart to love and pity him; and such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write. . . . [If he is a believer,] in a little while you will meet in heaven; he will then be dearer to you than the nearest friend you have upon earth is to you now. Anticipate that period in your thoughts. . . . [If he is an unconverted person,] he is a more proper object of your compassion than your anger. Alas! “He knows not what he does.” But you know who has made you to differ.
Working with you for sorrowful love,
Vince R.
For the past week, I have been meditating on Psalm 73:1. It is my spiritual goal to meditate on one verse of this Psalm each week until I finish it. I want to share some of my meditations with you.
Psalm 73:1 “Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.”
There is a longing in us that wants to believe in a benevolent God. We want to believe that God is good–all the time. Even when we hear the age old question: If God is so good, why does he let evil happen?, we still cling to the promise the Scripture gives of God’s omnibenevolence.
But why is it so hard to believe sometimes?
Asaph wrote Psalm 73. He doubted God’s goodness. This desperate poem and song to God truly meditates on the real experience of doubting God’s goodness. Verse one openly proclaims the truth that Asaph has come to doubt. It also answers the question I just proposed. Why is God’s goodness hard to believe? Because our hearts are not pure. I see two things that this verse communicates, both explicitly and implicitly.
1.) God is good, specifically in the person and work of Christ.
There is no doubt that the scriptures declare his goodness uniformly and specifically. Psalm 136 is the text of the congregational song of Israel. It repeats this phrase in its first verse: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” It is the phrase that the people of God sing to him when they meditate on his wonderous deeds. Psalm 118 describes this as well. The Psalmist who wrote the longest chapter in the Bible declared it completely: “You are good and do good; teach me your statutes” (119:68). When Moses pleaded to God to show him his glory, this is how the LORD answered him:
“I will make my all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.” And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19).
In the New Testament, Jesus chastizes one man for calling him “good teacher.”
“Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18).
It is the apostle John, however, who ties the encouter that Moses had with God with Jesus. He makes it clear that Jesus was not denying his own deity in Mark 10:18, but he was rather pointing out the heart of the man who approached him, for this man cared little about the goodness of God. Though Moses couldn’t see God (Ex. 33:20), Jesus is described as the only one who seen God and can perfectly reflect him.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…And from his fulness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:14, 16-8).
John doesn’t so much emphasize the Mosaic law (condeming man) and Jesus (liberating man) as he is emphasizing God’s glory being made known perfectly in the person of Jesus Christ. “He has made him known.” It is here that we are given the undeniable truth that Jesus is the good God spoken of in the Old Testament.
Indeed, Christ’s miracles manifested his glory (Jn. 2:11), but most specifically, God’s glory in Christ is made known when evil men do not believe in him.
“Though he had done so may signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ‘Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’ [Isa. 53:1] Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them’ [Isa. 6:10]. Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess, so they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God” (John 12:43).
It was that frightening vision of God’ s glory in Isaiah 6 that changed, justified, and atoned for Isaiah. It is here that John makes it clear: Isaiah saw Jesus Christ. “He is the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 4:3). “…the glory of Christ, who is the image of God…the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6). Every bit of God’s glorious nature is found in Christ. Most especially, God’s goodness is found in Christ. If we look at 2 Corinthians 4:1-6, we see that the glory of God is found in his gospel.
This is the way the writer of Hebrews describes God’s good for his people-
“But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:11-12).
It is because of God’s goodness in the giving of the Son that we have “an eternal redemption” paid for “by means of his own blood.” This is the ultimate way God is good to his people. He gives us his Son so he can bring us to himself. He wants his goodness to be known to his people, so he provides the way for them to experience it. Notice how Jeremiah prophecies of this giving of the Son as the means by which God will finally dwell with his people:
“And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and soul” (Jeremiah 32:38-41).
God is good to his people-with all his heart and soul. This is amazing! But notice this passage’s emphasis on the heart. “I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good…” He even speaks of giving his people “one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever.” It is in this sense, then, that we see what God’s goodness does to our hearts.
2.) God’s goodness makes us pure in heart.
If God has nothing but good for his people, and this is most specifically manifested in the gospel, we must consider what the gospel does to us. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God“ The way in which we draw near to God (and this is the climax of Psalm 73) is through the gospel. The gospel purifies our hearts and thusly allows us to see God the clearest. Matthew 5:8 says it this way: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” There is a direct tie between purity of heart and seeing God for who he is. Note how the apostle John puts it:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3).
The very appearance of God (as he is) and the fervent meditation of God (as he is) inevitably leads to purity. Being near to God thus equals purity of heart. The apostle James says this:
“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded” (James 4:8).
Conclusion:
Thusly, I think we see from Scripture that God’s goodness both demands purity and supplies what it demands. This is grace so amazing! By being close to God and considering him for who he is, the heart is purified.
Application:
If in those times of doubt, when you speculate and intellectualize over the goodness of God with a heart of unbelief, you are committing grievous sin. God’s goodness is not subject to your belief. Your belief is subject to his goodness! God is good to his people. Though evil surrounds you and doubt fills your minds, the goodness of God is not compromised. Your purity is compromised! Hoping in him as he says he is will result in a pure heart.
This has tremendous implications for our holiness because anytime we sin we demonstrate that we are 1.) impure in heart, 2.) far from the true and revealed God, 3.) doubtful of whether or not God is good. Anytime we sin we demonstrate that we doubt if God’s way (of holiness, godliness, honor, integrity, blamelessness, pleasure) is good. It is a heart of unbelief.
God says he is good, and though you cannot now see every way in which his goodness is made known to you, you must hope in him as he says he is. But behold the manifold ways he has revealed his goodness! Have you forgotten the wonderous deeds of the Lord in your life? Have you spurned his blessing of life? Have you begrudged his blessing of family, friends, food, home, and other providences? There is always a reason to give thanks. But if, by some wise and gloriously good plan of God, you have nothing but loneliness, hunger, homelessness, persecutions, and sword, have you spurned God’s ultimate good blessing? Have you forgotten the gospel? He gave his Son! Is that not enough for you? If you, like Asaph, wonder if God is truly good to Israel, you must examine your heart, for it is not God who has ceased to be good, it is your heart that has ceased to be pure.
Fly to the gospel and thusly purify your hearts. What love the Father has made known to you in Him! His goodness and glory washes you from all uncleanliness and unbelief. Purify yourself, and wash your hands by drawing near to God, meditating on who he says he is.
I leave you with four truths from St. Augustine that have helped me:
1.) God always enables that which he commands.
“Lord command what you will, and will what you command.”
If he says to believe him, he will create that in your heart. Plead with him until he makes his goodness pass before you!
2.) Our hearts will never rest until they rest in God as he has reavealed himself to be.
“Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”
You will have a wayward, tossed, double-minded way about you until you rest finally in the truth of God’s goodness.
3.) Our love for God is compromised when we love anything apart from him.
“He loves thee too little who loves anything besides thee which he loves not for thee.”
God goodness wants you to enjoy his blessings. God’s goodness also wants you enjoy them for him. His goodness will thus take that from you which will result in your losing sight of his goodness. He gives! But he will take away, and this is his goodness, kindness, and mercy. Remember, however, that there is one thing God cannot take away: His promises in the gospel. Find your love for God in this love he has for you.
4.) To truly experience the goodness of God, we require one thing: Humility.
“If I should be asked what is the first thing in religion. I would say that the first, second and third thing therein is humility.”
Doubt and speculation are not admirable. Humble and contrite hearts that tremble at his word is what God looks to. Carnal speculation and fleshly intellectualism do not impress God. He does not command your theodicy; he commands your humility.
Working with you for purity,
Vince R.
Regeneration vs. the Idolatry of Decisional Evangelism
March 26, 2009
It was about the time I heard this sermon that I was only 90% sure how I felt about the “sinner’s prayer.” After this sermon, I was 100% sure. I put the “sinner’s prayer” in the ground, buried it, and put up a tombstone that said “anathema.” Our evangelism is weak, unbiblical, and it is eternally destroying some. What are we preaching? See for yourself, and examine yourself. What are you preaching?
The New Atheism and the Endgame of Secularism
March 20, 2009
Dr. Mohler’s lecture last year at Dallas Theological Seminary. I plan on quoting it in my final paper for the class entitled The Victorian Period. He speaks of “the Victorian Loss of Faith.” My working title is: “The Ebb of Faith’s Sea: Doubt and Modernism in Tennyson and Arnold.”
“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.” -From Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
Charles Haddon Spurgeon had me thinking just the other night. I was supposed to be reading the devotional for March 9, but somehow, I had been reading from March 10 that day. Well, it was exactly what I needed to read at that moment for God had ordained it. Read it here, but these words that stung hard.“Let us recollect the frail tenure upon which we hold our temporal mercies. If we would remember that all the trees of earth are marked for the woodman’s axe, we should not be so ready to build our nests in them. We should love, but we should love with the love which expects death, and which reckons upon separations. Our dear relations are but loaned to us, and the hour when we must return them to the lender’s hand may be even at the door.”
My heart began to melt for I sickened myself. So I turned to the text on which Spurgeon was writing.
“Man who is born of woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.” Job 14:1-2
And so I began some meditations on the fleetingness of man, the finitude of life, and the fragility of plans. I was brought low in a moment. Everyone I know will go away in the end. What is the point? Why study so much? Why labor as I do? Why care? I turned to Ecclesiastes and read the simple phrases again:
“For in much wisdom is much vexation; and he who increases knowledge increases sorrows.” Ecclesiastes 1:18
I have turned sorrowful of late, vexed with much wisdom and increasings of knowledge. The closer I grow to the Lord, the more sorrow is mixed with the joy. The closer I get to God, the more I know my own sinfulness. The more I know my own sinfulness, the more I know the grace of God. The more I know the grace of God, the more joyful I am to know him. The more joyful I am to know him, the more sorrowful I am that others do not.
The sinfulness of sin has vexed me much of late. I see it in others, and no longer does it make me mad. It has truly rended my heart in two. What have we done?
“The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.” Ecclesiastes 4:5
Man destroys himself, smiling and indifferent to his own decadence. I am seeing it all around. We drink down iniquity like water. There is much bread and idleness. And we sink lower and lower, deeper and deeper into self-mutilation. I was particularly sorrowful as I thought of these things.
“All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.” Ecclesiastes 6:7
We cannot get enough. Our hearts are drawn to iniquity. Only recently I had been reading through the first three chapters of Romans. Paul’s main objective there: To crush man under the condemnation of sin. Even as I read it, my flesh ached and my heart hurt.
“Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” Ecclesiastes 7:20
My heart was engulfed with the exceeding sinfulness of sin. What is wrong with us? We supress the truth in unrighteousness and we destroy our own flesh with self-hatred. Though we love ourselves, we really hate ourselves if we love not God.
What hope is there for mankind? I was particularly distraught with hopelessnes. But then I knew…I looked to the cross and read.
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows his love for us in that while were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” Romans 5:6-9
“The cross has set me free,” I said. “All our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh” I recited Psalm 90:10-11. “The years of our life are seventy or even by reason of strength eighty, yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away,” I continued quoting.
But the cross has set us free to fear God in our passing days.
“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Ecclesiastes 12:13
And that is the end of it. What else are those saved from God’s wrath to do but fear him and obey him? We are free, counted righteous by the one who once stood in judgment over us. We were objects of wrath, but now we are objects of delight. We can now enjoy his pleasure. We can now enjoy him. We can now enjoy his blessings. There is nothing better under the sun in the few days that God has given us. This is the end of the matter.
Working with you in these few days,
Vince R.
Inoculated to Jesus?
February 28, 2009
“The hardest thing is not convincing people they’re saved; the hardest thing is convincing people they’re lost.”
-John Piper
100% Gospel: Jonathan Dodson on “Gospel and Method”
February 25, 2009
Jonathan Dodson contributed to The Resurgence web blog with these two articles. I had a verbal “wow” when I read them. Check out both parts. I have provided excerpts from both. Think hard especially about part II. It is there that I was even more convinced of this simple equation: Preach Word -> Church Growth.
“Perhaps we need to be debating the strength of the gospel that is being preached, taught, shared, and shown in our churches. Are we incarnating and attracting people to a diluted gospel or a strong gospel? Are we incarnating kitsch gospel or kerygmatic gospel? In the end, what are we calling people to? Is our gospel both missional and communal or inward and individualistic? If it’s the latter, then something is wrong with our gospel. What would happen if we stopped debating methods and started debating gospel—winsomely and charitably?”
“Each concoction of the 50/50 gospel is actually quite dangerous. They all produce churches that attract people to morality messages, missional activities, and communal experiences. The goal of the church is reduced to converting people to a better way of living, not to a better God to be believing.“
Working with you for the gospel method,
Vince R.
Why Revival Tarries by Leonard Ravenhill: Book Review
February 18, 2009
"No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying."
Johnny Cash, the Gospel, and an Empire of Dirt
August 3, 2008
Dr. Russell Moore surmises one of many reasons why I really like this country artist. In his article for the Henry Institute, Dr. Moore discusses the cross-culteral viscerality of Johnny Cash’s music.
Where contemporary country music often peppers Christianity (a quick reference to Sunday Meals and Jesus) with a host of other shallow references like beer, trucks, and lost love, Cash’s music deeply explores the pangs of death and the hope of Jesus. While I would never assert that all of his music does this, his songs do always ‘feel’ black with a small light of conviction (often gospel conviction). Of course, he was called ‘the man in black,’ but it is the poetry and weight with which he carried this persona (it was simply a persona) that communicates a profound understanding of pain, death and loneliness. His characature was a reflection of his heart.
In his later days, this came through so vividly. One can’t help but identify with a man suddenly finding himself alone and facing death asking–What is all worth it? Has it all been real?
While others were doing commemorating performances of their past songs, Cash was singing about Revelation such as in ”When the Man Comes Around” or warning people that “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.”
This was a man coming face to face with death and the weight of judgment.
Did Johnny Cash make it to heaven? I can’t say. He professed Christ frequently, and he recorded some of my favorite southern gospel songs. But was it all show? I hope not for his sake.
Here’s an excerpt from that article from Dr. Moore about Johnny Cash:
King Solomon never won a Grammy but, like Johnny Cash, he discovered the vanity of fame and finance as death approaches. The faith in American V is less like a celebrity testimony at a Billy Graham crusade and much more like the desperate faith of a crucified robber, sobbing as he drowns in his own blood: “Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
Here’s the song that echoes with a lonely man looking back at it all as an empire of dirt:
Hearing this song, I am reminded of John Piper’s echoing cry: “Don’t Waste Your Life.” I recall the haunting story of a lonely man coming down to the front in his old age, bawling the words “I wasted it! I wasted it!
This morning I read Acts 20. Verses 24 and 25 captured me. Paul, addressing the Ephesian elders, is about to leave them, and he says:
But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.
In the previous verses (22-23), Paul said he did not know what was going to happen to him, but he was sure by the Holy Spirit that imprisonment and affliction awaited him. He was right. Paul, for the sake of Christ’s gospel, was martyred.
I was close to tears much like those Ephesian elders who cared so deeply for him and what he did for them for the cause of the gospel.
I was shaken because I thought of my life. Will I look back and think I wasted my life? Can I stand with as much conviction as Paul in my farewell and share in his words. He accounted his life of no value or as precious to himself for the sake of the gospel of the kingdom. Will I?
Oh God, create that heart in me! Your gospel is just too powerful and your kingdom is just too glorious for silence and passivity. May I not look back on my life as just an empire of dirt.
Working with you for the cause of Christ’s Gospel,
Vince R.
