Sinclair Ferguson Biography
Sinclair Ferguson born Sinclair Buchanan Ferguson is a Scottish theologian known in Reformed Christian circles for his teaching, writing, and editorial work.
Sinclair Ferguson Age
Sinclair was born in 1948. He is 71 years as of 2019.
Sinclair Ferguson Image
Sinclair Ferguson Image
Sinclair Ferguson Wife
He is married to Dorothy Ferguson
Sinclair Ferguson Career
Ferguson received his Ph.D. from Aberdeen University and served as a minister in the Church of Scotland from 1971 to 2005, when he was transferred to the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, serving as the Senior Pastor of Columbia’s historic First Presbyterian Church, South Carolina. He served with the Truth Trust Banner as an editor and served as a minister at St George’s-Tron Church, Glasgow.
Ferguson was the First Presbyterian Church’s Senior Minister in Columbia, South Carolina. He was also a professor of Systematic Theology at the Dallas Redeemer Seminary and a part-time professor of Systematic Theology at the Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) before holding the Charles Krahe Chair of Systematic Theology at the same seminar.
Previously, he also served as a board member of the Confessing Evangelicals Alliance.
Sinclair Ferguson Sermons
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Sinclair Ferguson Books
Ferguson speaks at numerous conferences worldwide. Books he has written, edited or contributed to include:
The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, & Gospel Assurance–Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (2016)
The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction (2013)
Name above All Names (2013) with Alistair Begg
Deserted by God (2013)
The Grace of Repentance (Redesign) (Today’s Issues) (2011)
By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes me (2010)
In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel Centered Life (2007)
John Owen: The Man and His Theology (2003)
The Preacher’s Commentary – Vol. 21 – Daniel (2002)
The Big Book of Questions & Answers about Jesus (2000)
The Grace of Repentance (Today’s Issues) (2000)
Reformed Confessions Harmonized (1999)
Let’s Study Mark (1999)
Let’s Study Philippians (1998)
Let’s Study Ephesians (2005)
Big Book of Questions and Answers (1997)
The Holy Spirit (1997)
Heart for God (1996)
The Christian Life (1996)
Discovering God’s Will (1996)
Sermon on the Mount (1996)
The Pundit’s Folly (1996)
Grow in Grace (1989)
Children of the Living God (1989)
New Dictionary of Theology (Master Reference Collection) (1988)
Daniel (Mastering the Old Testament, Vol 19) (1988)
John Owen on the Christian Life (1987)
Kingdom Life in a Fallen World – Living Out the Sermon on the Mount (1986)
Know Your Christian Life (1981)
Faithful God – An exposition of the book of Ruth (2005)
Sinclair Ferguson Quotes
“Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.”
“We best defend the Lord’s glory by speaking first TO Him about unbelieving men rather than speaking first ABOUT Him to unbelieving men.”
“Failure to deal with the presence of sin can often be traced back to spiritual amnesia – forgetting our new, true, real identity. As a believer, I am someone who has been delivered from the dominion of sin and who therefore is free and motivated to fight against the remnants of sin in my heart. You must know, rest in, think through, and act upon your new identity – you are in Christ”
“You cannot open the pages of the New Testament without realizing that one of the things that makes it so ‘new,’ in every way, is that here men and women call God ‘Father.’ This conviction, that we can speak of the Master of the universe in such intimate terms, lies at the heart of the Christian faith.”
“The foundation of worship in the heart is not emotional…it is theological.”
“Yes, people will tell us they believe in a “God of love.” But they are self-deceived, and their lives reveal it. They neither love Him with heart, soul, mind, and strength in return, nor do they worship Him with zeal and energy. The truth is that their mantra “My God is a God of love” is a smokescreen, a phantasm of their imagination. Underneath it all is a deep mistrust of God—otherwise, why not yield the whole of life in joyful abandon to whatever He says or asks?”
“Knowing God is your single greatest privilege as a Christian.”
“True faith takes its character and quality from its object. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others!”
“Be obedient even when you do not know where obedience may lead you.”
“As the early church fathers delighted in saying, Christ took what was ours so that we might receive what was His.”
“Man’s insulting God is not reversed by our insulting man.”
“Karl Barth once wittily remarked, “One can not speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice.”
“God protects us from Satan even at times when we are not aware of His protection. But how can we develop Jesus-like discernment? By Spirit-aided digestion of the solid food of God’s wisdom.”
“So long as Jesus Christ is there, in heaven before God for us, our salvation will last.”
“Underline this thought: assurance, peace, access to God, knowledge that He is our Father, and strength to overcome temptation all depend on this-the Son of God took our flesh and bore our sins in such a way that further sacrifice for sin is both unnecessary and unintelligible. Christ died our death, and now in His resurrection, He continues to wear our nature forever, and in it He lives for us before the face of God. He could not do more for us that He has done; we need no other resources to enable us to walk through this world into the next.
You and I need a Savior who is near us, is one with us, understands us. All of this the Lord Jesus is, Hebrews affirms. Fix your gaze on this Christ and your whole Christian life will be transformed.”
Sinclair Ferguson Maturity
Sinclair Ferguson shows that a deep-seated concern of the writers of the New Testament was to see Christians grow to spiritual maturity and if that was the concern of the first believers, then it should be our concern too.
In clear and logical chapters that are rooted in the reality of the Christian life, the author, who has had long experience in pastoral ministry and seminary teaching, seeks to show what Christian maturity is, and how it is to be obtained.
It was the apostle Paul’s desire to present those to whom he ministered ‘mature in Christ’ for such a maturity would lead to stable, servant-hearted Christians, and healthy, fruit-bearing churches.
All those who desire to live useful, mature and consistent Christian lives will gain much wisdom from reading and reflecting upon the contents of this book.
Sinclair Ferguson In The Year Of Our Lord
Author Sinclair B. Ferguson
Publisher Reformation Trust, a division of Ligonier Ministries, 2018
Length of 229 pages
Subjects Religion › Christianity › History
Sinclair Ferguson Baptism
In 2004, Sinclair Ferguson gave one of the finest lectures on the history of the Westminster Assembly and Baptism. The talk was given at the first annual Westminster Confession into the 21st Century Conference, hosted by RPTS. The title of the lecture was “The Westminster Doctrine Of Baptism And Current Reformed Trajectories.” You can purchase an audio copy of it here. You can download the pdf of the Stephen Marshall sermon that Ferguson references in the lecture here. Stephen Marshall’s book on Baptism can be downloaded here.
Michael Lynch provided the following digest of some of Ferguson’s points from the talk concerning the reasons why the Assembly included their statements on Infant Baptism:
1. The covenant in Christ is the same substance as the covenant made with Abraham
2. The consolations of the New Covenant in Christ are greater than the consolations made with Abraham
3. The children of Abraham had a right, by God’s promise, to the privileges of the covenant including the seal of circumcision
4. In the enlargement of the consolation of the New Covenant the same is true for New Testament believers; circumcision replacing baptism as the visible/material sign and seal of the covenant
5. Christ received little children and said that as such shall receive the kingdom of God.
6. Children are sanctified by the faith of a believing parent
7. All this is implied in Acts 2:38-39
Stephen Marshall shared three concerns with the Divines over against anti-paedobaptism polemics
1. Exactly the same reasoning inevitably abolishes the reasoning for the Sunday Sabbath. (same covenantal transition, same lack of command, same type of boundary marker)
2. Single most divisive act in a united kingdom of Christ’s church
3. Puts believer’s children in the identical status as pagans. Turks and Indians (in the language of Marshall) to be exact. It implies that on the day of Pentecost when 3000 were baptized, a multiple of 3000 were simultaneously excommunicated (the children of believers). For Marshall it is the inconceivability that the Jews at the moment of their baptism were inevitably excommunicating (God was excommunicating) there children from the covenant (Abrahamic covenant)
Summary of Marshalls doctrine of IB with respect to anti-paedobaptists polemic
1. Contra, no explicit command in the NT that form of reasoning not only collapses the necessity of infant baptism but also collapses a host of other beliefs which Baptists and paedo-baptists are actually agreed. Examples: Polygamy, women to take the Lord’s Supper, laws of consanguinity and affinity. We draw these conclusions by reasoning theologically so that verbal reference is many times not the issue but rather good and necessary consequence.
2. Contra the anti-paedobaptist exegesis of Acts 2:38-39 Marshall points out that you don’t have covenant retraction but rather covenant expansion (to all who are far off)
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Sinclair Ferguson Interview
Growing in Christ, Serving in Ministry: An Interview with Sinclair Ferguson
Tabletalk: How did you become a Christian, and what brought you to the United States from your native Scotland?
Sinclair Ferguson: I was brought up in a close family, with loving parents who tried to get me to keep the commandments, but outside of the church. However, they enrolled me in the local church Sunday school—that was still considered the “decent thing” to do for your children. In God’s providence, I had a series of Christian teachers who impressed me, although I did not understand why. One of them encouraged me to join a U.K. Bible reading organization called the Scripture Union. It published monthly Bible reading notes. From age nine to fourteen, I read Scripture daily and diligently, prayed, and tried my best. I thought that made me a Christian. Then when I was fourteen, several things happened. One was a small awakening among people I knew. For the first time, I saw in teenagers a little older than me what I had read about in the New Testament. I experienced a deepening sense of my own sinfulness. And in my regular daily Bible reading, I came to John 5:39–40—the first text in Scripture I remember reading and thinking God might be saying, “I am speaking to you!” A couple of friends encouraged me to go to a Saturday night gathering in a church in the center of Glasgow called St. George’s Tron (where I later became the minister). The sermon text was John 8:12. That first Saturday night in February 1963, I began to follow the Light of the world.
Twenty years later, we came to the United States to teach at Westminster Theological Seminary. It is a long story, but the human instrument was Ed Clowney, then the president. Over an extended period of time he wooed me into coming to the States, despite my long list of reservations.
TT: What are some of the most common struggles laypeople have brought to you in your ministry, and how does the gospel address those struggles?
SF: Probably the two most frequent have been related to personal sin and personal assurance. With respect to the first of these (sin), I usually point people to Colossians 3:1–17 and to other passages that further explain it. It underlines a number of powerful gospel truths: (1) It clarifies our resources in our new identity in Christ (vv. 1–5). We are united to Him in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and heavenly session, and we know that He will not return without us. (2) It helps clear up confusion about our relationship to sin (we are no longer under its reign, although we are not yet free from its presence, hence we fight it from a standpoint of strength—but we do need to fight it). (3) It points us to the two-beat rhythm the gospel develops in us for overcoming sin—putting off the old (vv. 5–11) and putting on the new (vv. 12–17). Here we have what Thomas Chalmers famously called “the expulsive power of a new affection” in vv. 1–4, and then in vv. 5–17 the “gospel replacement” pattern in which through the Spirit we “put off” everything that doesn’t “suit” being in Christ, and at the same time “put on” everything that “fits” being in Christ. Never one without the other.
With respect to assurance, we need to have some sense of whether someone really is a Christian in the first place (1 John is a great resource here, so long as it is used as an encouragement and not, as sometimes, as though it were written to accuse and condemn). Then, I find two approaches have helped:
The first is to clarify that our assurance is not resourced in ourselves, or even in our faith as such, but in Christ. The gospel tells us to “fix our eyes on Jesus” (Heb. 12:2), since all the resources for both salvation and assurance are found in Him.
Problems with assurance are usually not solved by talking about assurance (although those who lack assurance want to talk about that) but by helping people understand the gospel—justification by faith alone, the love of Jesus, the struggles of the Christian life, the providence of God, the wiles of the devil, and sometimes their own personalities.
The second approach is one I adopt when it seems appropriate: open John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and read a relevant section. Bunyan writes about struggles with assurance in personalized story form. What people usually need is simply the light of the gospel shining on their situation. On occasion, Bunyan’s use of the gospel in story form does exactly this, and I find people say, “That’s exactly me!”
TT: We often hear of the calling for pastors to be theologians. What does it mean to be a theologian, and how can pastors fulfill that calling?
SF: Being a theologian means, in essence, having a comprehensive knowledge of the gospel in all its many facets and interconnectedness. I liken it to being a physician who understands anatomy, and a pharmacist who understands body chemistry and knows his pharmaceuticals. Without a good working knowledge of theology, we will never understand how the gospel works, nor what the causes of spiritual sicknesses are, nor what gospel remedies to apply. In addition, we will be very poor at destroying the intellectual strongholds of unbelief, since we ourselves will lack the stronghold of the whole counsel of God.
I have always loved something I read about Calvin: he became a theologian in order to be a better pastor. Growing as a theologian may not make me a better pastor than someone else, but it will make me a better one than I would be without it.
TT: You serve in Ligonier Academy’s Doctor of Ministry program. How does this program serve the church?
SF: In a sense, it seeks to encourage exactly what was in view in the previous question. Unlike some DMin programs that deal with pastoral engineering and are weighted on the “practical” side of ministry, the Ligonier Doctor of Ministry program is richly theological. The faculty are all committed to theology as a shaper of practical ministry. Plus, the class gatherings readily morph into mini spiritual retreats as well as mutual encouragement gatherings for the pastors who come. So they begin being biblically and theologically rooted and end up having hugely practical repercussions.
TT: What counsel would you give to a young man who struggles with whether he is called to pastoral ministry and, therefore, whether he should attend seminary?
SF: It would depend on how well I knew him, of course. But I think my counsel would include reflections such as:
(1) Paul suggests it is a great struggle to have (1 Tim. 3:1).
(2) Don’t short-circuit the struggle.
(3) On the other hand, try to be clear whether your struggle is with (a) your clarity about God’s calling or (b) perhaps about your own willingness to be obedient.
(4) There are three elements in a call to ministry: (a) a divinely given desire; (b) the requisite gifts and graces (for example, as set out in 1 Tim. 3:1–7 as well as a desire to become the kind of undershepherds described in 1 Peter 5:1–4); and (c) the encouragement and recognition of the church, eventually formally in ordination but long before that in the way fellow believers receive and recognize your present service to and among them.
(5) In this last context, I might tell my own story or that of someone else. It is usually the story of the awakening of desire to serve Christ and His people (2 Cor. 4:5 has been a big text for me here). It is a deep sense of “how can I possibly do this?” And then it is the help of fellow believers who give encouragement to go forward because they have received something from Christ through our present service.
(6) Make sure you are willing for a twenty-four/seven lifestyle in which the aim is “love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5). And if you plan to marry, or are already married, be aware that the quality, commitment, and courage of your ministry is unlikely to rise above the level of your wife’s commitment to it, to your people, and to you.
(7) It is a calling so wonderful that I wish I could begin it all over again.