‘You
are forgiving and good, O Lord, abounding in love to all who call to
you... Teach me Your way, O Lord, and I will walk in Your truth... I
will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart... For great is Your
love towards me’(Psalm 86:5,11-13). God loves us. He forgives our sins.
We receive His love. We want to love Him more. His love inspires our
praise - ‘I will praise You...’. His love inspires our prayer - ‘Teach
me Your way...’. Our whole life is to be a celebration of His love -
‘Great is Your love towards me’. We are to celebrate His love with
‘joy’(Psalm 86:4). We rejoice in the Lord because of who He is- ‘You, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness’- and what He has done for us - ‘You, O Lord, have helped me and comforted me’(Psalm 86:15,17).
A response to a comment by G. R. Osborne on Berkouwer’s understanding of the doctrine of final perseverance
In his contribution to Clark Pinnock (editor), Grace Unlimited (1975), G. R. Osborne states that Berkouwer, in Faith and Perseverance, pp. 9-10, “speaks of the time less ness of the doctrine of final perseverance, founded on ‘the richness and abidingness of salvation” (p. 188, emphasis mine). This single-sentence comment on Berkouwer’s view hardly gives a fair indication of the type of thinking found in Chapter 1 of Berkouwer’s Faith and Perseverance - “Time li ness and Relevance” (pp. 9-14, emphasis mine). Berkouwer insists that “the living preaching of the Scriptures, which offer no metaphysical and theoretical views about … ‘permanency’ as an independent theme in itself, does nothing to encourage ‘a continuity which is … opposed in any way to the living nature of faith” (p. 13). Berkouwer stresses that “The perseverance of the saints is not primarily a theoretical problem but a confession of faith” (p. 14) and that “The perseverance of the saints is unbreakably connected wi...
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